eBay and Feedback
by Tyler Jones

While I like the idea of feedback for eBay (to build a record of your reputation), the current feedback system is a trifle flawed and needs some adjusting, in my opinion.

For those not on eBay, as well as those who may just have joined up, feedback is a way in which people can leave a paper trail (or perhaps a paperless trail) on how they do on eBay. Each time a buyer wins an auction, the buyer and seller can leave feedback for each other once the entire transaction process is done. You can leave Positive, Neutral or Negative feedback depending on how the transaction went. Things like the level of communication, payment, shipping, item quality and the overall atmosphere of the transaction can factor into your decision as to which type of feedback you leave.

All eBayers have an overall feedback rating. For each positive feedback, you get one point. For each negative feedback, you get minus one point. You get no points for Neutral feedback. You only get points for unique feedback, so that if I bought 50 items from you, and leave 50 Positive Feedbacks, you would only have a net total of 1 point. This prevents two people from building each other up.

In general, this system works pretty well, at least in theory. There are two problems that I see with it, one minor and one major.

The minor problem is that many people often choose not to leave feedback. Feedback is voluntary, and some eBayers either do not fully understand it, don't have time or simply can't be bothered. The disadvantage with this is that it becomes harder for people to build up a feedback rating. That rating (assuming that is mostly positive) tells people that they can be trusted. I know that I take a great feal of pride in my own feedback rating, and you can't have it if people don't bother to leave you any. Many people claim that they're too busy to leave it, but they seem to have enough time to post auction items and take your money. :-) The only way to solve this is for us all to encourage each other to leave appropriate feedback, whether positive, neutral or negative.

Retaliatory Feedback is a much more serious problems. Often, eBayers who do not pay for their items, ship bad merchandise, etc. will justly receive negative feedback from their buyer or seller. Angry at this perceived insult, they will leave negative feedback as a "punishment" for the offender, even if it's not justified. This in turn causes people to be afraid to leave negative feedback or file NPB alerts. eBay has a very tough policy about removing existing feedback. It has been done, but is extremely difficult. While this is a good policy in general, I believe that eBay should be more willing to remove negative feedback that is clearly retaliatory. In the case of buyers, this is fairly easy to prove, since a payment trail is usually fairly clear. It's tougher to do in the case of sellers, but an effort can definitely be made to crack down on it a little bit.

One solution, mentioned by somebody on the chat boards, makes a lot of sense. In a transaction, feedback is anonymous until both parties have left it. In this way, retaliatory feedback would be more difficult to leave and easier to prove. Further, it would encourage people to leave feedback, since their own rating would not increase until they take the time and return the favor.

Another possible idea is that anytime anybody is kciked off of eBay (and by that I mean they leave eBay but not voluntarily) all negative feedback that they have left in the past 30 days is removed from the system. This is based on the assumption that most of that would be retaliatory. All negative feedback older than 30 days, along with all positive and neutral feedback, would be retained.