eBay UK testing new feedback option
by Sue Bailey
eBay UK have announced this afternoon that they’re running tests on new feedback options. Over the next 3 to 4 weeks, a “small percentage of buyers” will see a new feedback option, asking them to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely they are to recommend their seller.
We don’t have any screen shots yet – if you’re one of the lucky buyers, please grab one for us! – but we’re told the option is the same as one being tested in the US and Germany, where it “has not had an impact on buyer ratings”. And eBay seem strangely concerned to reassure sellers over this test:
We assure you that this is a test. The collected data will have no influence on your seller feedback score, rating on search result pages, or seller discounts. When the test is complete, the data collected will not be connected to your user account.
Sellers, no doubt, will be asking themselves what was so urgent about this feedback test that it had to be done now, and couldn’t wait until January. After the weekend we’ve just had, ANY kind of change, tweak or test run on the site should be left until the holiday shopping season is well and truly over.
Update: added link to US version of the test.
91 Responses on "eBay UK testing new feedback option"
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More complications for buyers…just let them buy and pay ffs.
Totally agree Whirly, it’s getting silly. As for rolling out or testing new features, didn’t they learn anything from Yesterday’s mess. Leave the bloomin’ site alone at least until well into January.
Testing means one thing..they have already decided they are going do it, this is just lip service, in a months time they will tell us how positivley the buyers have responded to it.
I prefer straight talk when I do business, smokes and mirrors is so 1980′s.
I think your’re right there.
I just dont leave any feedback as a buyer at all these days
I must admit I am coming round to the idea that a serious reduction in feedback and DSRs being left by buyers is about the only way to get ebay to change the rating system for sellers.
ebay are in danger of treating feedback like those vast lists of T&Cs you see on some sellers listings they addto and change for every incident& eventuality , that everyone ignores anyway
it really is becoming ludicrious
percentage of 100%
fractions of 5 stars
percentages of 1&2s over 12months or 4 months if you have 400 transactions
now score out of 10
its totally doo-lally-tap
Bottom line – ebay is in a mess
The problem is eBay want to be able to show bigger levals of differentiation between sellers & what ever they try there is still very little.
As an experiment I would like to have the default UK search show only UK based sellers and that to see sellers based overseas you would specifically need to choose that option (Sorry). I’m sure that would help no end in creating a better “buyer experience”.
Sellers, no doubt, will be asking themselves what was so urgent about this feedback test that it had to be done now, and couldn’t wait until January. After the weekend we’ve just had, ANY kind of change, tweak or test run on the site should be left until the holiday shopping season is well and truly over.
Oh Sue! I couldn’t have put it better myself! Why oh why oh why? I seldom put anything on eBay these days, but I was a fairly frequent buyer. I think they’ve made it tough enough for (non-diamond) sellers, but must they make it like an assault course for buyers as well, what with struggling to find anything *when* the site is up and running – especially if you don’t remember to disable best match and or ‘only view TRS’. Now a feedback survey form is proposed? Please ebay executives – step away from the Scotch……
Have you seen how many 99 pence Cd sellers are showing the postage on a single CD as Freight or collect in person as first option and a post option with the body of the text.
Even better still are UK mainland sellers listing on ebay Eire, but selling within the UK, in order to be able to charge postage.
PS Support states that this is OK – Yes they actually do – please ask them. You can live on the mainland . list on ebay Eire and post to buyers within the mainland and charge postage.
Now if that isn’t a complete crock of **** I don’t know what is !
I have never known ebay to be so confusing
I’m not quite sure why you think this is a big problem, a quick look shows (searching on cd):
25,064 results found for cd, £0.00 – £0.99
735,078 results found for cd, £1.00 – £1,000.00
Most uk sellers seem to be following with the rules.
I don’t know what the situation is like but if I were a buyer and saw 25k listings for CDs that were £0.99 and charging excessive postage I’d hit the back button rather than go through page after page before finding a legitimate listing.
The problem is that ebay is inconsistent in its policies and enforcement of policies.
They just don’t seem to know which way to turn, and as such they seem to be going around in circles
Yeah. And I recently discovered that if you list auctions – at any starting price – on ebay.com you can list them for free – to a maximum of 5 a month.
It might be worth trying to list on all global sites to see which ones best!
I hope the 1-10 scale gets implemented. As long as eBay don’t make the TRS based on the first 4 stars!
They won’t – on a Net Promoter scale of 1 to 10 eBay will probably use just the top two for TRS
With DSRs + TRS etc etc
EBAY IS just trying to put some sense back into the system………..I now because they told me so in my dreams
(THATS THE ONE THAT I KEEP HAVING & WHY THEY PUT ME IN HERE)
Your ex..ish ebay seller
Im mad..Im mad..Im mad..Im mad..
Broadmoor in-patient
PS; Will be one If they don’t leave us all alone
“at any starting price – on ebay.com you can list them for free – to a maximum of 5 a month.”
Yes, but the FVF is effectively higher if your item is over $25. The “free” ones have 8.75% flat FVF, which is only on the first $25 for a paid listing.
If you want to do it though you can get 10 by doing 5 on .com, and 5 on .ca, which are effectively the same thing as far as exposure goes.
Thanks for the tip about .com and .ca
FVF on .co.uk are 10% I believe
Geez – this reminds me of being at school and getting my homework score back. One teacher would give a 7 out of 10, and tell me this was an excellent score and (he) never gives better than that, and another would give me 7 out of 10 and say there’s room for a lot of improvement.
I also see this repeated in media reviews on an almost daily basis too – where one reviewer considers 5 out of 10 a decent and solid score, another would give the same score during a lousy write-up.
Far too confusing.
I really hope they DON’T implement the 10 star system.
eBay are obsessed with feedback. It’s about the only piece of their identity they have left now that they’ve marketed themselves as a dumping ground for overstock, faulty returns etc.
Our Account Manager admits to being shocked at how few buyers bother to leave DSRs. He might also be shocked to find out how few buyers can be arsed to rate sellers out of 10.
Still, I welcome any changes to the feedback system, for comedy value if nothing else. And congratulations must go to eBay, as ever, for their impeccable timing.
this week we needed to buy a generator
a fairly expensive item running into hundreds of pounds,
took us an hour to trawl thru the listings, the price, though important was not the main concern,as every price was much the same,on the product we required reliabilty of delivery was the main thing,
must admit in the end, we simply searched by TRS ,checked the despatch star and recent feedback then clicked buy, in reality a 2 minute process,
clogged up with 1000s of sellers listings we were never going to buy from
our point is the way ebay hhas things set up unless your feedback is god like or you want to give it away your buggered
This is us last year.
In the end bought great item from Aldi.
Cheaper than ebay better spec & collected same day*
I only leave feedback as I know it’s important to alot of sellers, especially the low volume sellers who can be really be hurt by just one bad remark, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.
I pay, you ship, if I don’t recieve it I contact you, you resend or refund. The End.
So that’s it then, this will come in perhaps January and it will be another stick to beat sellers with.
We have embedded Feefo ratings into some of our sites and this works well. It’s a four point system with
Great
Good
Poor
Crap
That way, people can’t bottle out and just give a non commital middle ground score. It’s working for quite a few independent retailers like Charles Thywritt and Lands End as well as my baby which is the children’s adventure park called BeWILDerwood.
http://www.feefo.com
Cheers
John
eBay’s announcement states that..
A small percentage of buyers will be shown different feedback options and..
The test will run for three or four weeks and only a small amount of transactions (approx. 2.000 sellers) will be affected
If the 2000 sellers they choose include their entire Outlet and DOTD Stores then does this mean that the DSR system and existing feedback system will no longer apply to them? If so this would appear to be a good way of protecting the reputations of these people. The way that a lot of them are racking up bad feedback and negative comments I don’t think they will get through to Christmas and beyond without an alternative feedback system
No – normally when feedback tests are run, they are in addition to normal f/b, i.e. you get asked to rate using the test system, and then you get asked to leave “real” feedback.
eBay don’t need to have systems like you suggest to get Outlet sellers out of poor feedback; they can always just remove it.
I am not so sure, maybe someone reading this is one of the “small percentage of buyers” shown different feedback options and they can tell us if they rated the seller using both methods..
If as you say eBay can simply wipe off a sellers bad record it makes a mockery of the whole system.
I’ve recorded quite a few instances of eBay simply removing the feedback from one seller in particular. Tends to be done in batches. Though in the case of that seller I never understood eBay’s motive since the overall feedback rating was the same either way (even down to the 0.1%) .
Maybe eBay should take a look at a certain TRS shoe shop outlet store it is promoting on it’s home page. More than 1000 non positive feedback in the last 30 days.
I suggest this particular “track record of excellent customer service” should be removed before they give us all a bad name…strangely their DSR’s seem to be holding up
I must say, I didn’t believe uk-vendor, so I thought I’d take a look myself. It didn’t take much investigation to find the well known brand shoe outlet seller of which he speaks.
As of this minute, they have 6115 positive feedbacks, 879 negative ones and 157 neutrals. This means almost 15% of their feedback is NEGATIVE for this month – a stunning figure.
Negative feedback comments range from an allegation of a “whole piece of” excrement being inside one shoe to auctions being reneged on for being won at a low price.
It looks as if they actually had more negs, but some have been turned into neutrals (eg, one person, who bought several items, made the same scathing comments, but half of those comments are acommpanied by a negative symbol and the other half by a neutral one. Unless they’ve got some kind of split personality, I suggest their feedback has been tampered with).
This “Top Rated Seller” has DSRs of 4.9, 4.9, 4.9 and 4.7.
Now, does any right minded person believe these DSR scores?
Their account manager will have a busy day ahead of him tomorrow doing more neg sweeping.
I have screen captured their most recent feedbacks so that I can look at it again tomorrow to check that I wasn’t dreaming and to see just how busy their account manager was.
Looks like something pretty disastrous happened with their stock control to me. Although this neg did amuse rather:
very disappointed, item listed by mistake – did offer 10% off their website
The number of negative feedbacks received by the majority of outlet sellers is very high – far too high in my opinion.
If negative feedback was done away with the picture would look much better for many outlet sellers as Most still have the Rossette and there DSR’s don’t look so bad.
Indeed Sue. The feedback suggests there’s lots of buyer harvesting going on – directing disappointed bidders to the seller’s website to claim their money off/discounts off their next purchases!
It appears to me that if an item doesn’t achieve a high enough price in auction they just say its out of stock. tut tut.
It appears to me to be the actions of a seller who will not be selling on eBay sometime soon.
They should by rights by now have had a shape up or else warning.
I don’t have an issue with “buyer harvesting” per se – indeed, I positively recommend it for all eBay sellers. I don’t think that “cancelling orders just so we can redirect buyers to our website” is what’s happening here – it really does look like a computer/stock control issue to me. And I have some sympathy for the seller concerned: in my very early days on eBay I had an employee who forgot that if we’d sold something, we shouldn’t relist it; fortunately I only had 30 or so buyers to placate and got away with it, but it is easily done.
However, that’s completely separate from eBay continuing to hold someone up as a pillar of the community. It makes a mockery of both TRS and Outlets, and it is deeply insulting to thousands of ordinary sellers who’ve worked like crazy to try to achieve this arbitrary and now-meaningless badge.
They use ChannelAdvisor, it is a great system so there should be no excuse for overselling, relisting in error or any of the other mistakes that can be made listing manually..I agree with every word of your last paragraph.
Too bad it is that seller. It is next to impossible for me to track that one. My problem has more to do with limitations to eBay’s hardware than due to eBay manipulating the seller’s feedback though.
Negs still coming in this morning and up to around 15% negs for the month on my calculations. Still showing a TRS badge too, is this some kind of sick joke by eBay.
I guess you keep the badge until the next review.
Ebay really should be slightly embarrassed by the performance of their chosen Outlets. Very few of them appear to be doing a very good job when it comes to Customer Service, with some of them apparently not answering emails at all.
And it would seem that most of them just want to pull buyers away from eBay and onto their own websites.
Just goes to show what a good job the rest of us are doing.
I don’t want to bore everyone by going on with this subject (this will be my last comment on it!), but there is something puzzling me….
There are some “false positives” actually coming from buyers – and some of them aren’t newbies either – with comments like “wasn’t allowed to give honest fb, never received item”. Another buyer commented that they were actually prevented by ebay from leaving a neg.
Can someone answer me this: is there ever really any instances where it’s not possible for an established buyer (not newbie) to leave negative feedback after they’ve paid for their goods?
The simple answer is that buyers can’t leave neg feedback for powersellers for 7 days, or they might not realise that sellers can’t neg back still, and there’s a suprising number of buyers who still don’t know about that.
Lol! I’m one buyer who didn’t know that you couldn’t neg a power seller for 7 days, but seeing as how I never leave feedback it’s not something that I’d be inclined to do unless the service was extremely poor
You can’t leave a neg for a PS until 7 days after the transaction.
I was just scanning through the feedback and noticed several false positives, I hadn’t realised there was a 7 day delay.
I think you also have to take into account a fair bit of abuse on the buyers part also.
I would love to see the stats on INR claims against diamond/V-Large sellers/brands against average PS’s etc.
I would expect the rate to be much higher for the larger sellers, which to me shows that the buyers are taking advantage with false claims. We al know it happens, I just think it happens a lot more than you might expect.
Whatever is going on here is pretty jolly close to meltdown. More than 25 negs since I checked last around 3 hours ago.
The ‘seller’, eBay and all other proper eBay sellers are at risk of permanent damage.
eBay must act now!!!!
It is a very graphic demonstration of how things can go very wrong when the ‘fat’ controller is not in control.
This is posted on their website blog:
Unfortunately, we encountered system problems with all auctions that ended between 7:30pm & 9:30pm on Wednesday 25 November on our outlet on eBay. Our automated system listed shoes that we no longer had in stock. We investigated straight away & found that our computerised system didn’t check our stock levels correctly & this resulted in stock being listed that we do not have. There are no words we can use to apologise enough for the disappointment this has caused. If there was any possible way we could have fulfilled these order, we would have done so. This is a very large scale problem as EVERY sale between 7:30-9:30pm. As you can imagine, this equates to thousands of sales & therefore thousands of our customers have been affected.
we have contacted each and every one of our customers via email to explain what’s happened, to apologise and to offer a goodwill discount that can only be used by them on our eBay store and also off of .co.uk.
They had around 15,000 (yes fifteen thousand) auctions ending in that timeframe. Most were sold, all those that I checked were ex-display seconds.
Would seem to be a duplicate listing issue not really one of stock control.
There could be quite a few more negs to come.
We have all listed duplicates in error from time to time but I guess not quite on this scale.
As before, eBay need to do rapid damage limitation on this for the sake of eBay.
At least their TRS badge appears to be safe. Even after all the negatives, neutrals and negative positives they received buyers appear not to have marked down their DSR ratings.
So let us see just how eBay plumb the depths on this with their level of understanding.
Dolphins caught in nets?
How about a submarine?
i have just sent the fb and i have to say whattttttttttttt YOU ARE F***** JOKING EBAY!! 6063 POSITIVE AND 185 NEUTRAL AND WAIT FOR IT 975 NEGATIVES – I’M NOT A TOP RATED SELLER 110 FB A MONTH NOT A SINGLE NEUT/NEG IN THE LAST 6 MONTHS. This has gone beyond a joke the should be kicked off straight away! To be on the safe side I have sent an email to the daily mail and the express to show that top rated seller is con and shoud not be TRUSTED!! ITS A FRAUD DO NOT TRUST TRS!! ITS BEYOND A JOKE I MEAN COME ON ONE IN SIX NOT POSITIVE (REMEMBER A YEAR AGO NEUTRAL IS ALSO NEG) AND TRS
A high proportion of those negs are for very cheap auction wins.
There are also plenty of positives that could be left as negs if the buyers understood the 7 day PS/Neg rule.
I don’t buy the computer error crap – it’s not the customer’s fault if they’ve screwed up.
It will of course be swept under the carpet.
Posters on the UK business seller’s board have already been threatened – see James’s pinned post.
My TRS badge is now quite worthless.
If it is a system error as they have stated, then the fact that nearly 1000 ebay users feel the need to neg them, it just shows the nature of ebay and its buyers. If this happened on their own site, the order would be cancelled and that would be end of it. None of this looking for blood b*sh*t.
I have on occasion sold an item only to find in pre dispatch tests that it has developed some kind of fault. Do i deserve a negative feedback for cancelling this order? Does this make me a bad seller? I would like to think not.
Remember, any bad feelings felt about ebay and its seemingly preferential treatment of outlet sellers should be directed at ebay themselves, not the outlet sellers. I guarantee that if any of us were offered better selling terms we would take it without a second thought.
well its just a joke – a year ago there were sellers being kicked off for a neg and a couple of neut. I HAVE STOPPED BUYING ON THIS CHANNEL ITS JUST TO MUCH RUBBISH ENDLESS LISTING OF THE SAME STUFF……….NEW STRATEGY FROM ONE TRS FLOODING THE MARKENT WITH IDENTICAL LISTINGS BECAUSE THEY ARE TRS THEY COME UP ALWAY FIRST…WHAT GOOD IS THIS TO THE CUSTOMER HE/SHE ONLY SEES ONE PRODUCT 50TIMES….deep breath just move along..ebay is dead
Wow, everyone makes mistakes, what’s with all the agression?
Sour grapes?
I say scrap feedback altogether, very childish system.
RUBBISH “EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKE” EBAY HAS NEVER SEEN IT THIS WAY AND THEY SHOULD NOT…YOU ARE DREAMER OR A EBAY YES MEAN IF YOU THINK A BUSINESS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TRADE IF 1 IN 6 OR MORE ARE NOT HAPPY – EBAY NEVER SHOWED ANY MERCY…NO FB SYSTEM YOU ARE JOKING???HMMM LETS JUST SEE DIAMOND ACCOUNT MANAGER WOULD JUST DELETE THE 1000 RATING AND NOBODY WOULD KNOW BUT IF A SMALL SELLER GETS ONE UNFAIR OHH NO IT CAN NOT BE DONE..A JOKE…TRS IS A CON THAT WILL HARM CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IN THE WHOLE EBAY SYSTEM…WHY FIX IT IF ITS NOT BROKE YOU COULD HAVE RAISED THE BAR TO 99% FOR PS
It could be one massive error – after all, it looks like all the auctions did end on 25 November.
But the way it has been handled speaks to a massive arrogance – anybody else would try to end the auctions or even get eBay to take them down.
But instead they’ve gone down the path of reneging on them – and eBay did advise sellers to do exactly this with auctions ending during the Sunday Outage.
I am just a sole trader but learned very early on to use my own judgement when advised by ebay on how to run my business. Some of the advice they give is unreal – and in the #1 slot must be “run 99p auctions to bring in the customers”.
It’s a bad show all round for ebay
A high number of these auctions did end on 25th november but by no means all of them. Now over 1000 negatives and screenshots no doubt taken will reveal any tinkering, besides there is no justifiable excuse for account managers to remove feedback it is schuhs error not ebays. They should be stripped of TRS before the newspapers get wind of it
or should i say decide to run the story.
Yeah, because what we really need two weeks before Xmas is a bad press story on eBay.
I see eBay are introducing a new badge for sellers who…
Consistently receives the lowest buyer ratings.
Never Dispatches items.
Has a track record of crap customer service..
The Top Negged Seller (TNS) badge…
[Edited by Sue to make the piccie show up]
Sue, “EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKE”.
Yours would appear to be punctuation. Please use some.
I TELLL YOU SOMETHING THE BIG BOYS ARE NOT TAKING ANY CRAP THATS WHAT ITS ABOUT OHHH FUNNY TWO NEGATIVES THIS MORNING ARE FOR NOT IN STOCK NOT HIGH VALUE 1.04 AUCTIONS RRP 25 AND THEN THEY OFFER 20% OFF…SEEMS TO ME THEY WERE BUSY FOOLS NOTHING MORE…AND COMING AROUND THE IDEA NOT TO SELL SOMETHING FOR A MASSIVE LOSS 988 NEGATIVES 988 NEGATIVES AND ONLY 6000 TRANSACTION IN A MONTH AND THEY ARE TOP RATED SELLERS LEAVES A BITTER TASTE IN MY MOUTH…
If eBay is so dead…why keep going on about it…build a bridge, get over it and concentrate on your own business.
If it is a listing error then eBay/Schuh need to start acting PDQ to sort it out, there are now another 1000 pissed off eBay buyers in the UK because of this so called listing error.
If I bought something and it turned out to be out of stock I wouldn’t be looking at leaving a seller a neg if it was dealt with properly, mistakes happen. How come everyone of those buyers is so pissed off? must have been handled badly imho.
As an aside, offering buyers discount vouchers for there website is just taking the piss, Mr Lewis should kick there arse’s and kick them very hard.
Very true, Whirly. We’ve sold items before, and when we’ve gone to pick them the box has been labelled wrong etc. It does happen. If dealt with properly, the customer should understand.
None of these Outlets seem to have got to grips with Customer Service yet.
And how do you list 15,000 auctions in 2 hours?
“And how do you list 15,000 auctions in 2 hours?”
I guess you’ve never heard of Scheduled Listings?
Or File Exchange or the eBay API
(I don’t think Turbo Lister would work that fast, but I did once get it to do about 600 in around 90 minutes.)
Depends on your connection speed I guess, I’ve seen TL upload 1000 an hour before now when I had a leased line.
Channeladvisor (the system they use) can upload infinite amounts of listings, so its probably pretty easy to upload 15000 products over 2 hours
live by the sword, die by the sword?
Only if they start selling baths John.
I thought swords were banned?
Sat with amusement from this, anyone from ebay HQ dare to comment on tamebay? Just hiding in the shadows?
Pathetic, old habits die hard…
Where’s Mr Lewis and co now?
WRITING IN CAPITALS IS VERY ANNOYING
Must admit, I’m starting to feel sorry for them.
An honest business with 250,000+ happy customers having their fb trashed like this. It is not as if customers have lost their money.
One fb comment complains that they have sent a UPI notice. Why oh why doesn’t ebay bail them out? Where is this special treatment thet the Outlets are supposed to get?? When one of them needs it most.
I’m rather agreeing with Ellen. Unfortunately what happens when a company has a lot of negs, is that everyone gets much more neg-happy than normal. Buyers who would normally have taken their refund and shopped elsewhere get angry about their “rights”, and it all snowballs. I think that getting trashed for a genuine mistake, albeit one of horrible proportions, is a bit much.
I understand the TRS badge stays until the next review but why have the Detailed Seller Ratings remained unchanged?
Surely with so many unhappy customers something would have been marked down
Looks like the coverup has begun.
[name withheld] left [name withheld] four negatives and several positives over the past six weeks. Three of those four negatives were removed on December 11. The only thing even remotely offensive about the comments that wasn’t included in the sole remaining one was the word “liars” which is even specifically permitted in the feedback rules.
I think the feedback for outlet sellers has been brought into disrepute by the fact the seller we’ve been discussing above has DSRs that have remained static at 4.9, 4.9, 4.9, and 4.7. Had eBay not made their DSRs static they would have been severely trashed by now as they have 5957 postives and 1380 negatives for the the past 30 days. This is over 23%. It therefore follows that their DSR scores are patently not true.
I do actually feel sorry for the seller; my point is I feel that eBay has tried to use DSRs to cull small to medium sellers but diamond sellers are not being assessed in the same way.
Actually I don’t think those DSRs are static. I’m showing that for the month they are only 4.4, 4.5, 4.3, and 4.4. It is likely they just have so many that the yearly ones just haven’t moved.
There is actually a better way to tell. If you go to eBay Vietnam you can see them down to the hundredth. 4.86, 4.85, 4.85, and 4.69.
Plus how do you rate DSRs on a nonexistant product anyway? Description = 1 because listing said it existed, Communication = 1 because seller told me product didn’t exist, and Shipping time = 1 because product never shipped? I suspect many just skip the stars because they don’t accurately reflect the situation.
How are you able to calculate the DSRs for the month only?
If I hover over the DSR scores it shows the ratings I mentioned in my previous post.
Also are we talking about the same UK seller?
Simple. I don’t get my information from the eBay site.
I assume my source is the same that [innocent 3rd party site withheld] uses to calculate your (or anyone else’s) current DSR scores on 30 days and 12 months.