Feedback continues to be an irritant for sellers as more and more new buyers come to eBay

Here is an idea from one of my readers, eBay seller, econsignonline2009, to make the current feedback system more fair and palatable to sellers:

econsignonline2009 sent this as an open letter to eBay

Sellers may not leave a negative or neutral for buyers, I understand that, nothing I can do about that, nothing you will do about it.

Consider this really FAIR idea: if a buyer wants to leave anything other than a positive, require that they send an email to the seller, and get a response from the seller. Fair is fair; regarding the issues bringing the need for the other than positive feedback so the seller has the CHANCE at least to respond and rectify the situation. I know that this is not hard to program, eBay has the technology!

Want to make eBay sellers happy, TRY THIS!

It is kind of like counting to ten… I feel it will better, the community and build buyer seller relationships, encouraging MORE TRAFFIC AND MORE SALES. Which of course you know will result in MORE INCOME for eBay!

Clearly, eBay is moving towards driving more and more communications through the eBay message system. I predict that soon that will be the only way sellers and buyers will be permitted to communicate. If this happens, then this idea will be not only feasible, but easily accomplished.

See Also

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How Important is Your Buyer’s Reputation?

Your reputation as a buyer (or ‘feedback rating’) is the most important thing people see when they deal with you on eBay. It is on the basis of this little number that they will decide whether they can trust you or not.

Each time you buy or sell something on eBay, people can leave feedback for you, and you can leave feedback for them. This feedback can be positive, negative, or neutral, along with a comment. Your feedback rating, then, is worked out using a very simple sum: the number of positive feedback comments people have left for you, minus the number of negative ones. This means that someone with a feedback rating of 28, for example, might have 30 positive ratings and 2 negative ones.

If you are a considerate buyer, then you should find that positive feedback will just appear next to your username, without you needing to do anything. If you want to help it along, though, there are a few things you can do.

Always leave feedback for others: People will feel an obligation to leave feedback for you if you leave it for them (eBay will send you an email after each transaction to offer you the opportunity). Take the time to write a positive comment about sellers who do what they should and the chances are they’ll do the same for you.

Pay promptly: Sellers love nothing more than to be paid promptly – paying as soon as the auction ends saves the seller all sorts of worry, especially if you pay by credit card or another electronic method. You will often find that your positive feedback appears within a few minutes of you paying if you pay as soon as the auction ends.

Don’t be a difficult customer: Understand that your seller might take a day or so to respond to you, and perhaps a few days to send your item – harassing them is nasty and unnecessary, and won’t get you good feedback.

Build relationships: If a seller sells a lot of a certain kind of thing you like, buy from them a few more times. They will be very happy to find a regular customer, and will go out of their way to leave positive feedback like ‘a joy to deal with as ever’. Also, they might offer you a few special deals!

Sellers won’t generally be reluctant to sell to buyers without much of a reputation, simply because it is the buyer who takes most of the risk in a transaction. It is worth remembering, however, that transactions where you are the seller and where you are the buyer are counted towards the same feedback total – so if you ever want to start selling, being a good buyer is especially worthwhile.

On eBay, people pay far more attention to sellers’ ratings than they do to buyers’ – most sellers can’t be bothered to check their buyers’ feedback, while bad feedback on a seller can (and should) be a dealbreaker. When you are buying, then, you need to worry more about the seller’s reputation than you do about your own, and that’s why the next email will be all about sellers’ feedback ratings.

Net income fell from $460 million to $357 million or $0.28 a share missing analyst’s forecasts

The earning consensus on Wall Street was for eBay to be down 20% and earnings to come in at $0.33 share. eBay CEO, John Donahoe blamed the stronger dollar and the challenging economy.  PayPal and Skype did well.

Here is what eBay said about the Marketplaces division that includes US and overseas eBay sites and the classified advertising site Kijiji:

“The Marketplaces business unit, which consists of eBay, Shopping.com, StubHub, Kijiji and other ecommerce sites, recorded $1.22 billion in revenue, equating to an 18% year-over-year decline. The revenue drop was attributable to the impact of the strengthening dollar and the decline of the core business in difficult macroeconomic conditions. Approximately 54% of Marketplaces revenue came from markets outside of the U.S. GMV (excluding vehicles) was $10.80 billion for the quarter, a decrease of 16%, compared to the first quarter of 2008. Online classifieds revenue increased 23% year-over-year. eBay Marketplaces continues to focus on stabilizing its core business by improving trust, value and selection for customers while looking for ways to drive growth through geographic, format and category expansion.”

The business forecast is not too rosy either as eBay sees further declines in the coming quarter:

“Second quarter 2009 — eBay expects net revenues in the range of $1.850 to $2.050 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.23 to $0.26 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.34 to $0.36”

Even with what I consider to be bad news, eBay stock is up almost 5% in after hours trading. i guess I know why I am not a Wall Street analyst.

I will be out of the office for the next few days with limited access to my computer, but stay tuned for a wrap up and analysis on the challenges eBay is facing.

Skip McGrath

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eBay’ s decision to spin off Skype was a brilliant decision, so could PayPal be next?

eBay overpaid for Skype and they never succeeded in integrating it into the eBay platform. Yet Skype continued to grow and its prospects for the future are excellent. So eBay’s decision to spin Skype off into their own IPO works. Skype will get some initial cash from the IPO and eBay will continue to participate in Skype’s growth and profits. If Skype reaches its full potential eBay will reap great rewards over time –much more than they could have realized by selling it in today’s market.

It is no secret that eBay is hurting. They are losing market share to Amazon and other ecommerce sites. Management is going through an identity crisis; one week they think they are Amazon and the next they want to become Overstock.com. eBay will report earnings tomorrow and I don’t think it will be pretty.  Some analysts forecast that eBay marketplaces will be down 20% or more. But, the brightest star in the eBay, Inc. holdings is PayPal.  Yes, PayPal has some detractors, but the problems I see with PayPal are minor. In fact, if eBay Marketplaces were as well managed as PayPal they would not be struggling today.

It makes sense to spin PayPal off into an IPO for the same reasons that Skype did. Freed of the eBay encumbrance, PayPal can continue to grow and increase market share in the online payments industry where they now account for almost 10% of all online transactions. 

A PayPal IPO would increase shareholder value and allow eBay to concentrate on their core business – providing online platforms such as eBay and the various classified sites where buyers and sellers can come together. And PayPal would be free of eBay’s constraints where other online companies would not see them as a competitor. This would also be a good move for eBay sellers. eBay could now focus exclusively on repairing and growing the marketplace.

Skip McGrath

See Also

• How to Make Good Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and The Internet
  Easy, low cost, low risk business that anyone can do. Great recession proof business.