Seller feedback is already pointless, unless you sell in a category where there is a high rate of counterfeit items and you can point buyers to your feedback to show messages and images of previous sales. For most categories, feedback doesn't tell you much about a seller unless that seller is in something like the bottom 0.01 percent of bad sellers and their profile is littered with comments about bad experiences.
I shouldn't say that it is pointless, but it doesn't seem to exist for the reason most people think it does. Most people think that it exists to challenge sellers, but I think it is the opposite. It exists as a marketing tool to make customers feel comfortable with sellers, and eBay makes it so that even the most unremarkable sellers look good on their feedback page.
Look at it this way, they introduced the "5 star" rating system.A really bad seller who delivers bad experiences on a regular basis might have 4.6-4.8. Even the most terrible and negligent sellers will have 4.5+ stars. By negligent seller, think of the worst experience you've had as a buyer, and imagine a seller doing that multiple times. That kind of seller will have 95+ percent positive feedback and 4.5 stars.
If you have never heard of eBay before and you see that a seller is a 95 percent/4.5 star seller, your reaction is that you have nothing to worry about. Automatic feedback is a continuation of this marketing.
(Of course, there are exceptions to the rule where a great seller who sells a low volume of items deals with an unreasonable buyer and ends up with a low feedback ratio despite being an attentive seller. That isn't the type of seller I am using as an example. The point is that a seller with a reasonable sample of bad transactions looks great on paper because of the feedback system. Automatic feedback is a continuation of this.)
Feedback is marketing. That is all. eBay doesn't evaluate accounts based on feedback. With their current feedback system, if the purpose that I perceive it having is correct, this is the right move.
They could switch to a more objective feedback system that simply displays metrics for both buyers and sellers. Such as showing the amount of returns a buyer opens or that a seller attracts, the amount of INRs, the amount of successful transactions without problems. I think that would be a huge mistake because I don't think your average buyer or seller is able to contextualize that information, and some sellers are already paranoid because of the power of the buyer protection policy. Being vigilant about returns has it's place. For example, I might think twice about listing something that costs a lot of money to ship because of the cost of a return. But there are sellers who look at every buyer profile for a $20 item, and then if the buyer is new "the account is new, they must be a scammer", or if the buyer is an eBay veteran "they have high feedback, they must know all the loopholes to scam me!". I think that sort of mentality is prevalent enough that a more objective and transparent feedback system would cause more issues than it would solve.
Lastly, I think eBay might have a mandate to attract new buyers and sellers to the platform. While it's a small thing, buyers and sellers are more likely to stick around and identify as a user of the website if they build up feedback, even if it is automated. How many threads are posted here throughout the years from newer sellers, frustrated that their feedback rating isn't going up despite completing a transaction without an issue?
