eBay.. so, who leaves Feedback first?

Buying or Selling on the auction site eBay?

So, who should really leave Feedback first? Buyer or Seller? It shouldn't really feel like a shootout at High Noon, but if you've used the Auction site for a decent length of time, occasionally it can feel that way.

In an ideal world, a seller would sell an item at a profit to make a living. A buyer would buy an item they liked or needed and leave happy and no feedback or red-tape would be documented anywhere. In these modern day times, this is a bit of a unachievable utopia. The Internet is a large faceless arena where you can be trading with just about anybody in the entire world.

As per usual, I'm perhaps slowly drifting off topic. So who should leave Feedback first then?

Well... recent changes on eBay within the last couple of days have perhaps made this blog rather moot. It doesn't make too much difference who leaves Feedback first now as Sellers cannot leave Buyers any Feedback other than Positive. It does rather unbalance things a bit and makes the value of Buyer's Feedback somewhat irrelevant. Imagine if you were a film critic, but if you saw a really bad film, you were not allowed to tell anybody about it. In this example you can see that the new system is maybe bordering on the ridiculous.

However... having just written the above paragraph, I can still see some business logic to this change. Buyers can now leave truthful Feedback without the fear of being left negative retaliatory Feedback in return. In theory this should expose a lot of the unscrupulous sellers. In theory. Without the fear of Negative Feedback, Buyer confidence goes up and therefore eBay generate more income.

Will this new Feedback system work? It's too early to tell. In the short term, Sellers are probably going to find things a bit uncomfortable. However, if over time, there are more Buyers on the site, good Sellers can only eventually benefit.

eBay plan near the end of the month to open a special hub for Sellers to protect them against Feedback extortion and underhand Buyers exploiting the new system.

So who should leave Feedback first? PASS.

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