eBay executives revealed during Thursday evening's Town Hall meeting that they are taking a look at the issue of feedback, and more changes may be coming. President of eBay North America Bill Cobb said he was uncomfortable with the role neutral feedback plays in eBay's new criteria for the Seller Non Performance policy, though they have not decided to roll it back. He said the issue of improving the feedback system is high on the list, and to "stay tuned."

In response to a seller who said she would list more if gallery was free, Bill Cobb said he is taking a look at the issue. The seller said the current free-gallery promotion was a huge incentive to list items and include more photos. He said, "Let me just say, I hear you. Stay tuned. We're taking a look at this."

eBay holds Town Hall meetings each month during which top executives from eBay and PayPal take calls from users. Last night, the last Town Hall of 2007, they responded to 26 questions delivered by phone and via email on a range of issues. Feedback and seller issues dominated the conversation at yesterday's event.

Why Penalize Sellers for Neutral Feedback?
A seller from New York made a strong statement questioning why neutral feedback affects her ability to sell. She said eBay imposed selling restrictions on her account, which has over 1,900 feedback, because of neutral ratings from new buyers who think it's okay to leave neutrals. She said she was under a restriction during her prime season and was in danger of losing her farm, and that she had written to eBay four times, "and no one will respond to me."

She indicated that the evidence in her favor was clearly demonstrated in the feedback and tracking in her eBay account. "You people aren't even reading my feedback," she said.

Interestingly, a buyer called in later to apologize for leaving neutrals for sellers, saying that he had no idea it could harm the sellers because there was no definition and no guidelines about neutral ratings.

Bill Cobb responded to the seller saying, "We don't have a full solution around neutrals." He said eBay has not decided to roll it back, but that they haven't solved issues around neutral feedback ratings. It's tied to a larger solution, he said, and "there are things we are looking at."

In answering another question about feedback later, executive Matt Halprin, head of eBay Trust & Safety, said eBay is exploring additional modifications to feedback. Research is going on, "we are looking at it," he said. Bill Cobb piped in, "We are going to have to take steps that seem very different." They might involve steps "to protect our best users," or wait until both buyers and sellers leave feedback, or adjudicate feedback more directly, he said.

Note that AuctionBytes wrote about a survey eBay recently conducted in which it asked buyers if they would like eBay to automatically leave them positive Feedback when they had quickly paid for their item. http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2007/11/1195440811.html

Price Plus Shipping Sort
Several users who both bought and sold on eBay said they wished eBay would add a new option to be able to sort search results strictly by price. eBay recently rolled out "Price Plus Shipping" sort options by lowest and highest price and eliminated the price-only sort options. An eBay executive said they want to encourage sellers to specify shipping, but are looking at putting back the price sort by highest-price option. He indicated it was unlikely the price sort by lowest-price option would be returned, reiterating that eBay wants to get more sellers to specify shipping costs in the shipping field.

MultiOrder Shipping (MOS) Glitch
A seller emailed eBay about a problem with the MultiOrder Shipping (MOS) feature on PayPal (see article about it here: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m11/i29/s01 ). A PayPal executive said the glitch caused a 1-hour task to take 5 - 6 hours, and that PayPal had rolled out a fix Thursday morning and the problem had been resolved. He said it was a complicated problem that did not affect all sellers, but he said that 5 weeks was not an acceptable time for the glitch to go on unresolved. He called it embarrassing and apologized to sellers.

He said PayPal has launched an Announcement Board to better communicate with sellers, available at announcements.paypal.com.

Blocked Bidder List, Buyer Requirements
A seller from Pennsylvania wanted to know whether eBay would expand the Blocked Bidder List, which is limited to 1,000 bidder names. An eBay executive mentioned the development costs the company would incur to deal with the technical challenges of expanding the list, and said they are looking into it.

In response to another question, eBay said it was exploring the expansion of Buyer Requirements in 2008. This feature lets sellers set minimum requirements before buyers are able to buy or bid on their items. They are considering allowing sellers to block zero-feedback buyers.

Auctions Ended Due to TKOs
A seller in Minnesota said eBay had ended his auction, which had a high bid of $750, because the high bidder had had their account taken over by a fraudster. He said because eBay ended the auction and removed it, he lost all contact with legitimate bidders, including the second-highest bidder.

eBay's head of Trust & Safety agreed that eBay could do better and said a team is looking into it.

Note that a seller commenting on the AuctionBytes blog raised the same issue and said the problem is happening to her more frequently. She said it is a serious problem during the short-lived holiday season:
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2007/11/1196202379.html

Other Issues
Other issues raised by users during the meeting included a complaint about Detailed Seller Ratings (rolled out in this year's Feedback 2.0 initiative); whether there was a way to leave multiple feedback ratings automatically; a question about the ability to give a shipping discount in calculated shipping; an international-shipping question; and a request for a buyer training program. There were also questions about eBay's new Guest Buyer program; Best Offer and Bid Assistant features; eBay Motors; retaliatory feedback; and keyword spamming.

A seller who participates in the eBay charitable Giving Works program said it is a great program, but said eBay needs to give it more exposure. Another seller wanted to know if eBay would bring back a co-op ad program for Trading Assistants. The answer was no due to issues of scale, though maybe eBay would revisit the issue in the future.

Audio archives and written transcripts are made available after Town Hall meetings on the Town Hall page on eBay.

http://pages.ebay.com/townhall