In a surprise announcement, which is nevertheless welcome, eBay’s Vice President of Seller Experience, Dinesh Lathi, has announced a revision to the Feedback Removal Policy.  His announcement has been echoed on eBay AU, which hints at the change rolling globally, although the Oz announcement is a cut-down version of the requirements.

This ammendment refers to International Transactions only, and only in the case of a buyer complaining within regular feedback regarding the legal requirement to pay Import Duties and Taxes, or of delays caused to delivery by shipment inspection (or other delays) due to action by the buyer’s country’s Customs Division.

As with all recent eBay “good news” announcements, there are caveats.  In his announcement, Disnesh states -

The following text, or very similar wording, must be included in the listing and be:

* In the format below
* In a font size no smaller than the majority of the other text in the item description
* Prominently displayed (in the upper half of the description, free-standing, etc.)

“International Buyers – Please Note:

* Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer’s responsibility.
* Please check with your country’s customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding/buying.”

In addition, sellers may wish to include additional helpful statements for their buyers, such as:

* “These charges are normally collected by the delivering freight (shipping) company or when you pick the item up – do not confuse them for additional shipping charges.”
* “We do not mark merchandise values below value or mark items as ‘gifts’ – US and International government regulations prohibit such behavior.”

Looks like I’ll need to update all my listings (again – groan) because although I have similar wording already, it is sufficiently different to give eBay a “get out” for taking action should I ever need it.

In addition to having the above within the body of your listing (not on your shop Terms and Conditions page), the buyer must specifically call out Customs delays or charges in the feedback before eBay will remove it.

With approaching 15,000 feedback comments in my feedback, and a “healthy” collection of negatives and neutrals for delayed delivery from international buyers, I have never once had a buyer reference the actions of one of their government departments as a reason for non-positive feedback.  I have had stroppy or whining emails and eBay messages from buyers, but never an in-feedback complaint echoing the same sentiment – the buyer has always used a different “more acceptable” reason for marking me down.

For that reason, overall, I rate this announcement as a valium offered to sellers still up in arms after the “no negs for buyers” policy of last Spring, and the introduction of invoice discounts, visibility rewards and punishments, etc based on DSRs a year after the system was first introduced.  It does nothing to fix the intrinsic flaws in the current feedback implementation, and will do nothing to help any more than a very small handful of sellers.

Naturally, the good news, such as it is, shows a step in the right direction by eBay in recognising the overburden that sellers are carrying because of eBay’s changes, but they have removed the burden of buyer education from the venue to the vendors.

Non-event, nothing to see here, move along.

Ed