Talk isn't cheap on eBay. So the online auction company is tampering with tradition to rein in sellers who post negative comments about buyers.
The San Jose, Calif., company recently announced that it would end its feedback structure that enables buyers and sellers to engage in mutual admiration or a flaming war of words after a transaction.
Some sellers, the company has said, have gotten out of hand with retaliatory postings that are driving away customers. Some sellers believe that a mutual comment policy is the only way to level the playing field in a battle with customers bent on trashing merchants and hurting their businesses.
The dispute came to a head this week, with some sellers participating in an eight-day boycott of eBay to protest the changes, which are to take effect in May.
The stakes are high. The company has said the negative reviews jeopardize its customer base.
"Many buyers have said that receiving a negative is the primary reason they have decreased or ceased their activity on eBay," spokesman Usher Lieberman said.
For some sellers, the dispute is a matter of livelihood. About 1.3 million people worldwide derive their primary or secondary income from eBay sales, the company said.
"It's a very inexpensive way without a lot of commitment to get a business started," said Ronni Rosen, a senior business adviser at the Stony Brook Small Business Development Center on Long Island, N.Y.
"The startup capital is very little, and so people can get a feel for whether there is a need for their products and services."
An eBay seller - Michael Doherty, 46, a bond salesman from Massapequa, N.Y. - believes the new policy is taking away a powerful tool that protects merchants vulnerable to unscrupulous buyers.
"The seller is at a disadvantage, without question, because there are going to be those buyers out there that will take advantage, that will buy something from your store and not pay," he said. "To not be able to leave feedback and warn other eBay store owners ... doesn't make a lot of sense."
Doherty, who has sold on eBay for just more than a year, has two storefronts on the site, Proactive Apparel, which caters to Hispanics, and Proactive Boxing, which targets boxing fans. Neither he nor any other sellers interviewed planned to take part in the boycott.
An eBay spokesman said the latest boycott has had no effect on its business. "There hasn't been any marked change in our daily listing volume," spokesman Jose Mallabo said. "And we monitor that pretty closely."
Concerns over the new feedback policy have trumped eBay's higher sales commission rate, which took effect Wednesday.
An AuctionBytes survey, conducted after eBay announced fee and feedback changes Jan. 29, found that the feedback changes topped the list of sellers' concerns. Forty-three percent of the 1,640 merchants responding to the online trade publication's poll said the feedback changes would most affect their business, compared with nearly 33 percent who cited the new commissions.
The changes also may rile sellers because eBay began its feedback structure shortly after its inception in 1995. The new policy represents a cultural sea change for the eBay online community, which has about 276 million registered users worldwide. And the company may be the only online marketplace that allows sellers, who can list items for sale or open a storefront, to post comments about buyers.
"Posting comments about the people who buy the merchandise - other than eBay, nobody does that," said Sucharita Mulpuru, principal retail analyst at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., technology research firm.
Alan Warshauer, a Ronkonkoma, N.Y., resident whose family has sold on eBay since 1998, said the sellers' right to respond helps counteract buyers who are quick to post negative comments.
"If I'm not willing to fix the problem, then I deserve what I get," said Warshauer, 45, a printer whose family was recognized as a top eBay seller in 2005. "Most buyers leave a negative first and then contact you. After that, it's too late."
Carrie Mason-Draffen writes for Newsday.