The petition
Current EBay feedback policies are designed to protect the power sellers, not the individual buyers. EBay has designed this policy to protect itself from legal liability if a buyer or seller’s reputation is damaged due to feedback that EBay sanctioned. We understand that EBay is never going to police its feedback. However, the policy must be improved to cut down on abuse and unwarranted negative and neutral feedback without major upheaval, complete revision of the system or EBay having to involve themselves in any way past the implementation.
In theory the EBay system is sound: A buyer or seller gain one point for positive feedback, no change for neutral, or loose a point for negative feedback. Where the system starts to go askew is when you are dealing with people who sell hundreds or thousands of items a month. Picture this scenario… Joe Buyer (current feedback rating 55, 100% positive) purchases a digital camera on EBay from The Camera Conglomerate (current feedback rating 2500, 99% positive) for $100. Joe Buyer immediately pays for the camera through PayPal. He gets a confirmation letter from The Camera Conglomerate that his payment has been received and his new camera will ship shortly. Unfortunately, The Camera Conglomerate just realized that they are out of stock in the camera Joe Buyer just purchased. Now, the right thing to do would be for them to email Joe Buyer and let him know, and offer him a different camera of equal value. Instead, they find another cheaper camera that looks just like the one Joe Buyer purchased and ship him that one. Joe Buyer, believing he got the right item, is so excited to get his new camera that he doesn’t look very closely before he opens the packaging and gets the camera going. It’s not until he goes to use a feature that the camera should have (which this camera doesn’t) that he realizes he’s been duped. He immediately emails The Camera Conglomerate asking what the deal is. They email him back, apologizing for the mistake, and tell him to return the camera in new, unopened condition for a full refund, even offer to pay the shipping. They knew going in that he likely would not inspect the camera box before opening it, so they got their money and then some. Now, when Joe goes to leave negative feedback, they will retaliate by stating that they offered him a full refund. His feedback doesn’t hurt them, because they have hundreds of other positive to balance it out, but theirs drops his score to a 98.2%. Is this fair? No.
The part of the buyer in any EBay transaction is simple: Win and Pay. Too many times a buyer completes a transaction, and the seller fails to keep up their end of the deal. Per current policy the buyer and seller both can leave negative feedback for any reason. However, sellers are now waiting for the buyer feedback before they leave theirs. This generates a fear in buyers to leave true, accurate feedback in fear of the seller leaving unwarranted retaliatory feedback.
We Propose that EBay Implement the Following Changes Immediately:
1. The Seller should be required to leave feedback for the Buyer within 48 hours of cleared payment.
a. This will force the Seller to comment only on the part of the transaction that the Buyer has control over.
b. This will force Sellers to leave true and honest feedback about Buyers.
2. In the event of a negative or neutral rating, Sellers should be limited on the reasons why they can leave bad feedback. For example: Non-Paying Bidder, Payment Received Past 7 Days of Auction End, Payment Returned, Unauthorized Item Return(Buyers Remorse), Abusive Buyer, or Unresponsive Buyer would be suggested categories.
a. This would force Sellers to justify why they are leaving the feedback.
b. Similar categories could be instated for Buyers to ensure fairness, however to cover all possible reasons the list would be extensive.
EBay is an excellent idea, in concept, however as buyers and sellers have changed, EBay has failed to adapt. If you are active on EBay, you likely see what I see- fewer and fewer items are selling. I chalk this up to the fact that buyers are afraid to purchase off EBay because there are so many scammers out there, and EBay is rewarding them by giving them the title of Power Seller. In all fairness, not all Power Sellers are scammers, but can you pick out the bad ones?
The changes we are demanding would be easily implemented and would cause the EBay system no undue hardship due to downtime or extensive reprogramming. The code is already there to limit the time you have to leave feedback, and they recently implemented the star rating system in the feedback console, so adding required elements to the feedback console without taking the whole system down has been proven possible.
If EBay has not implemented these changes (or a reasonable compromise thereof) or assured buyers that they will be completed in a timely manner, we, the buyers will go on strike. EBay has until 6/12/2008 to implement the demands. EBay must realize that we do not have to shop with them, and unless they start protecting their buyers they will loose them.
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