May 8th, 2008 by Skip McGrath

Can eBay make the feedback changes anymore complicated?

On May 19th the eBay feedback changes announced in January will go into effect on eBay US. Some highlights are:

• Sellers can no longer leave negative or neutral feedback.
• The positive feedback rating (percentage) will only be based on the last 12 months of transactions.
• Neutral feedback will be counted as -1 for the purposes of calculating the positive feedback rating percentage.
• Repeat feedback (weekly) will be credited in your feedback score (this will be retroactive back to 1996).
• Members will have 60 days (not 90 days) to leave feedback.
• If a buyer doesn’t respond to the Unpaid Item Process, their entire feedback (not just it’s impact on your rating) will be removed.
• Buyers will have to wait to leave neutral or negative feedback for sellers “with a track record.”

On this last point, they had originally said 3 days, and have just changed the waiting time to 7 days. They also finally defined “track record” as active PowerSellers with over 12 months on eBay. This has sparked more unrest from smaller non-PowerSeller sellers who feel that they are being pushed out to make room for the huge corporations.

Another change is to the Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback program. Many sellers predicted that the “alignment of Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback to the new feedback system” as announced in January would mean the program being cancelled.

We (at least I) had hoped that at the same time they would introduce a way for buyers who accidentally left the wrong type of feedback to be able to change or delete it. This was one critical use of the MWF program. Unfortunately, when eBay announced yesterday that the Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback program was indeed being cancelled (effective May 19th), they did not implement any program or procedure to cover these “accidental” negatives and neutrals.

SquareTrade dispute resolution will no longer be allowed either. I think SquareTrade has seen this coming for a while. Their business has moved far further into the warranty business and away from online dispute resolution which is now a much smaller part of their overall product offerings. In fact, it’s barely featured on their homepage. It remains to be seen if the SquareTrade Seal program will continue.

See Also

• Skip McGrath’s eBay Boot Camp DVD Set Now Shipping
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