Removal of feedback about buyers

[sellingpreloveditems]

eBay has now removed any way sellers can leave anything other than good feedback about buyers. Meaning sellers have absolutely no way of leaving honest feedback if their feedback happens to be anything other than positive. However buyers of course can still leave negative feedback about sellers. Now this is incredibly one sided and biased towards buyers, leaving it very unfair for sellers. I’m both a seller and a buyer.
There’s now no repercussion at all for a buyer to be a total assh*le, be difficult, demanding, rude or even take forever to make their payment. They can do what they want knowing it’s impossible for them to ever receive bad feedback.
Maybe people who are buyers will like this but I’m sure a lot of sellers would agree with me that it’s unfair. How does feedback get back to EBay? How would I submit feedback to EBay about this change? I’m hoping if enough people point out how one sided and unfair it’s now become, eBay May reverse the change back to treating buyers and sellers equally.

[enigmabear]

Sellers have not been able to leave anything but positive feedback for many many years now

Ebay don't care

They came up with some bulldust 'reason' about there being better ways blah blah blah

Fact of the matter being ebay will do whatever it takes to make sure buyers are always right,always protected and always 'happy' no matter what

[padi*0409]

eBay will never bring back the option to leave negs for buyers, one of the main reasons it was discontinued over 10 years ago was that sellers were using it to get revenge on buyers that left negative or neutral feedback.

Negs for buyers are pointless anyway since a seller doesn't usually have the time to check buyers feedback before they buy or bid on an auction.

Use the tools that eBay gives to to weed out bad buyers - like your BBL or the Unpaid Item Dispute process.

To add, you really need to put measurements in your listings for clothes as sizes vary so much between brands.

[performance_parts_clearance_centre]

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@sellingpreloveditems wrote:
eBay has now removed any way sellers can leave anything other than good feedback about buyers. 

There’s now no repercussion at all for a buyer to be a total assh*le, be difficult, demanding, rude or even take forever to make their payment.I’m hoping if enough people point out how one sided and unfair it’s now become, eBay May reverse the change back to treating buyers and sellers equally.

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"Now" is just plain wrong. It's not an overnight development, as noted in previous responses - sellers have been howling about it ever since it was changed, and eBay won't change it back.

[wide-world-of-stamps]

Yes, we use those tools & they weed out some of the problem buyers.

However, we've often thought that knowing a buyer regularly has unpaid item disputes opened would also be a help. There are some buyers out there who wait to pay until the last day of a dispute & if we knew they were serial offenders we'd open a case ASAP instead of sending polite reminders so as not to put them offside (revenge feedback as already mentioned).

Maybe we're too polite in some ways, but that's just us.

[kopenhagen5]

Just do what I do, open all unpaid cases at 5 days if no communication from buyer.

You can even have this set as automatic and if a buyer gets their hair up about it, I explain it happens automatically and no effect to buyer if paid within a further 4 days.

[wide-world-of-stamps]

We generally wait 7 days as we've noticed many sellers in our main category have that time-frame mentioned in their listings.

We do have a couple of buyers for who we open a case after 4 days as we know they never pay without it. We haven't blocked them as they usually buy in quantity & always pay eventually. One-off non-payers are generally blocked from buying again, unless they send their apologies (even if their excuse is probably untrue, they've at least made the effort).

[padi*0409]

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@aujoh_4llpe wrote:


However, we've often thought that knowing a buyer regularly has unpaid item disputes opened would also be a help. There are some buyers out there who wait to pay until the last day of a dispute & if we knew they were serial offenders we'd open a case ASAP instead of sending polite reminders so as not to put them offside (revenge feedback as already mentioned).

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Opening a UPI in itself is not grounds for penalising a "buyer", however I do agree with others that there should be an indication on buyer's feedback that they have had NPB strikes against them - not that it would help sellers who haven't got their blocks in place, and the "buyer" either bids on an auction in the last few seconds or "commits" to buy a BIN item without the "immediate payment" requirement on it.

[kopenhagen5]

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@aujoh_4llpe wrote:
We generally wait 7 days as we've noticed many sellers in our main category have that time-frame mentioned in their listings.

We do have a couple of buyers for who we open a case after 4 days as we know they never pay without it. We haven't blocked them as they usually buy in quantity & always pay eventually. One-off non-payers are generally blocked from buying again, unless they send their apologies (even if their excuse is probably untrue, they've at least made the effort).

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Sounds like you know your own category well and have it under control. 

[digital*ghost]

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@sellingpreloveditems wrote:

There’s now no repercussion at all for a buyer to be a total assh*le, be difficult, demanding, rude or even take forever to make their payment. They can do what they want knowing it’s impossible for them to ever receive bad feedback.

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I would actually argue that a negative feedback comment is not much of a repercussion, anyway.

I don't know about anyone else, but as a seller, my buyers do not get to do whatever they want without consequence - whether they care about the consequences is debatable, but I can assure you that such buyers don't usually care about red dots, either. There are just as many of these types of buyers on sites where they can get negative feedback. 

Someone being rude to me generally has the opposite effect on me to what the buyer originally intended, as I now find that kind of thing extremely easy to dismiss - the buyers are simply blocked, sent a message that shows them I can not be swayed or influenced by that kind of thing, and then I just continue on with my business. Other kinds of behaviour are reported where appropriate (to eBay, ACORN, whoever). 

The threat of negative feedback doesn't really bother me as a seller, which from experience takes the wind out of the sails of most people who behave in the way you've outlined - I won't say I don't care if I get one, but I can say my reaction lasts for about 10 minutes and after a bit of venting, I swiftly get to the "meh" stage and just get on with business, as I find when I concentrate on all the buyers who aren't behaving like spoiled brats throwing tantrums, or not paying for their purchases, the time and energy spent on - and effect of - the "undesirables" is kept at a negligible low.