We take advantage of the blog to anticipate the content of one of the columns that will appear in the next issue, number 157, of L'Orologio. We are doing so because the subject he had chosen and treated has become very topical in these days. We are talking about feedback, one of the most interesting and important tools used by buyers in online auctions, starting with the most famous of all: e-bay.
Feedback is an evaluation consisting of comments and scores left by other eBay users with whom the seller has transacted. It is a system that allows the seller's reputation on eBay to be checked: in fact, comments are included, together with the overall feedback score, in the seller's user profile. Consequently, trust in a user in the community is mainly based on the opinions expressed by previous buyers or sellers.
The buyer can also evaluate other aspects of the transaction, such as accuracy of the description, communication with the seller, how long it took the seller to ship the item, etc. Of course, by leaving objective comments on a particular user you give other members of the community the opportunity to get a good idea of the fairness of the user, especially as the feedback left is permanently embedded in the seller's profile. It follows that one's feedback score will be the higher the number of positive evaluations given by other users.
So far so good, but with due caution. If we look closely at the deals that have been concluded, we may come across 'constructed' feedback, for example by selling '10 fantastic wallpapers' for 1 euro cent each, or sales and purchases made constantly by the same group of users, who thus continually and reciprocally increase their feedback. All this in order to create a theoretically 'healthy' seller, from whom a not too cautious buyer could also buy, and thus pay for, an object that might later turn out not to be as described. And then the months spent building a nice house of cards might turn out to be aimed at achieving a double demise: that of the castle, and that of the buyer's own money.
