eBay recently announced a policy change concerning feedback. They have mandated that buyers can only receive positive feedback, while sellers can still receive negative, neutral and positive feedback.

As both an eBay buyer, and a seller, this certainly does not make any kind of sense to me. Feedback is a central part of doing business on eBay. It is a person’s reputation. This outrageous change has opened the door to buyer scamming with such mechanisms as threatening a seller with negative feedback if they don’t acquiesce to buyers demands, like free shipping, or a discounted price.

As a seller, I think I will follow a new policy of not leaving any feedback at all. Since the new eBay rules make feedback meaningless anyway, there is no point. Further, as a seller, I will bar all bidders with less than a 98% positive seller feedback. Although doing so will limit my buyers, it is also the only way to have any meaningful use out of the eBay policy.

One of my friends who also sells on eBay recently left a positive feedback for a problematic buyer that said: “Positively the worst buyer on eBay — Don’t sell to this person”. I guess that’s one way to handle it.

It is my hope that eBay reconsider this policy and recognize the error of their ways. I have always had issues with eBay feedback in the past because feedback carries the same weight whether a transaction was for a $1.00 item, or for a $1000 item. Because of this lack of weighting, people could essentially buy their eBay reputation by purchasing trinkets for a few pennies. Again, such policies make feedback inaccurate at best. I would rather do business with a person who has 98% positive feedback on large ticket items than with a person who has 100% feedback on low cost items.

Wake up eBay!