|
We got to thinking about the way the Feedback
system on eBay functions and why it is so badly broken these days as we
were developing the new auction site. Besides the bogus feedback problem -- and
the very real threat of "retaliatory feedback", there is the issue of
people who sell or buy a lot and have built up many thousands of feedback
responses -- if a person like that screws you on an auction and you file a
negative feedback on them, it doesn't even impact their overall rating in
any significant way. So, at some point, the people with a lot of feedback
"become immune" to a negative feedback. They may not be performing recently as
well as they have in the past -- heck, they may not even be the same person or
company they were a year or two ago -- but the long-term score continues to
reflect what that user name was doing 4 or 6 years ago.
There have been cases of people buying someone
else's eBay ID, just to get a great feedback history, and then running
the business very differently from the person who generated all that great
feedback --in some cases they even start scamming people successfully
because to their victims it looks like they were dealing with a long-term,
honest seller. In theory, eBay does not allow a user-name to be sold, but in
practice there is nothing they can do to stop it from happening. And, of course,
we all know about those sellers who continue to sell the repros as originals on
eBay every week, but who have such huge feedback numbers that negatives don't
affect them and they can use their big feedback number to falsely "validate"
their less-than-honest transactions.
On this list many people have said they don't bother to file
negative feedback on a "power seller" because it won't impact their huge
number-score, but the retaliation from the power seller on their relatively
small-total-number feedback score would be significant.
And yet there are other sellers, completely honest and
professional but without thousands of feedbacks, who point out that
"just one unfair negative feedback" which they got 3 years ago prevents
them from ever again having a"100 percent" positive rating -- because that
one negative record, even though it may be very old and only a teeny
fraction of the total, never ever goes away!
All of the above happens because of the inherently flawed
approach eBay took when they implemented their feedback system back in
their early days:
1) They didn't want to devote resources to resolving feedback
disputes, so they have always had a policy of "once left, feedback can almost
never be changed or deleted". In very rare cases they will alter feedback, but
the process you have to go through is incredibly complex, invasive, takes
forever and is deeply hidden from most users -- and if you're not a power user,
chances are you aren't going to get anywhere.
2) They decided that feedback would never go away and "always
count", even if it is 10 years old. A comment left many, many years ago carries
just as much weight in the overall score as a comment left
yesterday.
In pursuing our goal to be "different and better
than eBay" we have come up with a fundamentally different approach to feedback
for www.MoviePosterBid.com
-- We only count the most recent 100 feedback comments when
calculating the percentage "score". The total number of feedback comments
left continues to build up as a "raw number of feedback comments left" but
only the most recent 100 comments affect the "percent of positive feedback"
number that is displayed.
This way, the "percent positive" score more
accurately reflects a user's *recent* behavior, and no large sellers or buyers
can become relatively immune to negative feedback. And the person who got that
one negative -- either fairly or unfairly -- can look forward to the day
when they can again become "100 percent positive" because eventually that one
irritating record will go away and stop being calculated into their
score.
It also addresses the problem of a "power user's" overall
feedback score being heavily weighted by what happened many years ago
and not accurately reflecting their current behavior.
We couple this approach with an ACTIVE feedback resolution
policy. Anyone can challenge any feedback that has been left on them within 90
days of receiving it. We will contact both parties and try to come up with a
reasonable solution -- either by deciding the comment is appropriate and leaving
it as it, or perhaps modifying the comment or maybe even deleting it, if
that is appropriate. More important, as soon as we receive a request to
investigate a feedback comment we CHANGE the comment in question
to "neutral" so that it does not affect the user's percentage score
and we temporarily replace the comment in question with a statement that
says "this comment is currently under review by MPB staff".
So, while the feedback dispute is being resolved, the user is
not being affected by the comment in question.
While no feedback system is ever going to be perfect, we
believe the approach we are taking on MPB will prevent our feedback system from
becoming badly broken and essentially useless, which is what the situation on
eBay is at this point.
-- JR
|
