Prompt's TechBlog

Ebay has announced plans to stop sellers from leaving negative or neutral feedback on their buyers, according to the BBC. Under the new system, the only way sellers will be able to warn other sellers about dodgy buyers will be to leave feedback tagged as positive but containing negative comments.

Ebay owes its success in part to the feedback mechanism where both parties in a transaction can leave public comments about each other when it concludes. Feedback can be scored as positive, neutral or negative. All Ebay members have a feedback rating calculated by totalling the number of positives and subtracting the negatives and that score is used as an indicator of standing in the Ebay community. You wouldn't buy a Wii from someone with a feedback rating of zero, for example.

The problem is that sellers use the threat of negative feedback to coerce buyers into leaving favourable feedback for them, even if the buyer paid on time and got a load of rubbish in return. It's interesting to note that on Amazon marketplace (where buyers have no feedback rating at stake), sellers tend to have lower feedback ratings than on Ebay.

Banning sellers from leaving negative feedback would shift the balance of power in the community towards buyers, and would undermine the spirit of equality that pervades transactions. It would also make it harder for newcomers to gain the trust of the community. Under the present system, members can shop on Ebay to build up their rating before attempting to sell something. That won't carry much weight if the only option was positive feedback and the number of transactions without feedback isn't reported.

As someone who's both bought and sold on Ebay and who has a feedback rating of over 200, I can see something needs to be done but I'm not convinced this is the right solution.

Ebay has recently introduced detailed feedback scores for sellers, which covers things like how accurate the description was and how reasonable the P&P charges were. As well as leaving the 'positive/neutral/negative' score which is publically attributed to them, buyers can leave anonymous detailed feedback. The scores are averaged and only the average is disclosed to the public (and then, only after ten people have left a rating). Perhaps a similar approach could be used across the whole site, so that it's harder to see who's left negative feedback. That would cut the risk of retaliation and encourage both buyers and sellers to be honest in their ratings. The downside is that buyers and sellers would effectively lose the right to reply, which enables them to explain what went wrong in response to any negative feedback. The average would also tend to smooth out any negative feedback, when it's important for the community to know if 10% of parcels never get posted.

Anyone else got any ideas? I'm sure Ebay would appreciate the feedback.