On Jan 29, 11:33 am, Ignoramus1782
wrote:
Now sellers will only be able to leave positive feedback.

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/...tml?ov=004KM#2

Feedback Changes
The eBay Feedback system was designed to provide a simple, honest,
accurate record of member experiences. Focusing on customer service
includes doing everything we can to grow customer confidence in our
sellers.

* Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
* Positive repeat customer Feedback will count (up to 1 Feedback
from the same buyer per week.)
* Feedback more than 12-months old won't count towards your
Feedback percentage.
* When a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) process
the negative or neutral Feedback they have left for that transaction
will be removed.
* When a member is suspended, all their negative and neutral
Feedback will be removed.
* Buyers must wait 3 days before leaving negative or neutral
Feedback for sellers with an established track record, to encourage
communication.
* All Feedback must be left within 60 days (compared to 90 days
today) of listing end to encourage timely Feedback and discourage
abuse.
* Buyers will be held more accountable when sellers report an
unpaid item or commit other policy violations.

And yet another FYI...

TMT

EBay's tweaks to feedback worry sellers By AMANDA FEHD, Associated
Press Writer
2 hours, 44 minutes ago



EBay Inc. says it's changing its user-feedback system to keep buyers
from leaving, but the plan has sellers worried they'll no longer be
able to weed out untrustworthy shoppers.

Buyers and sellers have been able to rate each other at the online
auctioneer since its birth in 1995, when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar
envisioned a virtual marketplace built on trust among buyers and
sellers.

Come Feb. 20, a full spectrum of feedback is welcome from buyers about
sellers, while sellers can no longer give buyers negative star
ratings.

The shift was announced Tuesday among a complex series of pricing
changes and initiatives that eBay hopes will improve buyers'
experiences as it struggles with stagnant user numbers.

It's a fundamental change to create trust and tackle fraud in a
marketplace where buyers and sellers never lay eyes on one another.
Steve Grossberg, a Florida-based top seller of video games and
president of the Internet Merchants Association, said the ban on
rating buyers is a good thing.

"When the seller leaves a negative feedback for a buyer, it drives
them away from the site," Grossberg said.

But eBay needs to work harder to stop bidders who don't pay up, he
said. The site does not require immediate payment,and sellers complain
they are just as exposed to fraud as buyers on eBay.

Company spokesman Usher Lieberman said about 6 percent of auctions end
in nonpayment by the winning bidder.

Sellers can require payment upon checkout for fixed-price sales, which
account for 40 percent of eBay's business worldwide. But immediate
payment is not required on auctions because the buyers are not at
their computers when they win an auction, Lieberman said.

Sellers have long used feedback to alert one another about fraudulent
practices like nonpayment. Sellers earn good ratings by delivering
quality products and using timely and reasonably priced shipping
methods. Buyers earn poor ratings by not paying for an item or
threatening the seller with a bad rating if they don't lower the final
auction price.

Both buyers and sellers use the information to assess their trading
partners' trustworthiness. Buyers can decide not to purchase from
poorly rated sellers, and sellers can eject poorly rated buyers from
an auction, for instance.

But sometimes sellers retaliate for poor ratings by giving a buyer a
bad rating. Retaliatory ratings by sellers have risen fourfold in the
past several years, Lieberman said.

And that's turned off buyers, he said. Those who stop using the site
complain more often about retaliatory ratings than other factors, such
as not receiving items they've paid for.

Grossberg, the trade association leader, said eBay has no incentive to
stop nonpaying bidders, because it charges its fees and commissions
regardless of whether a transaction goes sour.

Sellers wrote this week in online forums that they worry what the
change means for how they do business.

"Most of the sellers are having a gut wrench about the feedback
changes. It's a very abrupt change to something that has always been
sacrosanct in the eBay world," Bill Hamilton, a top seller in Georgia
who specializes in collectible gemstones, said in an e-mail to The
Associated Press.

The company does not keep comprehensive fraud statistics since most
fraud occurs outside of the site -- when, for example, the customer
uses a nonsecure payment method.

In the first quarter of 2006, eBay's reported loss due to payments it
made to settle fraud claims was .06 percent of revenue.