The impact of negative feedback is no longer confined to a seller's reputation on the auction site where the odd negative was usually forgiven. Now a seller's qualification for fee discounts and the visibility of future listings are potentially at risk. This increased impact, coupled with the inability to leave anything other than positive comments for buyers, is causing a lot of concern.

So what can a seller do now if they find themselves unfairly treated by a purchaser? As part of the changes eBay promised to take steps to enable reporting of bad buyers for them to investigate and try to resolve problems.

True to their word a new report facility is now available for sellers to inform eBay about any bad buyer experiences. Looking at the screen you see it appears that eBay are well aware of the potential for feedback abuse in addition to simple non-paying bidders. They particularly highlight "feedback extortion", "malicious buying" and "customs fraud" while still enabling any other reports. We trust eBay will also deliver on the timely investigation and corrective action whenever justified too.

With buyers now seeing the message; "Buyers, you can no longer receive negative or neutral Feedback from sellers. You should leave honest and accurate Feedback without the fear of receiving negative or neutral ratings" right at the time they are about to leave feedback, some sellers feel buyers are almost being encouraged by eBay to be more critical. Perhaps eBay would do well to add a note to this message informing buyers that sellers now have the ability to report any suspected feedback abuse in order to deter unwarranted negatives or deliberate reputation trashing?

While the changes continue to come thick and fast from eBay at the moment, I'm certain this fundamental shift on the balance of feedback power will continue to cause many complaints and scenarios for sellers to sound off about. Some will be anticipated and some may be less expected, nevertheless I suspect they will all be heard quite loudly in the coming weeks and months.

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