Introducing automated positive feedback... April 2025

[department28]

Introducing automated positive feedback

The great service you provide to your customers deserves to be recognised. This is why we are excited to introduce automated positive feedback. 

Starting late April, automated positive feedback will be added to your feedback profile 7 days after tracking confirms successful delivery, provided the following criteria are met:

• Tracking shows the item was delivered on time
• The buyer hasn’t left feedback yet
• The buyer hasn't reported an issue or opened a return on their order

There’s lots of benefits of automated feedback too, including the fact it contributes to your feedback score and improves your positive rating percentage. When you receive the feedback it’ll display the message on your page, “Order completed successfully - tracked and on time”, offering reassurance to prospective buyers that you offer great service. 

Something new to discuss...?! 😄

[goodibags]

I totally agree. The concern has to be that if feedback is not being left by the buyer based on their actual buying experience than the overall system of feedback may be undermined to the point where it's of limited value to anyone. Adding automated feedback is just bringing forward the time it's phased out completely?

@sticky-art-uk 

If 70%-95% of buyers will 'jump on leaving you a negative with the slightest problem' it sounds like you may have something beyond feedback to work on?

[sticky-art-uk]

You've taken the statement completely wrongly so please don't make assumptions. 

We have  almost 22,000 FB so we're doing something right!

I was indicating that when people have an issue and start to grumble then 70%-95% of buyers will 'jump on leaving you a negative.

[akemp1]

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@sticky-art-uk wrote:

I was indicating that when people have an issue and start to grumble then 70%-95% of buyers will 'jump on leaving you a negative.

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That hasn't been my experience selling on ebay maybe it's specific to the buyers in the category or types of items you are selling? My experience has been that if a buyer approaches me with an issue then I tend to sort it out with them with a bias to accepting their perspective on the situation.

[gnosemalf]

I noticed on other, mainly Chinese, sites that they used a form of automated positive feedback and it concerned me a great deal. Like many things regarding online sales, it only works if there are no problems but if an item tracks as delivered but the buyer has not actually received it and the site has not been helpful in resolving the matter, the buyer may be holding off from leaving feedback.

And, on a different note, I recently bought an item on eBay and whilst I have no real concerns about the item, I was having a discussion with the seller about the general topic surrounding the item and realised that they were using ChatGPT. I should have realised straight away looking back on the conversation but didn't imagine that anybody would be so rude. I decided that I wasn't going to give them any feedback (it seemed more appropriate) but it looks like eBay may give positive feedback anyway.

[sticky-art-uk]

What's wrong with using Chat GPT?

It's being used on a great scale now and will become pretty much every websites virtual assistant.

It's answers are usually spot on and far more accurate than a human. No more waiting in silly queues for an advisor!

I've had about 9 Ai chatbot conversations so far and everyone flawless with the problem being solved 1st time.

[akemp1]

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@gnosemalf wrote:

I decided that I wasn't going to give them any feedback (it seemed more appropriate) but it looks like eBay may give positive feedback anyway.

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Ebay are giving sellers something that belongs to the buyers.

Ebay should respect the buyers wishes to leave no feedback when they are a bit miffed with a seller and certainly not incorrectly recording it as positive feedback. It's not right so I consider it broken.

As usual ebay have no respect for anyone if it gets them commercial advantage.

There are some basic principles of decency they are violating these days.

[akemp1]

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@sticky-art-uk wrote:

I've had about 9 Ai chatbot conversations so far and everyone flawless with the problem being solved 1st time.

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You are very lucky all the customer service AI that I have ever talked to has been a complete waste of time.

I've had a few good experiences with basic workflows but I don't need loads of regurgitated waffle.

[sticky-art-uk]

That's strange, all decent companies/websites have it working flawlessly.

They've invested millions into it.

I work in IT and I've seen Ai become insanely clever over the past 2 years.

The next 5 years will be crazy scary!

[goodibags]

But aren't most of the 'decent' companies still employing humans to do this? Almost by definition.

I agree with you that the prospect is VERY scary.

[akemp1]

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@sticky-art-uk wrote:

That's strange, all decent companies/websites have it working flawlessly.

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In which case do we conclude from the total guff the ebay AI writes in item descriptions that they are not a decent company? My view is that the psychological impact of talking with AI is still unknown. As humans we try and read too much into the nuances of what other people are saying. For transparency there should be a law requiring all conversations with AI to start with a disclaimer that you are talking to an AI system.

[vinylscot]

As a business seller, I don't want the automated feedback. It completely swamps my genuine feedback.

On the front page of my feedback, of 25 comments, 18 are automated nonsense, exactly the same. Yes, a few will be superseded by "real" comments, if the buyer decides to leave one, but potential buyers look at the most recent feedback, and just see all this generic rubbish.

Perhaps they could limit it to newer sellers, to help them gain a feedback score more quickly, but, after 20 years, and 10,000+ feedback, I don't want it. Could they at least give us a way to opt out?

[sticky-art-uk]

Not at all, we were referring to ai in a chatbot /troubleshooting sense.

Using it to write adverts isn't great yet and it's the same on most sites and not limited to ebay.

[sticky-art-uk]

employing humans to do what? human jobs are being replaced by ai at an alarming rate and you can either embrace it and learn to work with it or end up losing out and potentially being replaced by it.

[vinylscot]

If I employ a new assistant, and they're no good at the job, I get rid of them, so I no longer need to work with them.

It's the same with AI. When the AI offered for our use is fit for purpose, I'm sure far more users will use it, and more importantly, trust it. At the moment, eBay's AI doesn't come close.

[sticky-art-uk]

I agree 100%, I don't use ebay ai at all.

I do use AI in many other ways though, it can make your life so much easier

[johnwash1]

If ebay wanted to make an improvement to the feedback system, they could take a leaf out of e**d's book and make feedback revisable.  Over there I leave feedback as soon as I get paid, even before dispatch, confident that if something goes pear-shaped subsequently I can revise it.  Not that it ever has, I seem to get a better class of buyer over there! 🙂

[gnosemalf]

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@sticky-art-uk wrote:

What's wrong with using Chat GPT?

It's being used on a great scale now and will become pretty much every websites virtual assistant.

It's answers are usually spot on and far more accurate than a human. No more waiting in silly queues for an advisor!

I've had about 9 Ai chatbot conversations so far and everyone flawless with the problem being solved 1st time.

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I was having a 'conversation' with a seller about the hobby that the item I had bought from them is used, not eBay!

It was like they got my money but couldn't be bothered to continue a conversation with me that they had started.

[pulseofthedead]

I too think that feedback should be based on a genuine reason.

If I am happy with the whole experience I will leave a pos.

If I am unhappy with the whole I will leave a negative.

Neutral isn’t really anything.

The reason I say whole is that it has to be all. I recently bought some aprons.

The service of the posting was good, but the aprons were poor quality.. I could have sent them back at my own cost but was hardly worth it. So one part was good, the other wasn’t. It didn’t deserve a pos and it didn’t deserve a neg or neutral whatever that really is so I would just rather not leave the fb

[ncmetrobus]

I started off by leaving feedback for every item as I felt it was important (and it was too complex trying to work out which items affected feedback scores so I did them all).  I do, though, buy a lot of items and quite often several from the same seller in one lot - and this can be over a period of time such that they would qualify as separate transactions for feedback.  (It usually makes sense to bundle purchases together for both buyer and seller and these tend to be small collectables where the actual postage cost tends not to vary with quantity very much.)

The problem I kept coming up against was that eBay always tried to make it more difficult for a buyer to leave multiple feedback.  You have (or had, at least) to do each one individually and that was made more difficult, at least for a while, as you sometimes had to go to a dropdown menu by the purchased item to reach the "Send feedback" option.  They then changed everything so that the autofill I used to be able to use to type in a few letters to give one of my regularly-used feedback comments didn't work any more.  So I gave up with leaving feedback.  As a seller it's much easier, you can get the system to leave random feedback from a list of ten messages (or it was when I last acted as a seller).

Hence the reason buyers don't give the level of feedback that sellers do and expect (if some of the comments on this thread are anything to go by) lies with eBay and the system they've created, not buyers.  It is a more difficult process if you're buyer.

The world has moved on from when eBay was a peer-to-peer type of organisation with small private sellers and buyers using a new forum.  It is now dominated by business sellers who want to get feedback from buyers who get no benefit from gaining a higher feedback score, so there's no incentive.  Also, the world is feedback-crazy today - you can't carry out almost any form of transaction without being asked for feedback and you just switch off from the whole process.

Maybe there is a case for changing the system altogether so that sellers get a straightforward transaction score, maybe showing number of transactions and percentage completed successfully?  Other feedback would be for people to leave as they saw fit but buyers would no longer have a feedback score, which is what happens in much of the rest of e-commerce.

[theregoesatenner]

Have just been trying to leave feedback for a buyer but all I'm getting now is 'rate this item' and 'tell us about the item' comment box.  I was using a link to the old feedback page but it's no longer working.