eBay Feedback Extortion Alerting Service

For eBay sellers unhappy with the current state of affairs regarding feedback…

Another h/t to Ina at Auctionbytes for this news;

eBay Feedback Extortion Alerting Service

Which introduces AfterTheGavel.com. Dr. Ben Bishop, the founder, describes his site as

“A way for sellers to leave feedback about buyers to prevent problems. ‘Perhaps the buyer is trying to threaten the seller with negative feedback to try to extort a lower price,’ he said. ‘This is a mechanism for sellers to report that to other sellers so this buyer can’t go on doing this indefinitely, hopefully.’”

From the FAQ’s at the site itself;

“AfterTheGavel is for sellers to be able to manage risk for their online auction businesses. As the world of online auctions changes sellers need to know who they are dealing with as buyers as much if not more than buyers need to know sellers. AfterTheGavel.com will serve as a balancing weight to keep this information available to sellers.”

While this appears to be the founding basis;

Q: How can AfterTheGavel.com help me protect my auction business?

A: It has been a long held belief that when someone that is doing wrong is exposed they can be stopped. If you know there is a thief in your neighborhood you will lock your doors. The same is true online. If you know someone is a problem customer you can block them from doing business with you and causing you problems including ruining your seller reputation with unjustified negative feedback. All sellers even if they are not registered can search buyer IDs and find out if they want to block a buyer due to their history. That is fair and justified on the sellers part. Sellers can also leave feedback to warn other sellers. This will create a strong deterrent to buyers being unfair & unreasonable to sellers as it has always been.

Seems like a nice effort. I hope it becomes worthwhile.