Feedback Comments Visibility Feature, What is it for?

[kawartha-ephemera]

I must have missed the memo on this new feature. When I click on the little info icon I'm told "You are unable to change your comments visibility because you have active listings". OK ... so does this mean anyone who does not have active listings can now hide their feedback?

[recped]

If you click the "i" button you'll get a hint as to what this is about.

It's just the old Private Feedback toggle but it's not available for active sellers, only buyers can use that setting to hide all their feedback comments.

The setting used to be buried in the old version of Site Preferences.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/account/changing-account-settings/feedback-profiles?id=4204

[kawartha-ephemera]

OK thanks, guess I'm not a well informed buyer then because I was not aware of this. I'm still kind of puzzled though, say a buyer does hit the "private" button ... why would they bother leaving comments if they do not want to have them seen or read?

[pjcdn2005]

They don't want others to see any feedback left for them or see if they have left any negatives for others.

At one time buyers may have used it so that others couldn't see what they had purchased.

[recped]

Private feedback was never common but I used to have a few buyers who used it years ago when anyone could see the details of what you bought and who you bought from. When eBay anonymized buyer/seller id's that need sort of went away but some buyers still like to have their feedback comments left/received private.

Many sellers speculate that buyers are hiding something nefarious but that has never been my experience, my best all time buyers often had private feedback back in the day.

[kawartha-ephemera]

It wasn't until 2007 or so that I began selling, I do recall feedback at the time was a lot more revealing then than it is now. I cannot remember having buyers with private feedback but perhaps there were and I've just forgotten.