When we removed sellers' ability to leave buyers negative or neutral Feedback, we put in place new policies and tools, and increased the number of reasons for removing negative and neutral Feedback in Unpaid Item cases. These changes were intended to help sellers better manage their bidders and buyers and ensure that policy violators are reported and held accountable
Here are some of the ways we are helping you to protect your reputation and hold buyers accountable:
- New Buyer Requirements: We upgraded the Buyer Requirements tool to allow sellers to easily prevent unwanted bidders. This tool will let sellers block buyers with too many policy violation reports, who are not PayPal registered, or who have too many Unpaid Item strikes. This can help sellers reduce their Unpaid Item rate by as much as half. To access this tool, go to My eBay > Account > Site Preferences > Buyer Requirements.
- New Seller Reporting Hub: We made it easier for sellers to report buyer violations via the Seller Reporting Hub. Based on seller reports, we have doubled the amount of negative and neutral Feedback removed compared to the week prior to the changes, protecting sellers from abusive buyers – so keep reporting buyers who violate eBay policy.
- Enhanced protection for Unpaid Item: In addition to removing Feedback left by buyers who fail to respond to the Unpaid Item process, we now also remove Feedback when the buyer responds but it's clear they did not complete the transaction—for example, if they state they bought the item elsewhere or had a family emergency. Sellers don't deserve negative or neutral Feedback in such cases, and we now remove it.
- Proactively looking for abuse and taking action against it: An incident that occurred recently best illustrates our efforts. A seller used a separate "buying" account to purchase from his competitors. He left positive Feedback but low DSRs in an attempt to lower his competitor's standing in search results. We identified this abuse via a reporting system which flags buyers who leave positive Feedback but low DSRs. We immediately took action by removing the low DSRs and suspended both of the seller's accounts.
- Communication reminder: Now, before buyers can leave negative or neutral Feedback, they see a page reminding them to communicate with the sellers first, allow enough time for the items to arrive, and keep feedback comments factual. Buyers must check boxes next to all three of these before they are allowed to leave negative or neutral feedback. Below is an example of how this page looks.
- Removal of negative and neutral Feedback from suspended buyers: We understand that buyers who are suspended for Unpaid Items or other policy violations should not be permitted to harm the reputation of sellers. We now remove neutral or negative Feedback left by suspended buyers - so suspended buyers can no longer negatively impact a seller's record.
Our intent with all of these changes is to increase buyer and seller accountability. Buyers should be able to leave accurate ratings and sellers should be able to file claims when buyers violate eBay policies.
We'll continue to evaluate the recent changes to the Feedback system and also work on improving other aspects of it - including buyer-to-seller communication prior to leaving Feedback, improving the Unpaid Item process, providing sellers more detailed information on their DSRs and evaluating the process of leaving Feedback and DSRs.
