Posted By:
davidcyclebackThere are dishonest sellers and dishonest buyers.
What happens if a buyer gives bad feed back because the $1 shipping is too high (even though stated), and all the seller can do is give Positive feedback in response. How is that a good situation?
Also note that sellers in the old system have used feedback as blackmail, to get unwarranted things from the seller. "I will give you bad feedback if you don't give me ...."
How can sellers identify bad buyers (late pay, no pay, scams, theft, unwarranted even lying feedback, etc) if buyers can only receive positive feedback? How can YOU as a seller identify these bad buyers? Even if you don't sell now, you will sometime in the future and will desire a way to identify good versus unreliable buyers. There are scam artist sellers, and are also scam artist buyers. In the past, the common way to identify the worst of the worst buyers is by looking at their feedback. When a buyer had a (-3) feedback with complaints that he never paid, you would know to not allow him to place a bid in your expensive auction. Under the current system, the seller would have a perfect 100% feedback.
Some sellers abused the feedback system, including using it as blackmail against innocent buyers, and there's no doubt this is the reason why the system has changed.
I also tend to believe that, in a 100 point system, 99.5 is considered low and 98.5 really low, there's something wrong with the scoring. In a 100 point system, 99 percent of the scores aren't supposed to fall within 98-100, and 96 isn't supposed to be considered failure. In most college courses, 93% on a test will give you an A.