The Yak Shack Forum

eBay is changing its feedback policy so that people who keep their feedback private will not be able to sell items. 

Feedback is the cornerstone of trust on the eBay marketplace. A
seller's Feedback provides buyers the opportunity to make informed decisions
about their bids and purchases. It helps instill buyer confidence, and
it helps protect the marketplace against fraud.

We believe that buyers should have access to a seller's complete
Feedback record before choosing to trade with that seller. For this reason we
are restricting selling activities for members who have private
Feedback. This is a global change and will affect all eBay sites. The expected
date of this change is October 26, 2006.

What will change

-Members who have private Feedback profiles will no longer be allowed
to list items after this change goes into effect. Only members with
public Feedback profiles will be permitted to list items.
-Any items listed before the change will not be impacted. However, they
may not be re-listed by sellers who keep their Feedback profiles
private.
-Members who wish to make their Feedback profiles private can still do
so. However, they must cancel any existing listings, and they will not
be allowed to create new listings as long as their Feedback is private.

sounds like a good change to me! private feedback seems to defeat the whole purpose of having the feedback system in the first place...

Long overdue in my opinion  ;D

De Orc  8)

About time! I never understood the point of sellers being allowed to hide the history of their past dealings ::)

I don't think anyone should be allowed to hide feedback.  Like Kate said, that defeats the purpose.  I've seen people hide 100% positive feedback.  What's the point in that?

Maybe those people don't want others to know what they bid on. :o

YIPPEE!  That's quite a good change (for once)

But it isn't difficult to find out what anyone has recently bid on, and it doesn't matter whether feedback is public or not.

Have to agree with that...I made my feedback private for about 2 weeks so that my family would not be able to see any feedback of the stuff I purchased them for Christmas  :P

I am sure there are some people out there who definetly do not want you seeing the stuff they bought...remember...you CAN sell almost anything on Ebay.


Yes, but if you are going to purchase from someone with private feedback, will you spend the time to actually look up recent things they bid on?

Like many people, I have reservations about buying from someone who won't make his or her feedback public, and I definitely get nervous when someone like that bids on one of my auctions.  I would spend the time to look up recent bids.  It takes less than 30 seconds to do so.

I also feel the comments should be opened up as well. Some sellers get undeserved negatives due to the buyer getting the rats with them and I would like to make my own judgement. On the other hand, someone with a 10,000 positive but 99% rating may have their negatives spread over a number of years or they may have let down 100+ customers in recent times. We should be able to see the current state of play.

Bryanjs 14 - Open another account and don't tell the family. This is how I've kept things secret from Sharon ;D ;D ;D

Bogleg, if you ever want to see just the negatives and neutrals for a person's eBay account, try www.toolhaus.org.  It's an excellent and free service (although donations are appreciated).  You can even see the negs a person has left for others.  Whenever I think about bidding on an item and the seller has even one negative or neutral, I use that search tool to find the neg quickly.

On Ebay UK you can actualy view Poss/Neg/Neuteral feedback for the past 12 months, I assume that you dont have this feature over the pond?

De Orc  :)

We can see the number breakdowns for those categories in a table at the top of the page, but if you want to find the negative and neutral comments, you have to scroll through each page.  Toolhaus does this automatically and comes up with a page that lists all of the negatives and neutrals so you can read them easily in one place.

If feedback is private you can't see anything that's helpful.  The toolhaus feature works whether your feedback is private or not.

I just tried it, but it didn't work for a buyer who has private feedback. :-\

One of the reasons I like Toolhaus is that it allows you to see all of the negs together, so you can spot patterns.  Take, for example, this seller with whom I was unfortunate enough to do business with well over a year ago:

http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=jrssportscards&Dirn=Received+by

He has a history of not mailing items and he's often abusive when people leave negatives.  Had I used Toolhaus, I never would have bought from him.

 :o :o :o :o :o :o

Ooops!! Your cover is blown Graham!! :o :o :o
You won't get a moment's peace now you've admitted that - Sharon will be trying to find out what your other account name is! ::) :rofl: :rofl:

Nah, I'll leave that to Roz, my mate, my friend, my insider  >:D

That's right I've been selling Graham's latest eBay user IDs to Sharon for years now, usually in return for piping hot cups of tea ;D :rofl:

 :rofl: :rofl: The secrets out  :rofl:

 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: poor bloke ... didn't stand a chance did he!?!  ^-^ :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

>:D >:D >:D Roz  >:D >:D >:D
 0:) 0:) 0:) me  0:) 0:) 0:)
 >:D >:D >:D Sharon  >:D >:D >:D

What's a bloke to do? Sympathy notes and floral tributes accepted  ;D

Back when ebay first started all you had to do was click on the NEG in their table and the negative feedbacks were sorted out and displayed alone, ebay stopped doing that.

I wonder why eBay stopped that?  It's a very useful feature.  Ah, I've answered my own question. ::)

Does anyone else HATE the way Ebay does thier detailed feedback?  I have 5 of five stars in everything except shipping/handling where I have 4 1/2.  I don't charge any more to ship cards than anyone else and I CLEARLY state the shipping terms in my auction.  If someone thinks I'm charging too much ($3), then why are they bidding!!!!  >:()

Shipping covers shipping AND handling + packaging (and for some sellers also covers partial fees).  $3 isn't unreasonable... I charge $3.50.  With the USPS increase in rates AND labeling bubble mailers parcels (which starts at $1.13 I think) it's gotten crazy...

I have to agree. I have almost 5 stars in everything but shipping charges.  I had a 4.2 and I was only charging $0.40 more than the actual cost.  So, I started putting the shipping cost on the PayPal labels and now my rating is at 4.5. I think people thought I was overcharging them when I really wasn't.  I sell a lot of comics and they all weigh different amounts.  A heavy package could cost $8 to ship, but to someone who doesn't know any better, that could sound like a lot.  By putting the actual amount on the label now, they know that I wasn't just trying to make extra money on shipping costs. I was angry about this too.