eBay has done its best to reassure shoppers worried about bad sellers on its marketplace, but some of those shoppers have figured out how to game the system unfairly, especially after eBay took away sellers' ability to leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers.



With no consequences to their feedback reputation, some buyers have gotten bolder about making unreasonable demands of sellers, including partial or full refunds or even a second item to replace supposedly faulty products.







eBay now claims it is seeing positive results after improving a feature that lets sellers report bad buyers. This month eBay has been sending emails to sellers telling them it increased buyer account suspensions and restrictions from October 2012 to March 2013:



Buyer account suspensions have increased by 900%

Buyer restrictions have increased by 450%

We've protected the seller performance ratings of

over 100,000 sellers. (Check your seller dashboard to track

how your own seller performance ratings have been protected.)



eBay credits its own policies, detection systems, and dedicated Seller Protection team, as well as an enhanced "Report a Buyer" feature resulting in more reports submitted by sellers (though it did not disclose how many more).



I'd be interested to learn how many readers actually use the "Report a Buyer" feature and what happens as a result.



Have you been impacted by bad buyers, and has the problem gotten better? Worse? Remained the same?

