Ebay’s New Feedback Policy: The Customer is Always Right.

Most days, I love Ebay.  I buy, I sell, its great!  Nothing beats finding a pair of designer jeans at under retail prices on Ebay!  It’s like – yay – score one for me!  But today – I, like many Ebay Seller’s, am not happy with Ebay.  I thought this topic might interest our readers even though its not directly related to denim – because most of us denim lovers do find many of our designer jeans on Ebay.

About Ebay’s new feedback changes – Neutrals count as Negatives as far as your Detailed Seller Rating goes.  Sellers can no longer leave Neutrals or Negatives for buyers.  Yes, you read that right.  Only feedback in the last 12 months counts but all feedback comments are visible – so why did I spend years trying to maintain a good reputation on Ebay then?!  There is also no more Mutual Feedback Withdrawal program and no more Dispute Resolution program with SquareTrade.  

Ebay’s new feedback policy seems to be that the customer (buyer) is always right, and sellers, you are on your own – no matter that you are the one paying Ebay’s fees.  There is also an interesting discussion going on over in the HonestForum about this that I’d encourage Ebay Sellers to check out and put in their 2 cents on.

I’ve written in the past about the recent fee and feedback changes that Ebay’s had in the works this year.  Well the new feedback changes just went live this week, and I, for one, have been greatly affected by it.  If you check out this tool, you can see your feedback before and after the new feedback changes.  Many people’s ratings changed if they have been Ebay members for more than 12 months.  Personally, my feedback went from a 99.4% down to a 97.4% – two entire percentage points.  I am also currently a PowerSeller but because PowerSellers have to have a 98% positive rating or better, unless I get a lot of positive feedbacks fast, I am going to lose my PowerSeller status.  And PowerSeller status is important because Sellers get a discount on fees when they are a PowerSeller.  Oh and they just rolled that part of the program out too.  So just when we all thought to ourselves, “Cool, we finally have some benefit to being a PowerSeller, we get a discount!” they take it away by making it impossible to keep our good feedback ratings in place.

And some of our favorite sellers ratings also have dropped – like JudyNJacob, who went from a 99.8% to 98.9%, and lost their PowerSeller status.  And VIP Fashions, who’s been on Ebay for years, went from a 99.5% to 98.6%.  And finally, DailyDenim went from 99.9% to 99.6% and as of July will lose their PowerSeller status because they only have a 4.4 in their Detailed Seller Ratings for shipping and they must have at least a 4.5. 

I recently had a buyer who bought a pair of jeans and left me a negative because they were too big.  When I contacted the buyer to see why he hadn’t emailed me first to work something out – he said, “You are right, I overreacted and would like to withdraw my feedback”.  But guess what – he can’t, because of Ebay’s new rules.   

The reason this bothers me so much is that there are many honest sellers out there, but now our ratings don’t look that way – and many of us are losing our PowerSeller status because of these changes.  And we are the ones paying fees to Ebay to sell items, but Ebay is no longer giving sellers much support as far as the way disputes are handled at all. 

I just wish Ebay would have policies that were fair to both buyers and sellers.  The only change I see that helps Sellers at all is allowing repeat feedbacks from repeat customers – but there are even restrictions on that.

A tip for Ebay buyers:  If you have a problem with an Ebay seller, please, be cool!  We are humans too, and we sometimes make mistakes.  But most of us are nice people and will try to work something out with you.  Give your seller a chance to refund or exchange your item if there’s a problem before leaving a negative feedback and damaging that seller’s Ebay business. 

I posted some related articles below, which state how small to medium sellers are being most affected by these changes.  As we’ve seen from the stats above, the bigger sellers are taking big hits too, and even losing their PowerSeller status.

How much do you think these new changes will affect Ebay PowerSeller’s bottom lines, if at all, and thus, Ebay’s bottom line?

Related Articles:

• Sellers Give Negative Feedback on Ebay changes
• Ebay’s Feedback Changes are Bad News for Buyers
• Ebay feedback changes to take effect May 19th