eBay to Drop Negative Feedback on Buyers 505
Trip Ericson writes "ArsTechnica is reporting that eBay plans to drop negative feedback on buyers. It's just one of a number of changes eBay will be making in the near future. 'eBay's data shows that sellers are eight times more likely to retaliate in kind against negative feedback, a figure that has grown dramatically over the years. In an attempt to mollify sellers, eBay will initiate a handful of seller protections to offset the inability to speak ill of a buyer. Negative and neutral feedback will be removed if a buyer bails on a transaction or if the buyer has his or her account suspended. Buyers will have less time to leave feedback, and won't be able to do so until three days after the auction ends. eBay is also pledging to step up monitoring and enforcement of its policies around buyers who behave very badly.'"
Ob (Score:2, Funny)
Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Perfect Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
There are times where I've wanted to leave negative or neutral feedback, but won't because I know I'll get retaliated and the negative feedback hurts me a lot more than it hurts a power seller with 10,000 transactions.
It seems standard practice these days that a seller won't even leave feedback until they see what you've written.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would definitely vouch for that. In my eyes the seller's only business with leaving you feedback is how you payed for the item. Was it timely, was it the correct amount, etc? I've argued with a seller about not leaving feedback for a purchase, and refused to leave any for them until mine was received. Needless to say, I still don't have any from that seller.
But I agree 100% with the parent ab
Re:Perfect Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I mostly a buyer through ebay, although I do have the occasional sale, and the deal isn't done until the buyer says the deal is done.
The seller has the money. But only the buyer knows that the money has been paid and the item arrived and there wasn't any damage in transit and the description was accurate to the buyer's satisfaction and...
What if the buyer complains the item isn't new, when the auction clearly stated it was used? What if the buyer claims the item never arrived, when the seller has a tracking number from the shipping service saying it was delivered? Especially given the way PayPal operates outside the normal banking system and credit card charges can be disputed, even if the seller thinks payment is in hand, the deal isn't really done until the buyer says the deal is done.
As a buyer, I don't expect the seller to leave feedback until I provide feedback indicating the transaction is complete. As a seller, I don't leave feedback until the buyer does the same.
That said, I have tempered my feedback in the past knowing the other party can retaliate. I agree 100% with you agreeing 100% with the parent. Keep feedback hidden until both parties leave feedback (or some period of time has passed, so if one party suspects he will get negative feedback, he can't just not leave feedback to keep the other feedback hidden forever.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. This will help rid of the bad (scammer) sellers on Ebay who use retalitory feedback to keep their ratings good.
At the cost of hurting LOTS more honest sellers who now will get hammered by irrational or crooked buyers without any means of redress. I absolutely guarantee you this will do NOTHING to combat fraud and will only hurt honest sellers. Retaliatory feedback is a useful thing to honest sellers against dishonest buyers. The scammers need to be addressed of course but this policy will fix nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The seller.
If you're a buyer, your feedback is almost completely irrelevant. If you're a seller, it is quite important. That's why the feedback system needs to be weighted in favor of sellers; they're the only ones with anything at stake.
The new policy, which prevents sellers from warning other sellers about p
I would add one more thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP's solution allows bad sellers to avoid negative feedback by simply not posting any feedback themselves. To prevent that, eBay should also, after a period of time, display any feedback left by either party and disallow anymore feedback for the transaction.
Also, just so we're clear, neither party's feedback should figure into the other party's overall rating until that feedback is displayed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who left negative feedback about you when your rating falls.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly, what the hell is Ebay thinking with these changes?
Re:Simple Solution (80 day delay) (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm running bogus auctions to rake in money before anyone notices, this could give me an extra 80 days before new victims get any warning.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Ebay waits for a period of time - 30 days - and then withdraws the feedback option, adds a comment that they didn't bother and publishes yours.
Re: (Score:2)
You fool! You could have "con"sulted a cool half million out of them for that solution.
Seriously, I can't see any flaw in it. There's no disincentive to leaving feedback, and as long as you continue to receive reminders as now, you're not any more likely to forget. I can't see the downside, which makes it rather bizarre that eBay seems to have gone the wrong way.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO the seller ought to leave feedback as soon as they have received payment. I always do when I'm selling something, it seems fair.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how the US version of eBay works, but if it really allows one side to see the other's rating/comment before requiring him to also rate/comment, it's utterly broken. For me, however, the proposed solution doesn't seem to make sense. Adopting MercadoLivre's system would have been better.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
100 pages of "AAAAAAAAA++++++A+A+A+==!@£ GR8 WOULD HAVE BUYERS BABIES" just serves to hide any negative comments. I'd rather just see a list of negative comments and the user's reaction to them. Last I checked, eBay wouldn't let you just view bad reactions, though they were thinking about it.
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
AS an ebay buyer, I don't leave feedback about shipping and accuracy of item until after the seller leaves feedback regarding my payment and communication. Often this leaves the transaction feedbackless, even if there was nothing wrong with it.
Heck, when I use paypal to make payment five minutes after auction close or buyitnow, my positive feedback should damn near be automatic, since ebay owns paypal and has everything integrated anyway.
Hiding feedback until both sides had entered it would work well. The other party could see that you had left feedback, but not wether it was +/- or what you said, until after they had entered theirs.
In defense of the feedback change (Score:5, Insightful)
You can never really be sure about who you're buying from as long as sellers can hold this Sword of Damocles over buyers' heads. They need to at least put a time limit on sellers' window to leave negative feedback, so they can't still be holding it over a buyer's head long after the buyer has paid.
I can understand why power sellers would be upset by this. But there are so many scammer sellers on ebay today, relative to just a few years ago, that something like this was probably necessary. The primary purpose of feedback is for buyers to judge the trustworthiness of the seller. And while it also lets a seller judge a buyer as well, this isn't nearly as important, IMHO.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In defense of the feedback change (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting idea, but you have to make sure that you account for a seller who builds up a good rating, and then "spends" his rating in 30 days, scamming buyers, who don't see the updated ratings until up to a month too late. One could work around this by making the rating anonymous during the 30-day period, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
30 days may actually be too long. Serial scammers will just need to plan their initial bogus positive transactions 30 days ahead (they already create their JoeNotAScammer23123 accounts well ahead of time), and they can come and go within a month.
What's wrong with simply revealing both parties' feedback simultaneously, as soon as both of them have provided it?
Sellers need protection too (Score:5, Interesting)
I made my living off eBay for 2 years and trust me when I say there are at least as many crooked buyers as there are sellers. Arguably more in fact because the way eBay is set up its easier to be a crooked buyer than a crooked seller. Yes, we left retaliatory feedback for buyers who gave us unjustified negative feedback. Nobody is perfect but there are way too many people who will try to screw sellers over if the sellers have no means of redress. Want to get something for free of eBay? Buy with PayPal and use the magic words "not as described". Send back an empty box (for proof of return) and PayPal will automatically give the money back. Happened to us multiple times. Oh, and "not as described" works for cases of buyers remorse too, even if it was completely accurately described and you have a no return policy. After all, eBay doesn't know and doesn't give a shit.
In disclosure I'm quite bitter against eBay. They raise rates every six months like clockwork. Some of their (and especially PayPals) dispute resolution policies are insane. They screw honest sellers in a variety of ways (I'll enumerate if anyone's interested) and basically make it nearly impossible to make any money selling on eBay. Being a Power Seller is nearly worthless. We sold literally millions of dollars of products on eBay, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars on our work, had a 99.6% positive feedback and eBay treated us like garbage the whole time.
Some folks have suggested that feedback not appear until both parties have left feedback. Not a bad idea but unlikely to be a panacea either. High volume sellers simply don't have time to leave honest and accurate feedback for every transaction. There just aren't enough hours in the day and the cost/benefit just doesn't justify spending the time. Plus I guarantee that some people will leave negative feedback no matter what (think "feedback trolls") without any redress if it is unjustified. At least until recently sellers could make a case that they were being unfairly treated.
Network effects (Score:3, Interesting)
Ebay has no reason to cater to sellers.
Are you kidding me? They have as much reason to cater to sellers as buyers. There isn't one without the other. Screw either buyers OR sellers over and eBay no longer has a market and with it no longer has a business. That said, eBay makes their money primarily from the sellers so it makes some sense to be at least a little concerned about sellers needs.
As long as buyers continue to choose ebay over other auction sites...
Please study network effects [wikipedia.org] and try again. People buy on ebay because that is where the buyers AND sellers are. It's the same reason the NYSE [wikipedia.org] and NA
Great change (Score:5, Insightful)
If sellers are going to act like stores, then they should have customer service like one and be willing to suck up the bad comments like normal retailers do. Leaving negative feedback was a childish tit for tat response and actually discouraged me from leaving any feedback whatsoever for a long time.
What about non-paying buyers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about non-paying buyers? (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there some kind of "Customer was a doodoohead" thing going on?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh...no... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What reason does a seller have for charging more than the actual shipping costs, other than making up for the too small selling price? (And therefore showing up more positively in the search results)
While I understand this practice very well, it remains a misleading practice which eBay should prohibit.
I don't think that charging 1200% of the actual shipping costs is realistic anymore. (Regardless of the "handling" costs, whatever that may be!)
However, I agree that if a buyer agrees to do business with a seller using such a practice (and clearly mentioned it upfront) the buyer should be prepared to actually pay this cost.
Personally, I prefer not to do any business with sellers utilizing this practice.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It allows them to have an artificially low selling price for the item. eBay charges them a percentage of the selling price (before shipping), so the lower the selling price the less the seller has to pay eBay.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the seller had been interested in good service, they should have combined shipping. They were not interested in good service, so they did not get good feedback.
Combined with violating eBay policy on handling cha
Is this a good idea? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are obviously some flaws with the system (human flaws right?), but there should be a good remedy to make this work a little better.
Re:Is this a good idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of negatives towards buyers are retaliatory, since those who don't pay lose their accounts pretty quickly. And as long as a buyer has a feedback rating of 1, they're generally fine as a buyer. It's the sellers where people seriously evaluate the feedback and both having a huge amount of feedback and "fake" feedback that's not accurate is useless.
I know I do it (Score:2)
Good Change (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no bad buyers? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No?
Account suspension (Score:2, Interesting)
but how do they determine that. I complained about it
Probably a good move. (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago I bought a motherboard on EBay. I paid for insurance and waited. It never came we tried to contact the seller and nothing. We contacted paypal and they said that the seller claimed to have shipped it and we had waited too long. So I contacted my bank and they reversed the charge.
All the time the seller protested that he had sent it. We mentioned that we did pay for it to be insured but that didn't seem to make any real difference.
My wife wouldn't post negative feedback because when she check this guy had a bunch of new negative feedback about not shipping stuff.
Every buyer that gave him negative feed back got negative feedback from him!
Re:Probably a good move. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, did you actually get your bank to undo a completed PayPal transaction? ...and PayPal in turn to pass the chargeback on to the bad seller? If so, wow... I didn't know this was possible. How long after the transaction was it, and did you have to plead, beg or yell to make it happen?
I used to like E-Bay (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, for the last several years, E-Bay has become a haven for scam artists and people who try to sell crap in bulk. It feels more like a cheap flea-market than an actual auction.
I hope E-Bay can turn things around by focusing a bit more on the individual buyer, but I'm not optimistic.
Buyers are just as big a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I heard somewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
Or am I thinking eBay is just being an evil corporation or no reason?
Useless change... (Score:2)
Paypal used to be useful - you could contest the charge and do a chargeback if seller was trying to screw you. But now they're the same faceless corporation, in it for the commission.
It only get better... (Score:2, Interesting)
While admittedly this is a change that has needed to happen for a very long time -- eBay is overrun by crooked sellers -- this is sure to drive away yet more honest sellers away from eBay. You have to be really determined to sell there. You have to really need to - it's far from fun already, and it's hard to make money if you're honest.
eBay is run b
We have been a trusted company on eBay since 2001 (Score:2, Interesting)
Good riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
You won't be missed by the buyers during your silly little boycott.
The only time I've gotten a bad deal on E-Bay was some "power seller" that sent me a radio with a bad tape player and then tried to take me to arbitration over the bad feedback!
Re: (Score:2)
Sellers depend on other sellers to leave legitimate feedback as a guide for the integrity of the bidder.
The key here is "legitimate" feedback. It is equally the same for buyers and sellers (and many people are both). EBay was cool in the 90s, but it's been overrun by opportunists. I no longer bother with EBay as the time investment and risk are just too high. If EBay can't solve their reputation problems, they'll be supplanted. Mark well when they pull out their patent portfolio and start suing competitors -- that will be the beginning of the end.
Just make sure... (Score:2)
Happened to me (Score:2)
Real solution:mutually blind feedback (Score:2)
ebay changes (Score:2)
If I was a larger seller I'd be trying to get together with other big sellers to create a private system to share information about scamming/deadbeat/irrational/insane buyers and hijacked accounts.
On another note, ebay UK has announced that all prices must included VAT (value added tax) if it is going to be charged. In typical ebay fashion until now their help pages said that VAT would be included but they refused to
Oh well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once I took the risk and got screwed by such one. He never got a comment from me. He paid up by court order, 1x the sales value for me, and 20x to a charity of the jury's choice.
Read--yes, read--the feedback (Score:3, Interesting)
Your approach is similar to mine. The points or percentage scores are too easy to game and therefore are useless. I read the actual comments with a critical eye. The credibility of the feedback comments vary by a factor of 1000 to 1, so focus on the credible comments, and follow the links to see if the buyer is a whiner or not. This points up the reform Ebay should be making: Increase the permissible length of feedback comments. 80 characters is so 1996.
The gun auction sites have a built-in resistan
Froogle to the Rescue (Score:2)
eBay is a market monopoly that needs balancing. If eBay is stopping its own users from being that counterbalance to its own users, th
eBay has always been "buyers beware" (Score:2)
Even less time? (Score:2)
Sometimes buying from international sources takes a significant amount of time to ship, and yet paypal only give you a limited time to make a claim...
Also some unscrupulous sellers will try to keep you waiting around for the claim or feedback period to expire.
The only 2 negative feedbacks i have on my ebay account were retaliatory, one seller sold me bad goods (google for fastmemoryman - he does it a lot), and another didn't like the fact i won a no reserve a
eBay Abuses its Monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead, eBay will stop all negative feedback. Which is the only feedback that I ever look at, to see what will go wrong (things going right is the expected default, until I look at feedback). That will turn all eBay transactions into uncertainty, which is bad for the entire market.
But I guess eBay can rely on its monopoly (look it up, it means "market controller", not "sole marketer") to keep business roaring. Remember that eBay also controls PayPal, the unregulated Internet global banking monopoly, and Skype, the unregulated Internet global telco (not yet a monopoly, but gaining...). While eBay was protecting the consumer, those global market dominances in retail, banking and telephony were not such a threat. But now that they're showing the corporate bias towards secrecy to "solve" problems of abuse, they need a hard look.
Someone's got to protect the consumer, even if it means just forcing eBay to allow consumers to inform each other what sellers and eBay are working against them. It doesn't have to be a government. Something like Froogle's reviews [slashdot.org] could harness people power around the world to do it even better.
Not the right thing to be complaining about (Score:2)
Less time to leave feedback = not good (Score:2)
I don't live in the USA, although about 80% of the stuff I've purchased through ebay has come from the States. Typically, I have to wait between 3 to 5 weeks for an item to get to me from the USA from the date it's been delivered... if they don't leave time for me to leave feedback, I'll be more than a bit choked.
Also, of course, there's the issue of how to deal with sellers who delay in shipping in the first place... which adds even further to the amount of time it takes until the buyer can completely
Reactions from a fully supportive eBay seller (Score:4, Insightful)
Brick and mortar retailers are just as exposed (or even more exposed) to these problems. If eBay sellers want to be taken seriously, they just need to accept the there will occasionally be issues. The mantra of all successful retail businesses is that "the customer is always right". Whatever losses you take from the occasional return or other problem are more than made up for by the boost to your reputation you get by having customers view you as a fair and flexible retailer. If you want to be in retail, you've just got to have thick skin. I'm sure eBay has made the decision that if sellers can't accept selling by the terms of the normal retail environment, then they really don't need to be selling on eBay. All they will do is lower buyer's confidence and hurt the site's reputation
Separate Buyer/Seller Feedback (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be much better to have separate buyer/seller feedback. If I'm buying something, I don't care if the seller has lousy buyer feedback. And vice versa. Having the two sets of feedback in one pool is what makes retaliation really serious -- one bad seller retaliating against you can affect your reputation as a seller.
Not showing the feedback until both parties have commented is another good idea. That would help even more.
-Esme
Screw that; get rid of BUY IT NOW! (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT'S why I stopped using Ebay, not some stupid feedback issue.
TWW
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand that this means it's not an auction. But I don't want an auction, I just want to buy stuff, and eBay has the sellers.
Depends on the trade-off for sellers (Score:3, Interesting)
Now then - I could live with the change if eBay would improve the trade rules and their enforcement in addition to "automating" seller feedback (essentially what they are doing - the deadbeat buyer gets flagged by the system not by the seller). It sort of looks like that may be what they're doing but it might be too early to tell.
Too many buyers (and sellers for that matter) are far too casual about communicating after an auction closes. When I buy or sell something at a live auction, the deal is closed before I leave the property. Yet on eBay, depending on the nature of the auction, there could be a lengthy delay between auction end and any enforcement actions taken or permitted by the system. Thigs I'd like to see:
Bottom line is that the feedback system, despite it's blemishes, is the one thing that lends a tiny bit of integrity when dealing with unknown buyers or sellers. As long as the improvements come with balance it's probably going to be a good thing. Personally, I take the feedback in context when I read it. If someone has one or two bad remarks you can usually see from the comments if it's some sort of extraordinary issue or not. Ditto for tit-for-tat nastiness. More than that shows a pattern and I avoid.
My $0.02 (frequent buyer, occasional seller) (Score:5, Informative)
I've received no negative feedback as a seller, despite several disputes that I eventually resolved with the buyers.
The biggest problem I've had with eBay is that they don't enforce their policies on the seller. I've won several no reserve auctions for high value items at a fraction of the items' value. Just as a winning bidder has an obligation to pay, a seller has an obligation to sell to the winning bidder. Lame excuses abound when the seller finds that the item didn't fetch what they were expecting. I've heard "my apartment was robbed, sorry" or "I can't sell for such a low price" despite winning auctions.
Aside from sellers to bid up their own auctions, sellers who refuse to sell at the close of the auction are the worst part of eBay. I've filed complaints with eBay in each instance, and then nothing. eBay won't discuss the complaint with me for privacy reasons. I doubt the seller even got a slap on the wrist. I've never won an auction and refused to pay, but my guess is that there are much more serious consequences for buyers in this situation than for sellers who refuse to sell.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
It "dicks over" (great phrase) a seller like me because if someone bids on a high-value item, now I will have no way of knowing if they have stiffed or otherwise screwed other sellers previously. A lot of sellers have personal policies about protectively refusing or canceling bids from bidders with a significant percentage of negative feedback. Now when someone bids on my auction, he/she may have stiffed the last three sellers they deal with, and I'm clueless.
Every time eBay changes its policies, it makes it more and more of a crapshoot to try to sell anything on there. But they are the 800-pound gorilla of the online auction world, which means the hassles are still to some extent mitigated by the much larger audience viewing ones auctions. Whenever crap like this comes down from on high at eBay, you will hear sellers rant and rave about how they are going to take their business elsewhere. Most don't; a few do but quickly return when they try using the smaller auction sites and see their income plummet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Payment is just the beginning (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Yes actually. It's called a credit reference check. Of course if you pay cash for most transactions you're fine. There are other restrictions like having age ID, having a driving license (hiring a vehicle), etc..
Also displaying goods is known (IIRC, in the UK) as an "offer to treat" and doesn't obligate the retailer in anyway to sell you the goods (but if they do sell them then they are obligated to do it in the proper manner, eg at the right price, etc.). This issue often arises when selling to children - no matches and paraffin, no eggs and flour, you get the idea.
If I don't like the look of you I won't let you in or will quickly usher you out of my store. If I've just seen your picture in the paper associated with anti-social behaviour then I'd be even more inclined to do that. Larger stores in most cities have a "store watch" or similar that bars people who have been caught shoplifting or which ensures suspected shoplifters are escorted around the store. So, this sort of thing does translate from/to the web/traditional retail environments.
Buyers of course have ample opportunity too to know about who they are buying from. There are lists of registered companies (with details of directors and other personnel). Also there are established mechanisms (trademark law and other consumer rights laws) that protect buyers at traditional retail outlets.
Basically I think your whole argument is pure bunkum.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it so a buyer cannot leave any feedback for a seller unless the seller has already left feedback for the buyer.
Terrible idea because only the buyer actually knows when the transaction is complete. A transaction is only complete when the buyer receives (paid for) goods and accepts delivery of them. A seller should never leave feedback prior to a buyer acknowledging via feedback that a transaction was completed. Otherwise the seller is opening himself to unjustified negative feedback with no means of redress. Any seller who leaves feedback first is quite simply foolish.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I have received retaliatory feedback from some sellers and it really sucks. In fact the 2 negative feedbacks I have is because of retaliatory actions. As someone else have said, when I buy an item and pay immediately, I have completed my side of the contract. There is NO exc
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As a buyer with a couple hundred purchases now it is down to 25-33% of sellers who have left feedback after paying
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I use paypal on 99.9% of the auctions I win - so I have usually paid for the item before the seller even knows it has sold.
What really gets me though, is on eBay "neutral" is a dirty word - and in most peoples eyes the same as "negative".
If I win something on ebay, promptly pay, and it takes 4 weeks of me asking via email where my item is - and finally ha
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put, the buyer is to bid and then pay-- the rest is the responsibility of the seller. So by being able to mark a buyer as 'non-paying' in their new system will have huge effects on their buying ability, while buyers can still rate the seller without fear of the "I'll rate you when you rate me" blackmail.
This is a great change.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Maximize *this*.
Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
What you want is to trick people who don't know about sniping and who treat eBay like a meatspace auction. As everyone else sees it, if people get "carried away", that's not "too high", it's "what the market will bear".
You say that you wouldn't bid if you couldn't snipe because prices would go too high, but you somehow think that you're helping people by staying and keeping them low (and winning them yourself.)
You've "helped" nobody except yourself. The seller would have gotten more if people had bid the item up. The buyers would have gotten more if they'd had a chance to win.
If you left eBay what would happen? People would still buy things, as people have got to have their crappy collectibles. Regular buyers would have a chance of winning, so they'd stay. Sellers would get higher prices, so they'd stay.
Maybe there'd be a problem with people skipping out, but then there'd be a way to put down a deposit, or people would really use escrow services, or you know, solve the problem without your help.
Meh, if eBay didn't suck it wouldn't be phasing out negative comments, they'd give you more ways to spot people who always reply negatively to any criticism. Frankly, they deserve people like you.
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Informative)
"In order to clamp down on the practice of tit-for-tat feedback, eBay will begin preventing sellers from leaving negative feedback on buyers."
I was going to summarize this but that one sentence is about as basic as it gets.
Re:Well Duh (Score:4, Funny)
instead send them here www.rtfa.co.uk
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Buyers and sellers could "opt-in" to a moderated rating system. Under such a system, meta-moderators could rate buyer or seller feedback as "fair" or "unfair" depending on the justification for the rating by the buyer/seller. Buyer or seller could leave the the moderated user-rating system at any time, but could not re-enter once they leave. "Fair" ratings would remain, while "unfair" ratings would not, and enough "u
Re: (Score:2)
ebay has indeed become something different than it once was. the good is still there (oddball items from people's basements, etc), but it is mostly a haven for people who bought the "how to get rich on the internet" books.
another option for them could be Karma - an aggregate rating that doesn't show individual scores. I have found, however, that the best way to insure a decent exper
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Couldn't come at a better time (Score:4, Insightful)