Heres an idea

[outback_blends]

How about buyers HAVE to contact a seller first before they can leave a neg.  At least give us half chance to protect our seller accounts (Because ebat sure as hell cant) 

Just got a neg (another account) for an item not recieved. It was a $3 item which I would have had no problem replacing if the buyer had contacted me first. But no, this putz blunders in, drops a big red one on me saying item not recieved. 

Buyers should HAVE TO contact a seller to sort it out before they can leave neg. 

Just a thought.

[ridyruki]

Help now theyve sent a picture of the hallmarks that they said wernt there and asked 3 times for my address and said customer service told them to take their tracking number  in manually  to the resolution centre ???????? in the Phillipines ??? .And they dont trust me  That ill break it all apart when i get it    I just want it back AAAAHHHHHHHHH 

[digital*ghost]

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@ozstockman wrote:

How about preventing those buyers who asked to cancel or done something wrong which led to cancellation  from leaving any feedback as a start?

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I definitely think there's a little too much room for buyers to leave bad feedback in circumstances like that. On the one hand, in some cases, leaving bad feedback might actually be appropriate, but on the other hand it can be argued that that can also be the case if a buyer doesn't end up paying for an item, and feeback in those cases can be prevented or removed (eg think situations where the seller sets it up to make a PayPal payment unacceptable and tries to instruct the buyer to only pay by bank deposit, which they refuse and don't end up paying at all). 

Ideally, ebay would be more amenable to reviewing these situations on a case-by-case basis and apply logic and reason to a decision of whether or not to allow a neg / neut to remain, but in the glaring absence of that, I suspect there's more instances where it would be appropriate to disallow bad feedback for a cancelled transaction than there is to allow it.

[springyzone]

I think DG has given a really interesting twist to the whole discussion & shown exactly how there can be exceptions to every rule. That it comes down to ebay sometimes needing to make a sensible decision on a case by case basis.

Overall, I would say that the whole process has to be as simple as possible though. Making buyers jump through hoops before leaving feedback probably isn't going to be a great idea. It could annoy them more, if anything.

I know a lot of sellers feel upset when feedback is not about the transaction itself but about things outside the seller's control eg item didn't fit, they didn't like it as much as they thought they would, 3mm was narrower than they thought, Aust post was slow etc  but while  feedback  remains in its present form (ie individual comment, not just tick the box options), you will always get some of this. It's the nature of the beast.