Comments

10 responses to “Lost the Plot: EBay to ban negative seller views”

1. 2008/02/06

   Chris Boyle

   I actually think it’ll have the opposite effect. If you look at their rationale, this only applies to seller views, and the vast majority of negative feedback from sellers is purely retaliatory. Fear of such retaliation has been preventing buyers leaving negative feedback: how many sellers leave positive feedback when they’ve been given a negative themselves? eBay is removing a feature that was mostly used for bullying, and as a result, feedback from buyers can be far more honest.

   That said, I think a better way to do this probably would have been to hide any given feedback from its recipient until they have also provided feedback, removing the opportunity for retaliation.

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2. 2008/02/06

   The Line is Here » Blog Archive » I’m Highest Bidder Now*

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3. 2008/02/06

   Hazel Stone

   Chris: Piffle, as I stated here. Feedback from sellers is just as important as from buyers.

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4. 2008/02/06

   Roy Adams

   You do realise that only buyers can leave negative feedback in Amazon marketplace, just as ebay is proposing?

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5. 2008/02/06

   alecm

   I see what you mean, though it still makes me deeply uncomfortable – whenever I see an asymmetrical loss of transparency, to me it implies the “law of unintended consequences” will shortly impact. It’s encapsulated in what you say:

   >Fear of such retaliation has been preventing buyers leaving negative feedback: how many sellers leave positive feedback when they’ve been given a negative themselves?

   My concern is: imagine that 1 in 1000 EBay users is someone having a bad day, someone who’s a nutter, someone out for a free ride, someone who gives bad feedback for the hell of it.

   Since there are 233 million EBay users, that 1-per-1000 means globally there are 233,000 such nutters. What happens when you let them off the leash without giving a seller a potential right to respond for individual cases?

   Complain to EBay customer services for each and every incident? For 233,000 * N potential incidents?

   I’d rather see the whole thing out in the open.

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6. 2008/02/06

   alecm

   @Roy:

   >You do realise that only buyers can leave negative feedback in Amazon marketplace, just as ebay is proposing?

   I hope what I’ve written since, in the comment stream, clarifies my position.

   The Amazon example was badly chosen by myself – an attempt to illustrate the unintended consequences issue and how it impacts a social network – but alas it’s not an actual analogy for the EBay issue which will be disastrous in an entirely different way 🙂

   Amazon is mostly business2person and businesses generally have to abide by a code of conduct and take the hits on bad payment, etc.

   EBay are significantly person2person.

   That’s a different ball game.

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7. 2008/02/06

   Darren J Moffat

   Just leave the negative comments in FaceBook after all they will get to know everything you bought sold or were even thinking about before you do anyway 🙂

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8. 2008/02/06

   Craig Overend

   alecm,

   Just like counseling in courts, some people need mediators to help resolve conflict. Sellers may be better served by providing feedback to the moderator (eBay) and not the users directly. This kind of system will only work however if eBay takes action and polices members themselves with negative reputation based upon buyer history and not just single, retaliatory transactions. What this however requires is a transaction record and rating process. Including *all* communication events and both parties opinion of their effectiveness. Of course a system like this may be made even better if seller feedback either follows or appears to the moderator at the same time a buyers does. Extra penalties for buyers and sellers, should they be seen to be gaming the system with negative feedback also needs to be taken into account by the moderator. The transparency process I believe best to pursue, is to be given access to the other parties transaction history during a moderation process which requires a cost for that moderation so as to support that ecosystem.

   A robust system is only as good as one that can support itself. Right now the cost to buyers in giving negative feedback is too high. There have also been studies that show that the way we buy things directly effects how happy we are with the outcome. Buying online without seeing the goods, or knowing exactly if they do what we want without direct interaction with them, muddies the view from both sides. It all comes back then to moderation processes to allow users to place disputes, and systems for managing those mechanisms in a sustainable manner.
   I can potentially see a new field emerging here… something I’m tentatively dubbing reputation management.

   They MUST have done real user studies before coming to this decision, I’d like to know what the background management system for this will be.

   Craig.

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9. 2008/02/06

   CF

   I think ebay has had a serious move from the idea of private sellers dealing with each other in a community.

   The recent changes on ebay and the death of ebay express show that they are repositioning the main site as a channel for volume business sellers (if you are getting a few hundred sales a week a few negatives hardly matters). The hobby private seller with less than 100 feed back is effectively out of the market place.

   Those concerned should be looking more at the paypal ‘hold for 21 days’ on certain incoming transactions, while this is common with real merchant providers like worldpay its going to come as a nasty shock to the ebay community, especially with ebay’s almost total lack of fraud prevention tools for sellers.

   They may claim now that this will only apply to sellers with low DSR’s but it can’t be long before it is rolled out to all sellers. Any serious ebay business should be exploring alternative channels to market such as play.com, amazon, and their own website urgently.

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10. 2008/02/08

    eBay Curbs Internet Revenge from Travis Vocino

    […] that the whole idea though? Isn’t the eBay feedback system supposed to operate as a self-policing open forum where you’re scared to screw people because they might destroy your reputation? What was […]

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