EBAY FEEDBACK IS DEAD - in my opinion

Ebay(tm) goes to great lengths to try to make people who don't know better believe that their platform is a happy benevolent little idealistic world. In my opinion this is driven solely for making money on transactions. If sellers have honest negative feedback due to bad or dishonest practices some people won't buy from them and Ebay can't take a percentage of the sale. Ebay would like you to believe if a seller "makes it right" after screwing you its always just an honest misunderstanding and the seller is a fantastic upstanding member of the community.

To further the goal of a perceived happy little world they imposed a seven day cooling off period for negative feedback. This has two affects. One good and one bad. It does give an honest seller a chance to fix a mistake before receiving negative feedback. It also throws cold water on very much deserved negative feedback for dishonest or otherwise unethical sellers.

Ebay also doesn't show older negative feedback as part of a seller's score. This is also misleading.

Remember that now to leave negative feedback you have to be upset or outraged enough to come back a week later to leave your review. Many people feel its just not worth the trouble so they don't. You can leave positive feedback right away.

Recently I purchased an item from a seller as new. Not new old stock. Not used. Not reconditioned. The item was not to spec and the packaging was very old and beat up. They seller told me to go pound sand and implied I was incompetent. I waited my week to leave in my opinion honest negative feedback and it did not appear on the sellers profile. It might be a glitch, but in my opinion Ebay has gone one step further towards proliferating a perception of their false happy little world all in the sole search for transaction fee profits.

The things stated in this article are my opinions based on my experience.

For context, I have left hundreds of positive feedback for sellers, although I often forget. I have purchased quite a number of items off of the Ebay platform over the last couple decades. I have only left about dozen negative feedback in all that time. I have left more neutrals, and of course plenty of positive feedback when deserved.