@quality-cellular wrote:
"So, a buyer is not being punished for not leaving feedback. But, the more positive feedback that a buyer leaves for transactions, the lower the defect % the buyer will have when they do have to leave bad feedback for a Seller.
Buyers should have a defect rating just like the Sellers. It is only fair."
Although your suggestions make logical sense from the point of view of sellers, and although I'm sure many sellers (including me) would like to see buyers be made more responsible for their "behaviours", the net result of a defect rating system for buyers would probably be to drive buyers away from eBay.
You might say, well, good riddance to less than perfect buyers. But I think the very existence of a "defect" rate for buyers might turn off a lot of people, including those who feel their negative or neutral comments in FB were legitimate and deserved. Not every seller is perfect either.
I'm no apologist for eBay policies, but we should bear in mind that one of the reasons eBay got rid of sellers' ability to leave frank and open FB (i.e. negative comments) for buyers was that the free-for-all mud slinging was driving buyers away. I can remember those days, seeing a lot of rather shocking personal comments and near obscenities in FB from sellers all over the place. Not only did it look embarrassing for eBay, but I'm sure it must have driven many buyers away before they even started.
In truth, the FB you do get as a seller is the FB you want to keep (if you're a good, reliable, honest seller). Your happiest customers will make you look the best. I've stopped fretting about those who don't bother -- I'd rather have no comment than a lukewarm or neutral comment these days.
In addition, I think we sellers have to recognize that there are instances where there is a difference of opinion between seller and buyer on whether a transaction was a perfectly happy one. There are also just plain dishonest, negligent or shoddy sellers on eBay. If eBay wants to keep buyers coming back (and heaven knows, they need to!), then they need to convince those buyers that they'll be treated fairly by sellers.
Pressures from the marketplace in general have raised the bar for all retailers, and raised buyers' expectations. EBay had no choice but to follow suit to keep from bleeding buyers off to other sites or to commercial B&M retailers.
However, it seems to me that the real problem for eBay over the past 3 or 4 years has been finding a balance between keeping its sellers honest and prosperous and its buyers happy to come back again and again. The pendulum swung wildly in buyers' favour starting in 2012, and now in 2014 we've seen masses of sellers losing status or being kicked off the site, some for inadvertent errors, others no doubt for obviously bad practice or ignorance.
My personal view is that the whole FB system has become virtually meaningless, and perhaps it's time for eBay to completely rethink how it presents it sellers to the world. The defect system is like a field of landmines, even for the best of sellers (small sellers, that is). It needs to be retooled or tossed out and completely redesigned.
The challenge eBay will have in 2015 will be in keeping the loyalty not only of its buyers, but its (smaller) sellers. Many long-time, experienced sellers are getting fed up and leaving. Hordes of new sellers who can't be bothered reading policies (and are being told by eBay that selling is a cinch), will be ejected from the site anyway.
Maybe that's what eBay wants -- to ultimately have just a coterie of the biggest commercial retailers left on its site. That would be short-sighted thinking in my view, but as long as shareholders' pockets are being lined today, why would eBay care about 3, 5, 10 years down the road? My point has always been that if eBay makes this site comfortable for smaller sellers, they'll stay for years. The "big guys" on the other hand, will move on with their own agendas.
In any case, the new guy at the helm is going to have a lot of serious thinking to do. Let's hope he thinks up some way of swinging the pendulum back a little toward eBay's original core of independent sellers.
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