eBay Hacks

Negative Feedback Notification

Have a script notify you whenever you’ve received negative feedback.

Given the importance of feedback, especially to sellers, it’s a good idea to routinely check your feedback profile for complaints or comments that should be addressed, as discussed in [Hack #4]. But doing this every day, especially for sellers who receive dozens or even hundreds of feedback comments every week, can be a chore.

This script routinely scans your feedback profile and notifies you of any new negative or neutral feedback you’ve received.

#!/usr/bin/perl
require 'ebay.pl';

$localfile = "feedbackalert.txt";
%roles = ('S', 'seller', 'B', 'buyer');

my $rsp = call_api({ Verb => 'GetFeedback',     [1]
              DetailLevel => 1,
                   UserId => $user_id,
                   SiteId => $site_id,
             StartingPage => $page_number,
             ItemsPerPage => 1
});
$totalcomments = $rsp->{Feedback}{FeedbackDetailItemTotal};

$oldtotal = 0;
if (-e "$localdir/$localfile") {
  open (INFILE,"$localdir/$localfile");
    $oldtotal = <INFILE>;     [2]
  close (INFILE);
}

$newcomments = $totalcomments - $oldtotal;     [3]
if ($newcomments == 0) { exit; }

if ($newcomments > 200) {
  $num_pages = int($newcomments / 200) + 1;
  $page_size = 200;
} else {
  $num_pages = 1;
  $page_size = $newcomments;
}

PAGE:
for (my $page_number = 1; $page_number <= $num_pages; $page_number++) {
  my $rsp = call_api({ Verb => 'GetFeedback',     [4] DetailLevel => 1, UserId => $user_id, SiteId => $site_id, StartingPage => $page_number, ItemsPerPage => $page_size }); if ($rsp->{Errors}) { ...