eBay announced some updates and changes to some of its policies during eBay Live, and posted the changes to its website this week. The changes include limiting listings that are eligible to appear on the home page, and some significant change to eBay's Feedback policy.
Diet Pills Banned from Home Page
Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, announced a new policy for listings featured on eBay's home page using the Home Page Featured listing upgrade. An announcement posted to the site stated, "Due to their high visibility, we want to make sure that listings being promoted on the home page maintain the credibility of the marketplace and do not harm the eBay brand." When Cobb announced the policy during last week's eBay Live convention, a cheer went up from the audience when he said "no more diet pills."
Feedback Changes
Bill Cobb also announced changes to the feedback policy, some of which were received very positively by attendees. Brian Burke, Senior Marketplace Policy Manager for Feedback, posted details of the forthcoming changes on the Announcement Board last week.
Neutralizing feedback left by members who don't participate in issue resolution processes. eBay members who fail to participate in processes designed to help resolve issues, such as the Unpaid Item process or the Item Not Received process, will not be able to impact another member's reputation. "After this change is implemented, if a member leaves feedback for a transaction and does not participate in these processes, eBay will neutralize their feedback. This means the rating (whether positive or negative) will not affect the recipient's feedback score. While the feedback comment itself will remain, it will include an administrative note from eBay indicating that the feedback doesn't count towards the member's total score."
eBay will remove feedback from users who are indefinitely suspended within 90 days of registration. "We believe that members who are indefinitely suspended within 90 days of registering on eBay were never truly members of the Community, and so their feedback comments and ratings should not count. We will automatically remove feedback (positive, neutral, and negative) left by such users."
eBay will require new members to complete a tutorial before leaving neutral or negative feedback. This change will require all new users (members with a feedback score of less than 10) to complete a short tutorial before leaving neutral or negative feedback. "We hope that the tutorial will educate new members about the feedback system as well as ensure that they are aware of the various communication tools available to them prior to leaving feedback for their trading partner."
(During Cobb's announcement about the changes, he specifically said he would not change the way users find negatives in another member's feedback rating. He said he would not add a sort by negative feedback. Users who want to find negatives "will need to go find negatives among all those green positives," he said.)
Policy & Enforcement and Excessive Shipping Charges
Matt Halprin, eBay's VP of Global Marketplace Policy Management, announced a new strategy for global marketplace policy management to address member concerns regarding eBay policies and enforcement. "I've formulated a strategy and built a team to improve the situation. During 2005 my team and I are focusing our efforts in the following areas: Policy clarity; Education; Detection and Enforcement; and Consequences and Mitigation. PowerSellers have been informally told one area of renewed enforcement is shill bidding, with harsher consequences for sellers who bid on their own items in order to drive the price up.
eBay also announced last week it will add a shipping column to every search results page. The move is an attempt to thwart sellers who charge excessive shipping & handling charges on their items by making the charges more visible to buyers.
Changes to Dutch Listings
This week eBay announced some changes to Dutch listings. eBay is changing the bid status messaging on the listing page so that bidders will be able to more easily tell whether they are winning some or all of the items they are bidding on. Bidders will also receive an outbid email when they are no longer winning items on a Dutch listing. Users can opt out of receiving the messages in their eBay Preferences in My eBay under the "Outbid emails" preference.
