@south.coffee wrote:
We are lucky to receive positive feedback from 1 in 10 sales, 10%. When a buyers expectations are not met that rises to 100%, so one negative feedback has far more consequences to your reputation.
After 60 days if no feedback is provided, I would like to see a positive feedback added to my tally so it reflects the volume of satisfied buyers.
On the Chinese online sites, sellers receive this automatically with the words: This user did not fill in the evaluation.
A crazy buyer jammed us with 3 negatives today, all unjustified.
The issue with that is that it doesn't reflect the volume of satisfied buyers in as much as it reflects the volume of buyers who didn't or don't leave feedback, and for an accurate representation of that in feedback, neutral would be more appropriate and less presumptive, if it were not for the fact that anything less than full marks with a green dot is interpreted as negative (this phenomenon is not exclusive to eBay - there are companies around which have implemented a rating system for customers to evaluate their experience with a tradesperson, salesperson, or customer service rep, usually out of 5 stars, and less than 5 stars can actually jeopardise that person's job, and / or comepnsation, like wages, commission or bonuses etc).
I would prefer a transaction count, rather than automatic positives, which is an accurate data summary people can interpret in a meaningful way. eg This seller has sold 35,000 items, and has received 19,254 feeback, 19,251 of which were positive.
The consequences (to sellers) of negative feedback are largely unquantifiable - they don't affect a seller's service metrics or their eBay account at all anymore, they do affect percentages on feedback pages, which may affect the perception of the seller at a glance and may deter some buyers, and I suspect many sellers would say that it affected their sales. (For me, it's really hard to say - I received a neg just after Christmas, and sales have been below average since then so it would be easy for me to say it's because of the neg, but I highly doubt it as there are many other contributing factors at the moment).
Some sellers will swear blind their sales rose after getting a neg, as though they were getting empathy buys, or their response convinced more prospective buyers that their customer service is actually exemplary.
So at best I would say they are contributing factors to some results, but not the sole or primary reason for up or down swings.
Disclaimer, though - I really don't care about feedback one way or the other, that makes me objective in some ways, but it is still a bias, the same way something that is important to someone can result in a bias, something that is unimportant to someone can as well.
