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Epicenter from Wired.com:
Ebay Sellers Riled Up About New Fees and Feedback Rules

After a fairly challenging year, John Donahoe, who takes over as eBay CEO at the end of March, unveiled plans yesterday to lower the upfront listing fee and increase the back-end fee for sellers. The so-called “success-based” model, which takes effect Feb. 20, is meant to increase listings, but from what we can gather, it will do little more than enrage its merchant base.

Donahoe also said;

“Sellers prefer this structure, as it lowers their risk if an item doesn’t sell,” Donahoe said in a keynote speech at a conference yesterday. “Put simply, we will make more of our money when sellers are successful.”

Wired doesn’t know who Donahoe consulted, but all of the things I’m reading tend to lean the other direction; regular sellers do not prefer the new pricing. What’s really troubling is the new feedback rules, according to one ebay forum poster;

“Sellers will no longer have a way to protect themselves against bad buyers, deadbeat bidders, scam artists, buyers who make unreasonable demands, buyers who don’t read the ad then demand a refund, the list goes on and on…”

Usher Lieberman, the spin artist for ebay, said this:

“We’ve seen a four-fold increase in unwarranted negative feedback left for buyers in a retaliatory way. Buyers have told us consistently that one of the strongest reasons for not using the site is retaliatory feedback,” says Lieberman. “If buyers have a bad transaction, that won’t drive them away. What does drive them away is retaliatory feedback.”

I see, it’s OK if a buyer leaves snarky feedback for a seller that didn’t give his or her all to the transaction, but it’s not all right if a seller does it. Feedback is just that; feedback, and negative feedback is generally retaliatory. One of the reasons that ebay’s been so successful in my opinion is because the community weeds out the bad apples. If ebay management is going to make judgements on what is and is not good feedback, we might as well bail to Amazon.

As far as retaliatory feedback driving buyers from ebay, that’s all bullshit. I’m sorry, but ebay doesn’t derive a lot, if any, revenue from buyers, they get it from listings by sellers. I don’t know about you, but alienating your revenue stream doesn’t seem like a particularly savvy business maneuver.

I’ve seen feedback from sellers that has curled my hair, but it’s generally due to the fact that the buyer treated the seller, from the get-go, like dirt. Having both bought and sold on ebay I can tell you that selling is the harder of the two activities by far. I have perfect feedback because I am always up-front in the ads I construct. There are always pictures, full descriptions, and I tell prospective buyers exactly what is wrong with the item (paint chips, dings, dents, etc.) I also describe my terms “before the fine print” in a larger font. These include my return policy (I generally sell old electronics on ebay–you buy and it’s yours), who is going to pay for shipping (buyer pays) and what payment method should be used (PayPal confirmed address ONLY). I don’t want there to be any mistakes or infer any warranties whatsoever.

If someone stiffs you, or insults you, or pays after your deadline, you have a perfect right to put that in a negative feedback and report the member to ebay. That’s what the system is for. The hobbling of that is going to make it harder on everyone in the ebay community.

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Filed under: Internet, Stupidity, Tech