Ask HN: What is eBay buyer feedback for? A++ fast payment.

1 pointstefan_kendall1 comment

Does anyone have any idea why eBay lets sellers rate buyers? Other than the positive/negative count, what is the point of the 80 character rating system?

I've only ever seen "A++ fast payer." It's prisoners dilemma - a negative review probably means a negative review for you as well, so you can only really both win or lose.

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eBay doesn't let sellers give buyers negative feedback anymore (they did for a time).

It's the philosophical equivalent of "everybody gets a gold star".

The 80 characters can come in useful if you're on the fence about an auction- if the negatives come in the form of "didn't get here fast enough" left 3 days after the auction end, they're easier to overlook than "item was used, dirty, and broken instead of new, fraudulent seller".

It does allow sellers to squelch bidders with less than a certain number, reducing the ease of creating throwaway accounts for nonpayment or shill bidding purposes.

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