Amazon could fix this situation by rating unrated transactions as at least "good", with the assumption that if someone was unhappy they would complain. It has been proven time and again that people who are unhappy are much more likely to go to the trouble of leaving feedback than people who are content. In any case, as far as we are concerned, the feedback system on Amazon is hopelessly compromised. If Amazon wants to keep bad sellers out of their system they need to do some work on their own to make it happen.

For example, they can easily review customer complaints and A-Z claims; they can do statistical analysis on the number of incomplete vs. complete transactions; they can look at book descriptions and eliminate sellers who mass-list books they do not own with vague repetitive descriptions.

At eBay, another site on which we sell, feedback has also reached an incredible level of absurdity and non-usefulness. Here both buyers and sellers can rate each transaction and also respond to their feedback. The unwritten rule is that if you give me great feedback I will give you great feedback. It simply does not pay to give poor feedback unless you are willing to suffer negative feedback in return. Great feedback on eBay, in fact, can cover up persistent fraudulent activity, as Ken Lopez points out in a recent open letter to eBay from ABAA.

Despite the fact that these limitations are well-known, both ABE and Alibris are going to join the fray and are working to put a feedback system in place. I am not at all enthusiastic about it; all of these sites have a lot to do to clean up their acts without adding yet another layer of manipulation and complication. If these sites took the time to eliminate obviously bad sellers with bogus or inadequate listings, this would do more for ultimate customer satisfaction than a feedback system based on flawed models which even Amazon and eBay have been unable (or unwilling) to fix.