Since a few months, sellers can no longer provide neutral or negative feedback to buyers. Not sure if I completely agree with this as I reckon buyers can be quite dodgy and how else to capture that. But the objective was to weed out retaliatory feedback. I.e. buyer has a bad experience, provides neutral or negative feedback, and in return for his honesty gets back similar feedback. So that’s no longer possible. I suppose that’s good.

I actually had such an experience at the beginning of the year, before the new policy. That one (in this case neutral) retaliatory feedback seriously impacts my rating to just over 90%. Not much of an issue as a buyer, but if I want to sell something, potential buyers might regard me as dodgy just on the basis of that number. Of course they could delve into the exact feedback comment and figure out what’s been going on to some degree, but who bothers with such detail while browsing eBay for goodies?

The formula for the rating is positive / (positive+neutral+negative), and all that limited to the last 12 months. Let’s take my simple case where I get one neutral. For 11 transactions over the last year, you get 10/(10+1) = 90%. Ok so I don’t buy stuff on eBay all the time. Most people don’t. But let’s double the number of transactions and see how the formula works out: 20/(20+1) = 95%. Still not good for seller karma. Anyway, you get the picture; this kind of thing is damaging, and you’d really have to go on a buying spree to make up for it. With different buyers or on different weeks, otherwise it’s counted as a duplicate and disregarded. And heaven beware if any of the many different sellers also decides to give you a neutral rating!

Ok ok, so the new eBay policy prevents this exact scenario from occurring again. But consider the mechanism if you’re a seller. Buyers *will* provide you with feedback, and using the same formula a single malicious buyer can destroy your reputation. You suddenly have to sell a lot more to make up for it, except you may not be able to, because of your rating! In a nutshell, unless you’re a powerseller moving dozens of items a month, you’re pretty much an open target. If you, like I, sell the odd item once in a while, you don’t have a chance.

But hang on, isn’t there a policy that allows you to get feedback removed? Yes, but only in very specific cases. For this, the comment would have to be defamatory, referencing an unrelated item/transaction, a policy file number, a URL or other contact details, stuff like that. Also, a clearly negative comment on a positive rating qualifies. But not the other way round.
So, the loophole is a gaping one, and that is: you just scribble something nonsensical or at least meaningless; that way it won’t qualify for removal. So you can just give a seller a neutral (just as damaging as negative, as far as the formula is concerned!) with a comment of “blah de blah” and that does the trick.

Someone please tell me that I went wrong with my logic – and where!