Feedback 2.0 check-up

In the UK (and other countries), eBay launched Feedback 2.0 in late Feb.  We've been watching closely and talking to customers.  While there's been quite a bit of anxiety, so far things seem to actually be better than many of the doomsday scenarios that sellers were worried about between the announcement and launch.  For example, many sellers thought buyers would rate them all zeros for the five "Detailed Seller Ratings" (DSR).

The DSRs don't show up for the seller until you have 10+ DSR feedbacks from buyers so given we're at March 7th and many buyers are choosing not to leave DSR, there haven't been any "live" examples of Feedback 2.0.

One of our large media sellers, gowingstore, has hit the threshold and it's interesting to take a look at their DSR which you can see live here.  For your convenience a screen shot is below:

Here's my take.  Gowingstore already has stellar feedback with a 99.4% positive rating.  Doing the volume they do, this is a very very very high level of feedback to attain.  For example in the last month they had 12,607 positives, 90 neutrals and 101 negatives.  Shipping 12k products a month means you are shipping 400+ items a day and listing 800-1000+ items a day.  That's a lot of activity that can generate errors.

So far, gowingstore has 117 buyers that have left DSR and its interesting to see that contrary to the doomsday scenarios the DSR feedbacks are largely positive and in-line with gowingstore's overall feedback.  For the first DSR, "item as described" they are a solid 5.0/5.0.  For the other three they are also very positive at a 4.5 out of 5.0.

From a buyer's perspective, I find this very helpful.  If you read some of the comments around negatives some of them talk about shipping time.  But if you look at the DSRs, the bulk of the buyers aren't finding this is an issue with this seller.  So I think of the DSRs as a net positive for me as a buyer because they give me more information to consider.

From a seller's perspective, let's say that over the next 200-1000 DSR feedback, the dispatch time slips to 4.0/5.0.  That gives me a wake-up call that I need to:

1. Communication shipping timeframes better and set expectations correctly in my listing template as well as all email templates.
2. Potentially work on improving shipping times (if possible).

Bottom-line, from what I'm seeing here, I think Feedback 2.0 could be a win-win enhancement to the creaky eBay feedback system.  What do readers think?

Comments

[Chris]

Oh... forgot to say, Feedback 2.0 only went live late yesterday afternoon UK time....

[Chris]

More to the point in the time since feedback went live gowingstore have received over 400 feedback, but only 124 (at this moment in time) Detailed Seller Ratings.

You have to question a) Can buyers be bothered when it's 5/5 across the board and b) Is it truely reflective of the transactions (Chances are for multiple purchases no buyer will bother to leave more than one or two Detailed Seller Ratings!)

Other concerns - buyers of risque and personal products will have the item title clearly displayed on feedback... nice to know everyone can see what knickers you're wearing! :O

As for the idea that a seller needs feedback to tell them what they're doing well or otherwise, quite frankly if they don't already know they shouldn't be in business, and if they do know it probably is a business decision to settle on certain standards. Sometimes profit just doesn't justify being the best in all areas. Let's face it we're in this for the money not to get a couple of brownie points or your cycling proficiency badge! I forecast some sellers will be upset about this one for years to come, and others just won't give a damn.

The thing that STILL rankles most with me is Cobb's comments in the e-commerce keynote 2007 where he promises to US sellers Detailed Seller Ratings would be road tested outside the US and only introduced on .com when the problems were ironed out. If that's his attitude he needs to get a grip and realise the .com site (although the largest) is the most stagnant and with less dollars per capita population than other territories. If it was just badly phrased he needs to wake up and stop insulting the rest of the world with his faux pas. Either way why don't we see the worst most contentious features tested on .com prior to the rest of the world? .com get all the good stuff like MarkDown Manager first and everyone else pretty much gets used as an inconsequential test bed.