Feedback needs an overhaul

[eerie_doll]

I am seeing a lot of sellers making the item title private for negative and neutral feedback but not positive.

How are we supposed to be able to determine if they are a worthy seller if we cannot see what items to steer clear of?
Furthermore, what is the point of the feedback system if they can be dishonest in such a manner?

I do not think this should be allowed.

I also would love to see feedback for items ON the item listing for that particular item based of previous purchases so that buyers can know what to expect or whether it's a worthwhile item to purchase.

[lyndal1838]

Sellers cannot make their feedback Private based on the colour or the dot.

Whether the listing is Private or not is determined by the seller at the time of listing the item, not when feedback is left.

It is not dishonest to make a listing Private....you can still determine if a seller is good/average/bad by the overall feedback score, the comments and the DSRs.

If you want to know about the items generally there are plenty of sites on the internet where you can get reviews from many people.

[ausbargainbasement]

I believe Ebay are introducing a product  review  feature aka Amozon.

[imastawka]

I also would love to see feedback for items ON the item listing for that particular item based of previous purchases so that buyers can know what to expect or whether it's a worthwhile item to purchase.

A seller is not going to put in their listing whether the product is good or not.

Go to the sellers feedback page and make it 200 per page.

Then press the F3 key.   A window will open at the top of the page,

 where you can type in the key word that you're looking for. 

Press enter and that word will be highlighted all through their feedback.

Then you can make your own judgement

[springyzone]

Wow, stawka, that is brilliant.

I would never have known to do that.

Must admit, there have occasionally been times where I have wanted to see how a particular item from a seller rates. I can sometimes see how many of those items a seller has sold & what the person paid (currently feeling slightly good as yesterday I got an item $2 under what another buyer paid the day before.) but unfortunately it doesn't show how they liked the product.

I know you can just go to feedback and look for someone with that same score showing but it is too tedious for big sellers, you scroll forever.

[digital*ghost]

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@eerie_doll wrote:

How are we supposed to be able to determine if they are a worthy seller if we cannot see what items to steer clear of?

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Negative feedback for the quality of the item doesn't make a seller less "worthy". The feedback system was, in fact, not intended to be for product reviews. 

I know they're often used that way, and it can be handy for someone to see how happy overall people are with a particular product, but even the best seller in the world can find themselves with a bad batch of something and rack up a few unhappy customers before they even know there's a problem.

Use product reviews, wherever available, to determine if an item is worth buying. Use seller feedback to determine whether a seller is worth buying from. 

[*tippy*toes*]

I always try and rate the seller. If I'm leaving multiple feedbacks for the same seller I may make a comment in one how great the items are and what not. The last one I leave will usually say something like "posts quickly, packaged very well, exactly as described". If I've had any communication with a seller, I add something about that as well.

I've had quite a few buyers leave a product review rather than a seller rating. If anyone bothered to read my feedback, all they'd know is that the buyer was happy with the item they bought, rather than the service I provided. It matters not, they still give a green dot and 5 stars, so not complaining! I'm at the stage now where I don't care if buyers leave feedback or not (although it is handy for untracked items to know they've arrived).

[digital*ghost]

I'm actually a pretty lazy feedback-leaver, in the main  In that the vast majority of my comments are generic and identical (after leaving several thousand as a seller and a buyer, I can't really come up with anything new anymore, so I stick with a few tried and trusted ones ). 

I will make special comments if something out of the ordinary happened, though (good or bad), but I usually don't mention anything specific (eg I recently had an issue with a purchase, the seller was great and re-sent some items out straight away, I didn't mention the problem, just made sure to say I was impressed with their service).

I think references to quality can have their place in FB, particularly if it's the kind of issue that should be mentioned in a description but it's apparent it was deliberately omitted, or even if the quality is so bad everyone would be better off if the seller just withdrew it from sale, but they continue trying to palm it off, but they still come down to more commenting on seller actions than product quality. 

Just for the OP's benefit, as a good example for why FB isn't really a good way to tell the quality of items, a while back I was selling a product I designed and make myself. The design was fine, but after I sold a few I got in some more material that turned out to not be quite up to scratch and I started getting complaints / return requests over the quality issue. All up, I'd say I got about half a dozen reports of a problem, out of maybe 15 sales, so more than a third - but, not one buyer left me negative feedback about it, most likely because they were happy with how I handled the situation. I've also since changed the materials used so it's a far better quality product (0 reports of problems since 😄 ), so even if all of those buyers had left me a neg, they wouldn't have been indicitave of A) my customer service and B) the current quality of the item. 

A lot of buyers leave positive FB on receipt of an item, too, which often means any quality issues that aren't immediately apparent are never mentioned in FB.