On ebay, what is the purchaser's incentive to give feedback on a seller?

Don’t buyers get feedback too? It would seem that they would leave positive feedback to a good seller and in return perhaps get positive feedback as a buyer.. so that people will trust them as customers. It’s been a while since I’ve been on ebay.. but that’s how it was back in the day.

@NaturalMineralWater ; That’s exactly right. Many sellers won’t give feedback until tehyrecieve fedback as a buyer. Some sellers won’t sell to someone who hasn’t established a good feedback rating.

It’s a heads up to your fellow buyers.

Well until recently last year, both Sellers and Buyers could leave positive, negative or neutral feedback. Now us Sellers can only leave positive feedback and Buyers can leave positive or negative. The reasoning for changing was because sellers would sometimes hold the buyer to positive feedback or risk getting negative feedback. As it is now the only recourse you have of of an unpaid item is to submit this to eBay and it may reflect negatively if a buyer gets a few unpaid item strikes. They can lose their buying priveleges. I do note that since not being able to leave negative feedback there have been more incidents of unpaid items. It is definitely advantageous for the whole community if buyers leave feedback. It helps other buyers to know about good sellers(the vast majority) and it also helps buyers get discounts on eBay fees which may get passed onto buyers in competitive pricing.

If I’m not mistaken Ebay has been slowly hiking up its fees too… that’s lame.

I miss the old ebay.

It’s how you would like to be treated, isn’t it?
Hey, I still flash my headlights to warn oncoming drivers when I pass a radar trap in their direction. That has saved me many times. I figure it’s a simple courtesy to pay forward.
I’m from the days when we just drove “Fast” not “Furious”.

Back when eBay was great, there was incentive for all parties to provide feedback, the feedback system itself was more integrated with the site, there were more options, and the community was there to support honest reflections on users. Since then, eBay has changed drastically, its feedback options have been dumbed down and are not as valuable, but most importantly a lot of the community has dissipated, scammers are aplenty, fees have gone up, other alternatives (Craigslist, Facebook marketplace) exist, all leading to (IMO) a reduction in both members and quality of members.