Importance of Good Sellers and Buyers Feedback

When a sale is made on eBay, both the buyer and the seller get to rate the other participant according to their feelings regarding the level of service provided.  This serves as one method of determining if the buyer or seller is worth the risk of doing business with.  Every online transaction possesses the risk that one or the other party will not live up to the deal and this is one way of “weeding” out the crooks.

Like all businesses, the online industry has its share of shysters and crooks.  These are people who run scams, try to get money from customers and then disappear or order a product and refuse to pay after they have received it.  This fact helped create services like PayPal and SafePay, and they have reduced crooks form bilking people, but it still happens, and the rating service is one other way of showing who is acting in good faith and who  is, well, somewhat sketchy.

Seller and buyer feedback also allows other interested parties to determine if the problems were endemic to the product, due to delivery issues or if they were caused by laxness on either side. For instance, during Christmas 2005, many sellers experienced shipping issues with UPS and FEDEX due to heavy storms in the Midwest.  Many eBay sellers had to ask their buyers to mention the delays in context on the feedback comments section in order to avoid earning a bad reputation from circumstances that were completely out of their hands. 

Most buyers, realizing that the delays were not the fault of the seller were willing to put good ratings up for the seller and then explain the problem.  This served two functions. One, it preserved most seller’s reputations. Two, it showed other buyers when problems might occur and to plan their purchase activity accordingly.

Feedback also gives sellers an idea of what their market demands in terms of service and quality. They might want to work with another shipper or increase the quality of their product, due to customer feedback. They also are able to gauge the degree of demand based on the number of purchases and their ability to meet that demand based on how pleased the customers were with the delivery and the product.

For sellers, feedback on regular buyers allows them to decide if they want to go through the aggravation of dealing with an individual. Since most auctions on eBay are Escrow, payment first type deals, the seller will not ever risk losing a product if they are careful, but they might identify a problem buyer before that individual gets to make their life difficult.  This is an invaluable tool to determine whether or not a customer is worth the effort.  Some are not.

Finally, the most important reason feedback is crucial is because it allows both parties to assess the other.  In online transactions, you cannot look at or talk to someone and determine whether they might not be what they appear.  Feedback, however, allows for the good and the bad to be tagged accordingly.