eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

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 [Hack #5] . 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',
		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>; 
		close (INFILE); 
	}

$newcomments = $totalcomments - $oldtotal; if ($newcomments == 0) { exit; } if ($newcomments > 200) { $num_pages = int($newcomments / 200) + 1; $page_size = 200; } else { $num_pages = 1; $page_size = $newcomments; } PAGE: ...