Have you heard of Private Feedback?

[Amatino]

Got an offer and checked my buyer (as always) and read this:

“Private Feedback – This member, ******, has decided to make his/her Feedback comments private. Feedback can still be left for this user and the Feedback ratings left are shown above in summary format.”

There was a referral to this page: https://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/profile-public-private.html

I liked eBay’s comment there that having public feedback “builds trust” because that was my concern. However, this is not a new eBayer, the buyer has nearly 1,000 feedback, so I’ll go ahead. Just thought I’d mention it. First time for me.

[Terri]

I’ve had a few buyers over the years who had private feedback and have never had an issue. I think it used to be more of a thing when other members were able to see what someone had purchased by clicking on their feedback. I don’t quite see the point of it any longer.

[Inglewood]

I think hiding feedback/items purchased has it’s place – for example, if you are buying gifts someone can see what you bought them. Or, if you are buying something that you may not want others to know you are into, you can hide the item/feedback.

[Jay]

Private feedback for buyers really doesn’t matter. A seller can’t leave the buyer a negative feedback anyway. Byer feedback is always really innocuous (“Thanks for buying. Come back again!”) . What info could they hide?

[Inglewood]

Jay – it does hide the description of the item that is purchased as “Private” as well. It will just show the item as “–” and price as “–“.

For example, if I ran an eBay store that sold Christian Bookstore type material, and bought some “Satanist themed adult movies” using the same eBay account, I may want to hide my purchase from potential buyers.

[Terri]

The purchases have been hidden for all buyers for some time now.

[Jay]

Understood. The original post was asking if the seller should be worried if a buyer has private feedback. My answer is that private feedback doesn’t hide any info that would stop a sale.

[Inglewood]

When I click on any seller’s user ID, I can see everything except the username is somewhat blocked – for example, Inglewood is “I***d”.

Everything else is visible for any seller on eBay – Item Description, Item Number, price paid, censored username, buyers feedback, when the sale occurred, and a link to the item for recent sales.

[Terri]

For a seller, yes, but not for a buyer.

[Amatino]

Jay, it also hides the tab “Feedback left for others” and I have been very cautious about accepting offers from folks with bad feedback in that section.

I can’t think of any reason to hide feedback other than
– you’re buying gifts for someone on a joint account and you don’t want them to find out
– you’ve bought some items that you don’t want disclosed, e.g. sex toys
– you have a history of bad feedback left, or seller responses to your bad feedback that you don’t want others to see.

For the first two, well, First Amendment. For the last one, that’s a concern.

[Jay]

Ah, then I see how that might worry a seller if you cant see the kind of feedback the buyer leaves.

Private Feedback by itself doesn’t bother us. if the buyer is asking a lot of weird questions and being grumpy, then it might raise a red flag.

[Author]

Posts