Other Shoe Drops On eBay Automatic Positive Feedback - Removing Negatives & Neutrals Just Got Harder
Sellers who were elated at the announcement of Automatic Positive Feedback at eBay Open 2025 are now finding out what happens when the other shoe drops as August Seller News updates show it will soon be harder to get some feedback removed.
Here's what today's update had to say about Automatic Positive Feedback, which was announced eBay's annual seller conference last week.
Liz Morton
Automated Feedback
What you need to know
Starting September 3, 2025, we’ll provide automated feedback for eligible orders, giving you more opportunities to increase your feedback score.This October, you can also expect improvements to how we handle mixed feedback. If a buyer’s comment includes both removable and non-removable content, we’ll give them the option to edit the removable part so their feedback is published.
What’s changing:
Automated feedback
Most transactions go smoothly, with sellers providing great service, but that hasn’t always been reflected in buyer feedback.Starting September 3, 2025, you’ll automatically receive feedback for successful transactions that meet all of these criteria:
- You shipped the order with tracking and it arrived on time
- The buyer hasn’t left feedback
- The buyer hasn’t reported any issues
If a buyer decides to leave feedback, we’ll replace our automated message with their message. If the buyer returns the item or reports an issue, we’ll remove our automated feedback.
Unfortunately, there's where the good news ends - and the rest of the update could put sellers in a difficult position when it comes to removal requests for unwarranted feedback or comments which violate eBay's feedback policies.
Previously, if any part of the feedback was not allowed, eBay would remove the whole thing but now buyers can potentially edit their comment to get it to pass the feedback policies and allow it to stand.
More flexible handling of mixed feedback
We’re also improving how mixed feedback affects your profile. Starting this October, when you ask us to remove feedback and a buyer’s comment contains both removable and non-removable content, we’ll ask them to edit the removable part.If the buyer revises it, we’ll publish their feedback. If they don’t, the feedback won’t appear on your profile at all. We’ll notify you whenever we ask a buyer to revise their comment.
See our full feedback policy to learn more.
eBay provided the following FAQs about how the new Mixed Feedback policy will work:
What happens if a buyer doesn’t respond to their revision request?
If the buyer doesn’t respond to the request to revise feedback, the original feedback won’t appear on your profile.
What happens if a buyer leaves the same feedback as before?
After the buyer revises their feedback, we will review the new comment to make sure it follows our policy. If the buyer doesn’t address what we’ve asked them to edit, or if there is some other policy violation, we will not publish the revised feedback.
Can buyers downgrade their rating during the revision request?
No, the buyer cannot downgrade their rating. For example, if they selected a neutral rating in their first submission, they won’t be able to downgrade their rating to negative.
Will you stop removing feedback?
No, if the entire feedback qualifies for removal, it will continue to be removed without asking the buyer to revise.
Will eBay’s revision requests impact the number of seller revision requests I can send to the buyer?
No, these revision requests from eBay will not count towards your feedback revision requests.
And the bad news doesn't stop there - eBay's full Feedback Policy page also now has a note saying they will no longer be automatically removing negative and neutral feedback on free returns or returns where the item was used or damaged and the seller chooses to deduct a partial amount from the refund.
Changes to global regulations mean that, from September 3, we'll no longer automatically remove negative or neutral feedback in the following returns situations:
- The seller offered free returns, handled the return, and issued a refund
- An item was returned used or damaged, and the seller deducted an amount from the buyer's refund
Sellers who've had feedback removed in the last 12 months in either of these situations have been notified in their Seller News email of this upcoming change. Any feedback removed under our current policy will not be reinstated when the new policy takes effect.
They instituted the same policy in the UK when they expanded Automatic Feedback there earlier this year.
Liz Morton
Sellers in the eBay community forum were not thrilled with these updates to feedback removal, fearing it will allow abusive buyers to engage in extortion or fraud with no protection for the seller.
Ebay should be discouraging neg feedback- instead they make it easier?
New feedback policy is odd- so leaving auto good feedback if buyer does not is fine i suppose- who really cares...but making it harder to remove unjustified negs is just plain agressive to sellers.
Anti seller policies like this are just getting tiresome- so now a buyer can return a broken, damaged, used, out of packaing item- get all their money back while making the seller pay the return shipping AND still get to leave a defamatroy neg feedback to boot?!
What is the logical reason behind removing a simple automated seller protection?- by deducting from the return the seller has already noted an issue with the buyer. Why does ebay want to punish sellers for doing everything right?--- Protection is also elimated if you offer free returns and give a full refund???????
Absolutely absurd. So good sellers are punished for no reason. and reason ebay gives is global regulations??- I call bleep on that...... show me a global regulator that makes laws about a subjective thing like feedback! Typical ebay - one stupid change causes 10 new issues that never existed, and for what?
And then if buyer decides to leave neg at a future date- ebay will replace their pos feedback with the neg! lol--- you could not make this stuff of if you tried
What do you think of these updates to the eBay feedback experience? Is the benefit of automatic positive feedback worth what sellers will be losing in terms of feedback removal and protections? Let us know in the comments below!
