https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Seller-Check-in-Feedback-Update/ba-p/34523278
TLDR > eBay admits they made a fiasco of their feedback removal procedure.
For which I have been banging my head against the wall for several months now.
Today…Vindication!
WOW
Not great that it happened at all, but for sure we would never see Amazon say that they take responsibility for being negligent while making changes.
Yeah, it seems like eBay swtiched over to a IDGAF feedback removal system like Amazon. However, the pushback and drastic change from the system they had been using forever was just too big of a switch. At least for now, it does seem like they have listed to their sellers. Something Amazon would never do.
----- Ebays ResponseThis Week vs Last Week --------
<-------------Todays Response ------------>
…"A good day to you, thanks for contacting eBay about your concern on a negative feedback left by your buyer. My name is Belle from eBay Customer Service, and I personally emailed you right away after receiving your concern about the item id xxxxxx. No worries, I got your back, and I have already resolved this one for you.
Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that I granted your request and have taken the liberty of removing the feedback left by the buyer ““ebayaholeusername”” after taking the time to check the details for your concern. You have nothing to worry about, this has been rectified and it will not count as a defect from your monthly evaluation on the coming 20th. …
<-------------Last Weeks Response ------------>
…I understand that you want to remove the feedback. Please allow me to help you further and explain what happened and help you to resolve your concern.
PersonName, I fully understand the impact of a neutral or a negative feedback to a seller’s ability to attract buyers. Please be reminded though that your feedback rating is not included in the parameters of measuring your seller performance rating.
At this point, please allow me to provide you with an insight on eBay’s policy and guidelines regarding feedback that can be removed. We can only remove feedback once there is clear evidence in our system that they are not accurate. This is when the Feedback comment left on your account violates eBay policy, such as:
· Containing false positive feedback
· Fee avoidance
· Feedback not related to the transaction
· Personally identifiable information
· Profanity
· Reference to an investigation
· Threat of bodily harm.
If the feedback left by your trading partner does not fall under any of the above categories, the feedback will not be removed. Thus, I highly recommend that you explore other options available before requesting for feedback removal:
Option 1: Try to get in touch with the buyer so that you can try to work things out together. One of the principles that eBay stands on is that “there is good in every individual”. Successful transactions rely heavily on good communication. You can communicate with the buyer and request for a feedback revision.
Please bear in mind that you can only request feedback revision once per transaction and only if it has been left in the last 30 days.
I have added a link on how a feedback can be revised or removed. Just visit
http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/revision-request.html
Once the buyer receives the request they have 10 days to respond.
Option 2: If the buyer is not responding to your attempts to revise, or the situation is too far gone to work things out, replying to Feedback is an option.
Potential customers are going to review your account and will understand the issue based on the response provided. They do this to establish expectations on what kind of transaction they can expect to have with you. You can use this attention to help them set the correct expectations about your eBay business. Your reply to the Feedback shows them how you handle the situation…
Be that as it may (or may not), whether or not an individual is “good” has zero transfer to whether or not an eBay transaction will be provided accurate, compliant feedback and/or that faulty feedback will be remedied with a message that might or might be seen.
That’s some BS to put in a support message, right there, and honestly a mystery as to how any rational person approved that as appropriate official messaging.
That statement would’ve pushed me over the line from “working with eBay” to “actively revolting against eBay in a very public way”. Just sayin’. Yikes.
My opinion on the feedback systems in place at marketplaces is it’s being done all wrong. The biggest issue is the fact that feedback is highly skewed towards negative. If there’s no problem with an order there’s no need to leave feedback.
It should show a seller’s total order volume for the past 180 days, or whatever timeframe, and show how many negatives they have, and customers can make a judgement for themselves whether the seller has problems or not. Without order qty shown it’s hard to know if someone has 10 bad feedback out of 20 orders, or 10 bad feedback out of 1000. And feedback just shouldn’t be removed, because inconsistently removing feedback is worse than having all sellers on an even keel and just not removing any (and I’ve seen TONS of struck out Amazon feedback that should NOT be struck out). If order qty is shown then it’s easy to see if the # of negatives a seller has is reasonable or not. And it’s less work/pressure on sellers to try to “resolve” every negative feedback vs just knowing that a certain amount of negatives is expected by all parties.