Many eBay PowerSellers have noticed in their a note that from July 2008 a new criteria to determine PowerSeller eligibilty will be DSR scores.
Currently there is no indication of what minimum DSR score levels will be used to qualify as a PowerSeller in the UK but sharp eyed TameBay reader Suz, from might have found a clue – the sets a level of 4.5 minimum for all four DSR criteria. The scores are based on the last 12 months, not the trailing 30 days, so eBay are aiming for longstanding good service, not a short term improvement in standards.
To be honest I’m impressed that eBay have taken up the gauntlet to improve PowerSeller requirements and for introducing benefits that make the badge more meaningful than simply indicating a seller with a high turnover. Whilst there will probably be a few sellers that no longer qualify for PowerSeller status in the short term, when they regain their status it will be a signal that they really are an elite seller.
28 Responses
I wonder how long before feedback goes all together. DSR’s seem to give a buyer a much more transparent view of a sellers performance.
I’d be happy to see feedback go, unfortunately buyers seems to like collecting points
True, but the points are worthless. All the people who have joined eBay since the feedback changes have come into force have 100% feedback, that figure is useless and pointless as it can never change.
about time they got rid of the term “powerseller” too
the term powerseller smacks of foot in the door pressure sales
Betterseller , sounds so much better, or
Trustedseller, sounds so much more trust worthy
A little bit unfair for those of us living in N. Ireland because we pay higher postage rates.
Needless to say our P&P charges are on par with everyone else in our category yet we have one of the lowest P&P DSRs.
I did laugh the time i seen a seller who offers free P&P on everything and he had 4.7something P&P charges. Good old ebay it wont be long until we are paying the customer to delivery their goods.
This change has been on the cards since Jan, I reckon an awful lot of sellers arn’t aware of it and will get there ass bitten hard come July.
Whirly:I know the ‘points’ are worthless, you know the points are worthless, but I still get emails from buyers asking me to give them feedback (even though feedback is automatic on payment).
North: I’ve never though of the term powerseller like that, but now I do you are 100% right, it does sound right out of a 80’s high pressure sales manual. I wonder how it will fit with the new consumer laws (not much effect on ebay, but not good for high pressure outfits): href=”https://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file46035.pdf
Hi 7. I don’t get those emails anymore because I leave positve feedback as soon as an order is placed, irrspective of whether the buyer has paid or not!! If my feedback was high and I was a volume seller I would report every non payer in a jiffy, but because I am a low volume seller I simply cannot take the risk. I work on the assumption that as a seller leaving feedback at the earlist opportunity builds buyer confidence. It may well bite me on the ass one day but I believe its my best shot at survival at the moment.
As a company we are trying to move away from eBay, .we have programs in place to do so, they are slow and I dont mind admitting that but in 12 months time I hope it will pay off, the next time I get a email from eBay reminding me that they think”I am wonderful, why are you not listing” I want to be able to tell them to f off and think nothing of the financial consequences.
In my humble opinion eBay have just done a ratners, there PR department are a disaster.
Whirly: can you automate feedback on winning bid/BIN, or do you do it manually?
I agree with you there is no point in not giving feedback ASAP, i’ve also seen that once you get over 50 or so feedback buyers don’t appear to care so much about leaving it (they do leave it, but often take weeks, much slower), maybe they feel a little sorry for me below that level or something.
I am also moving as much business away from ebay as possible, over to google base, adwords, amazon, own webpage etc. Ever order that comes in and I don’t have to pay ebays FVF’s I jump up do a little dance!
I was much younger when Gerald Ratner made his infamous ‘crap’ comment, but I remember it well (still at school doing business studies, rather than running a business).
While ebay and paypal would appear to have done ‘a ratners’ over the past few weeks, its nothing to the PR they were getting week in, week out from the buyers for sellers poor performance.
Whether any of us will survive as sellers, on ebay, remains to be seen but for any that survive I don’t think its a bad thing to be judged. I think it just needs some fine tuning, some people (and I don’t include you in this whirly by any means, I think your record is exemplary) posting complaining have had a couple of negatives OR a couple of neutrals in the last month with less than 50 sales. Compare this to north who has has one negative in several years on one of his ID’s, he’s the sort of seller we should all be aiming to emulate.
These people need to wake up and smell the coffee, this LOW level of service isn’t a conspiracy by ebay, or buyers, their service is poor and they need to stop blaming others and ‘shape up’ or find another venue to sell on.
I’m fed up taking the blame for other people who can’t even get it together to stick a packet in the post the day after someone orders it.
Sorry if this is a little disjointed, I’ve just had a couple of bottles of wine over dinner 🙂
it looks a little more than a note on my dashboard
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v67/boardsurfer/psdsr.jpg
To me it is all a big joke. I sell internationally and clearly communicate to my buyers that I only charge actual postage. Nevertheless I am stuck at a 4.5 DSR for shipping and handling. So I am less than an inch away from losing my powerseller status.
I think eBay does a great job at patronizing and manipulating sellers. If you are a good dog you get a cookie, or else….
Pathetic.
I do it manually Max. It’s risky I admit that, I have had one or two emails from buyers asking me why I have left them feedback before they paid, I just reply and tell them that I can either leave them nothing or a positive and by leaving them a positive straight away hopefully they are more relaxed about the transaction and will leave me good star ratings, but more importantly at the moment if there was a problem with the product or delivery they would contact me first before leaving feedback.
Understand where you are coming from completely Whirly – but doesn’t that just show how worthless the Feedback System is now? All I have to do is purchase from you. If I don’t pay then you can use alternative systems to report me ( I take it that leaving a positive before payment doesn’t preclude you from using those?)
So why give buyers feedback?
The only positive for them is that when they start selling they will have a feedback base to start with – which is meaningless as it doesn’t reflect their performance as a seller, although it might convince a new buyer that they are buying from a reliable source.
And totally agree re the term ‘Powerseller’ and think ‘Trustedseller’ sounds great – if eBay can guarantee that their new system would result in all Trustedsellers being worthy of the name. If it becomes as abused as Powerseller then it would be a laughing stock.
Hi Jayne. I should have added in #12 that I only leave feedback early for cheap items like silicone that haven’t been paid for, I will not do it for our core products like baths. And if anyone wonders why I am selling silicone for £1.20 a tube, that is to help the DSR’s as bath buyers are extremely slow at leaving feedback because generally they don’t have them installed for a couple of months. I think the last feedback I recieved related to an item purchase in early may and even in the feedback it was stated that the haven’t unwrapped it yet.
“”If I don’t pay then you can use alternative systems to report me “I take it that leaving a positive before payment doesn’t preclude you from using those?”” I mark them in SMP as despatched but not paid.
I have 6 items eligible for a UPI, 2 eligible for a FVF, I’ll just let them roll out and archive them. If I had 10,000+ feeback I would strike the lot of them but as I only have 704 I simply can’t take the risk.
These stupid £1.20 sales are a nusiance and I wish to god we didn’t have to do them, but we have to.
Hi Whirly – your system makes perfect sense and I see exactly why you do it. It’s the feedback system that is worthless. We have stopped selling completely on eBay at the moment and as we didn’t sell much for the last year on eBay our DSR is pretty limited.
I know I would be sad if we lost our 5000+ FB, as we worked hard to get it – but it actually relates to 2 years ago BW (before website 🙂 ) and I have to acknowledge therefore, isn’t really relevant to people buying today – except of course, the service is still excellent 🙂
Seems to me that eBay are running the FB system and the DSR system alongside each other for a while which will give all sellers time to build up a contemporary DSR figure of performance and then they will ditch FB altogether
I hope your last paragraph is correct Jayne, I won’t last long trying to juggle both of them 🙂
I know this sound obvious for whirly, but I saw on another thread that you had quite a few non payers on silicon etc. Can you sell things like replacement bath plugs with instant payment by paypal required? I know this is probably teaching you to suck eggs, but worth a try.
Hi guys
We’re an ebay drop-off store (and doing quite well) but it is a scary worl at the moment. Has anyone had the “luxury goods” phone call from ebay? Apparently they are limiting the sale of luxury goods site wide. They wouldn’t say what classifies as a luxury item – typical ebay – dictionary definition is anything that is not key to survival!! So any auction can be taken down or restricted!
Anyway about the DSR’s. I see to get a discount on fees you have to have a DSR of 4.6 on each star rating.
Lookin at the Ebay site wide average on P&P charges for the last 30 days it is 4.59 so that means on average no one will qualify for a seller discount.
We are at 4.38 so we are miles off. It doesn’t help that ebay/paypal insist on sellers using tracking postage for dispute purposes whilst encouraging buyers to look fro postage free items on Ebay with big banner ads.
The DSR’s are so subjective, and to base our invoice charges on what a customer thinks about certain questions is ridiculous. We lost out on £500 discount last month – crazy!
eBay is cloning Amazon at a super-fast rate. And the problem with making changes so quickly is that it doesn’t filter down quick enough and leads to a lot of confusion.
Make no mistake ebay is changing it’s business model. Here is what is happening:
1. Feedback will go, it will be just DSR’s.
2. Upfront fees will end in favour of final value fees.
3. Paypal will become the only payment acceptable and Paypal will hold all funds for 21 days and remitt payment into the sellers account on a monthly basis in arrears – to implement this customers will be able to make a payment by debit or credit card without a paypal account.
4. With paypal in place eBay will control the P&P charges – it will cap what sellers can charge based on weight and destination, and it will take a commission from this remitting the remainder to the seller.
5. The Auction format will eventually be removed.
6. Ebay becomes Amazon!!!
Just my thoughts.
Rich
#17 Bath Plugs….Lucky me lol
#18 “Luxury goods” phone call…not had one but heard a few rumours, could you go into anymore detail Rich.
Knowing ebay I wouldn’t put it past them to class any item on which VAT is payable as a ‘luxury item’
#20 I wonder if I replace “Luxury Whirlpool Bath” with “$hite piece of plastic” I can slip through the net?!?
Bugger…I’ve just done a “Ratner”
🙂
Dam, to late to edit last post. Better call in the administrators. lol
From eBay.
Hello,
We’d like to let you know about some selling limits that may affect your account.
To protect our users from fraud, we may place restrictions on sellers listing items such as certain luxury goods. These could include limiting the number of items a seller may list, asking the seller to confirm
their identity through PayPal, or blocking 1- or 3-day listings.
If you inadvertently try to list a restricted item, you’ll receive a message to let you know why you can’t list it and what to do.
Why are we doing this?
Our top priority is keeping our users safe and happy – so we’ll always do our best to protect you from fraud while using our site. We’re also committed to fighting counterfeits. They are illegal and buying a counterfeit item is a bad consumer experience. Bad experiences undermine buyers’ trust in the eBay marketplace and ultimately hurt all sellers.
Again, you may not be affected by these limits, but we wanted to let you know about them. Please don’t reply to this email as we won’t be able to respond. If you have any questions or require assistance, you can contact us from any eBay Help page.
Are they just reviving an old policy in light of Hermes sueing them? my guess is it’s well known brands like Prada,Nike etc
#22 Bribing the moderators is always an option. My PayPal address is biddy@…
#23 is just beyond belief. eBay have gone completely secret squirrel.
#24 Paypal….you having a laugh. lol
Sorry. Nochex address is the same one though 😀
Ho Ho