Tech Review

Here's the new ebay screen.

For years, the most absurd thing on the internet has been the fact that ebay sellers could hold perfect buyers hostage with the threat of negative feedback. Imagine: you buy a turntable and it comes broken (I don't have to imagine.). The man refuses to give satisfaction, but knowing how to game the system, hasn't given you your feedback despite your prompt payment. You let the matter drop rather than have your low total feedback number suffer disproportionately compared to his larger one.

It was a ridiculous system that prevented honesty and held down feedback scores. The buyer's responsibility is to pay. If he pays, he's a good ebayer. If he doesn't, he should never have the merchandise to rate.

According to the new rules, a seller can only leave positive feedback. He pays- boom! feedback. I guess if the guy pays late, you can decline to leave any feedback whatsoever. The buyer can still leave negative or positive. In addition, he can use star ratings for a more precise assessment, "Yes, it was a good product, but the shipment was a little late and the packaging skimpy." It's not perfect: If the buyer never pays, he can still give negative feedback, but it's an improvement. Maybe there should be a two stage feedback process where the buyer has no ability to feed back if he doesn't pay.