Feedback from NPBs

It might seem an overly harsh place to start.

The worst of Ebay. We'll get to other issues later, including the best of ebay. But this topic gets intense attention on the ebay boards, and deserves a separate discussion beyond ebay content ownership.

The two worst, as I see it, at the moment:

1. Fear of undesirable feedback from non-paying bidders.
2. Paypal Echecks.

First off, let's get past the naive view: NPBs should not be allowed to post negative fb. There are plenty of occasions when NPBs should be allowed to post neg, and if it were not for the potential for such negs, the incidence of seller misbehavior would rise. These cases all involve a bidder who is willing to pay, but seller is refusing to complete the transaction as advertised. The two most common examples are "out of stock" and "refusal to ship for free as advertised". We need a way to passively record such events on seller's record.

However, the vast majority of NPB feedback comes from buyers who simply did not pay, and were annoyed by seller's reporting them to ebay (as part of reclaiming the final value fee).

Seller should have no fear that a buyer who did not pay, by buyer's choice, will post undesirable feedback.

There already exists a mechanism for buyers to report Non Performing Sellers, which is Ebay's term for sellers who refuse to complete the transaction as advertised. This can and should serve as the primary path to record NPS events. Perhaps a standing NPS strike could enable undesirable feedback, but just as easily, the NPS strike could have even more effect than undesirable feedback. An NPB who starts out to post fb (or has posted fb in the past) should be directed to the NPS report mechanism, while by default the feedback is removed. This includes positive feedback with unknown stars. There is little value in feedback from a bidder who refused to pay.