So eBay has decided to be a little tougher on feedback.  Now a neutral comment is basically the same as receiving a negative, in the way that it affects feedback score.  Is that fair? I don't think so and neither to thousands of other sellers. Just search the net and you'll find them on various sites complaining about what eBay is doing.  I personally dont care.  If not for eBay where would people find my listings?  I dont have the time to create my own online store and even though fees are probably higher here than anywhere, buyers simply dont go anywhere else to shop online. 

What I do think is unfair is the way buyers view feedback.  I've actually had people email me and demanded that I explain why my feedback is not 100% and that since it is not, I should give them a discount so they can help me raise my feedback again. At the time of this writing, I am at 97.8% positive.  In school, thats an A+. 

Lets think about some numbers. What do you think is the percentage of buyers who are satisfied with their transaction and dont leave any feedback simply becaue they dont care to?  maybe 10%.  What do you think the percentage of buyers who are unsatisfied and dont leave feedback? I would guess not even 1%.  So already the seller gets screwed since 10% of the satisfied buyers are not leaving feedback.  That 10% is enough to raise my feedback to over 99%.  So in this way, yes feedback method is a bit unfair.

Now some more numbers. When someone sells about 100 items a day, like I do, and ships using the US Postal System because honestly other shippers charge entirely too much, what percentage of packages do you think the USPS will either lose, damage or delay just because they are human and sometimes make mistakes?  In my experience, 1 out of every 20 things I send gets either delayed or lost. Thats 5 out of every 100. 

so if every 100 buyers, 5 gets delayed, and 4 of them leave a neutral comment whether I refund them or ship them a new one, thats 120 neutrals a month.  95 people are satisfied but only 90% of them decide they want to leave any feedback at all.  90% of 95 is 85. so at the end of the month, there are 2550 postive feedback and 120 neutrals or negatives. to calculate feedback, you take the 2550 and divide it by 2550+120 and you get 95% positive feedback.  Thats well below what I have now, but still you see that its not really such a bad number.  still an A+. but in the eyes of eBay and the buyers, this is a number that is not satisfactory to be a powersellr or to be purchased from. 

This is what seems unfair to me.  So when you see a buyer who has lower than 100% feedback, please take these things into consideration.  We are all human and when we rely on third parties to complete our transactions (delivery services) we add the element of the unknown. 

I have not even gone into other situations where buyers simply expect miracles. I've had people pay for an item on a friday, and send an angry email the following tuesday demanding to know why their item has not arrived.  These people, no matter what you say to them, will end up leaving a negative, and especially now that sellers are no longer allowed to leave a negative or neutral comment, there is no stopping the ignorant from wreaking havoc on eBay feedback.

So instead of complaining about the new feedback system, lets just take a minute, look at the bigger picture and change the way we look at feedback as a measure of a seller. if its over 90%, chances are that seller is doing a hell of a good job.