| July 10, 2008 |
 eBay Feedback Change: Neutral Means Neutral |
| By: Ina Steiner |
| Thu July 10 2008 22:11:57 |
 eBay spokesperson Usher Lieberman confirmed that the company would no longer consider neutrals in its Seller Non Performance (SNP) policy, though the timing of this change has not yet been determined. In February, I wrote about eBay's decision last year to use neutrals in addition to negatives and other factors in a formula for measuring a seller's Buyer Dissatisfaction Rate (BDR)
Today, eBay posted on the Announcement Board that it would no longer count neutrals as part of the Feedback Percentage Score, a change taking effect in late August. However, the timing of the change in which neutrals will no longer affect SNP may not coincide with the August Feedback Percentage Score change. Lieberman said eBay has not committed to a timeframe.
In reading sellers' reaction to this afternoon's announcement, it appears that many sellers are happy that eBay is not counting neutrals in the feedback percentage score, a practice they said made neutrals count as negatives. But a minority of sellers said they are unhappy about today's announcement because they wanted to differentiate themselves as higher-quality sellers.
Lieberman said buyers have a number of tools to discern quality sellers, including Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs). In moving forward, feedback will be more reflective of how buyers feel about sellers as they are more likely to leave a negative if warranted, he said.
"Since we took away a seller's ability to leave a negative or neutral, the number of neutrals that have been left has dropped precipitously, which supports our hypothesis that neutrals were indeed a proxy for negatives."
I asked Lieberman how many PowerSellers would be eligible to receive discounts tied to DSRs now that neutrals were no longer affecting a seller's powerseller status. "There would have been a number of sellers who would have lost PowerSeller status, we have not disclosed how many, but now, no one will lose PowerSeller status because of neutrals," though they may due to other factors such as DSRs, he said.
Why not release the number of powersellers? "It's a metric that has the potential to move up and down and may not be an accurate reflection of the business. And as the number moves, people would infer things that may not be true." That's the rationale for not releasing other metrics as well, Usher said.
I asked Lieberman about the UPI statistic Lorrie Norrington released in her announcement this afternoon in which she said, "since we debuted the new Feedback system in May, we have removed more than 60 percent of the negative/neutral feedback left by buyers in an unpaid item (UPI) process."
Lieberman said, most of the 60 percent are from buyers who did not respond to the UPI report. He said there were a number of factors affecting the 40 percent whose feedback remain, including buyers who paid or who responded to the UPI claim.
The other part of eBay's announcement today was that it would put in place a mechanism to allow buyers to change their feedback. Lieberman said eBay is still defining how the feedback withdrawal process will work, and has set a timeline of late October.
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