I am instantly sceptical of very high eBay ratings such as 98%. Or more.
In real life there are always disgruntled customers who ordered the wrong item, didn't read the spec properly, wished it came in a different colour, have unreal expectations, didn't like the packaging, etc. They must surely constitute 5% or 10% of sales but, mysteriously enough, are completely unrepresented on eBay.
It's basically down to the 'requirement' that the only possible feedback rating is 5*, so every half decent supplier is always very close to solid 5*.
If 3* meant OK, 4* meant good and 5* meant really excellent one might get sensible ratings but there's no hope of that now.
The eBay feedback ratings (like 99%) aren't based on the star ratings, they're based on the positive/neutral/negative tickbox only. So a 100% score means somebody got no negatives (within whatever time window they calculate - 12 months maybe).
These ratings (should be) about the seller, not the item. If the transaction was negged because the buyer didn't like the colour I think the seller can get the comment removed. If a seller is getting less than say
99% with a substantial quantity of negs it's because something is very wrong- usually I dig into the feedback section and it's seller problems like items not arriving, misleading descriptions, dubious stuff etc. Below 98% and it means 1 in 50 transactions is going seriously wrong, which is a red flag.
There are separate reviews for items, although a lot of sellers don't turn these on. They don't always aggregate those across multiple sellers (a lot of stuff on ebay is unbranded - there's no barcode to align reviews across different sellers of the same item).
You see the opposite in Amazon reviews, where people complain that a Marketplace item was slow to be delivered - a pointless review if buying from a different seller.
Theo
Nowadays if I want to leave a negative rating, eBay requires me to wait a week or so. When I eventually leave that rating, I find the supplier usually contacts me to say I can have the (small) item for free provided I remove my rating.
Another supplier who hadn't supplied the goods at all, got rid of my negative comments by cancelling my order completely.
I ordered some button cells from a seller on Amazon who ran into trouble with supplies during the lockdown and quickly got 40% dissatisfaction ratings there covering the last few months. However on eBay his ratings stayed above 95% throughout.
The only thing I can be certain of on eBay is the high 99% ratings are fake.
Yup one of my pet hates, product reviews where the reviewer has slammed the product itself just because the courier could not find their house or similar!
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