Sellers continue to be affected by eBay's recent change to its Seller Non Performance (SNP) policy, and one vendor is urging eBay to modify the criteria used to enforce the policy. Kyozou is a third-party selling tool for eBay users. Director of Marketing Thierry Nihill issued a press release last week to propose alternatives to the policy that he said would accomplish eBay's goal of targeting the bottom 1 percent of sellers and penalize them accordingly, while not affecting everyone that sells on eBay.

The new enforcement initiative of the SNP policy began in June, although sellers weren't informed until August (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m08/i30/s01). The new criteria take into account neutral feedback ratings, which eBay said are "increasingly and almost always used as a measure as a sign of dissatisfaction with some part of the transaction."

After one of Kyozou's customers was adversely affected by the policy, Nihill said he investigated and found that several of the neutral feedback comments left along with the neutral rating couldn't be described as overtly negative - some buyer comments were actually glowingly positive in nature. However, because of the eBay policy, the seller was still penalized.

Nihill said he spent two days talking to eBay representatives on behalf of Kyozou's customer, and proposed two valid alternatives: "Either eBay Trust and Safety take the time to actually review the buyer comments left with a neutral feedback score and make an informed decision about the true nature of the transaction, or (even simpler) institute a 30-Day Probationary period based on neutral feedback alone before restrictions or suspensions actually go into effect."

Nihill said the issue is under review thanks to Kyozou's efforts to accentuate a change. "We didn't make any demands," said Nihill. "We just asked eBay to amend the policy a little so that it was a little less subjective to interpretation (based on raw numbers) and a little more objective based on actual buyer experience."

"I truly feel eBay doesn't realize the disastrous potential this creates for mass seller dissatisfaction," Nihill said.

http://ecommwire.com/?id=3749&keys=Neutral-Feedback-Auctions