In Which We Discuss eBay(™, &c.)

Despite being momentarily short-of-cash, I still check eBay from time to time.   Not so much to buy anything, but just out of force of habit and curiosity.  Logging in earlier today, I noticed a general announcement down at the bottom of the My eBay page that's been a long time coming: "Restricted Use of Private Feedback".

Basically, for those who were unaware, eBay's much vaunted feedback mechanism had an option where you could prevent people from seeing the comments left for you.  You still could see what the overall feedback score was, but only by clicking to view the user's profile; otherwise it just showed a score of "private" on any auctions they were participating in (as bidder or seller).  The change referenced above is that sellers will no longer be able to have private feedback.

Of course, removing the private feedback option is just good publicity and really doesn't do much.  After all, a seller with a feedback rating of private was essentially a giant red "don't buy from this guy" flag.  But eBay has to do something, since there are always complaints that their feedback isn't representative (and it isn't, but that's another entry) or as much of the protection against fraud that they like to claim.

However, this is too little, too late.  Rather then making feedback private, I'm of the opinion that you'll see more new seller accounts selling stuff.  Maybe not many, as I don't know how many sellers with private feedback there are, but some.  Of course, the question then becomes: who's going to buy from somebody with 0 feedback?  Well, to be honest, it's very easy to gain feedback.  Although eBay has explicitly prohibited what they term feedback solicitation^* for some time, there are still always ways.  Give me a new eBay account and $1 US, and I guarantee that I could get you 100 feedback within 24 hours.

They didn't always explicitly forbid it.  There was a time that a search for "positive feedback" would bring up pages of auctions whose only goods for barter was the feedback to be left once upon completion.