eBay have announced measures to protect sellers in circumstance where the snowy weather resulted in late deliveries.
They say that the majority of buyers responded with a great deal of patience and understanding and that their analysis of detailed seller ratings during the affected period shows no discernible increase in the number of sellers who were rated poorly for dispatch time.
Whilst there isn’t a need to review all sellers they have said that they will intervene in a limited number of cases where eBay Top Rated sellers are at risk from losing their status, due to low ratings on dispatch time that are inconsistent with their previous selling history.
For all other sellers who feel they’ve been unduly affected by bad winter weather and have proof to support your position, you can request an account review after the evaluation of your seller performance.
It’s good news that eBay will review cases and today is a particularly timely day for the announcement as it’s the 20th that Top Rated Seller status is reviewed each month. Have you gained or lost Top Rated Seller this month and if so was it down to despatch time or was it one of the other three DSRs that have improved or been hit?
28 Responses
I only had one low rating for dispatch in December, which looks to be down to the weather. However I sell collectables which buyers mainly buy for themselves, and are generally happy to have secured the item, with delivery time not being that critical. I would have thought buyers would mark more harshly where Christmas presents, spare parts etc were involved
Its still too early to say. I have around twenty known issues around non delivery since 12th December to early January and expect a few more to come in. Most of these twenty are still giving extra time for backlogs to be delivered, but are nearing the end date for waiting. One or two have indicated their impatience or disbelief at my attempts to explain the difficulties in predicting delivery times over the holiday period and into January, and I have had to refund in order to hopefully waylay veiled threats of negs.
Most of my non deliveries are to the States and a few to Holland. I think the new customs regime in the States is having an impact but Ebay are not recognising this aspect in their regime.
Oh glory be….Ebay, just to little to late, as usual.
TRS get the protection & non TSRs have to beg to CS, that seems really fair and evenhanded.
I too have had a large number of US bound items despatched in the run up to Christmas go missing/delayed and have had to deal with some (understandably) irate customers.
I’m hoping to submit a claim to RM as I have sent out some replacements and issued refunds and I’m interested to know if others are going to persue RM for compensation? No doubt RM will try to wriggle out of items concerning US bound items citing the new security restrictions but I’d like to know other TameBay users thoughts.
First time post but long tern lurker by the way!
Cheers,
S.
We have had a massive amount of complaints and have only just got though TRS this time as normaly we are ok and yes it was on dispatch time
We have had to refund over £500 on orders which arrived late and told the customer to keep the product FOC and give out freebies to try and keep customers happy – so over £1000 this has cost us and we have scaped through on 0.48 on dispatch time and we are a high volume seller
This has realy made us think and its time look at other revenue streams other than ebay, amazon, play, etc
Its time ebay sorted it out this DSR – So its either dispatch time or delivery time and made it crystal clear for both the seller and the buyer so they both see the same info and both understand what they are either been rated on or leaving ratings for…… Make it fair thats all we ask
How can it be our fault if it snows or that over xmas RM are busy so orders get delayed – we offer UPS next day at an extra cost but if you dont pay for it then we wont send it and it goes RM 1st class at the standard postage charge
I wish ebay would get there house in order.
Oh happy new year Chris and Sue – Bit late I know but my first post of the year
What December meant to me?
-over 1000 transactions
-close to £1000 in fees paid to ebay
-22 low DSR for dispach time(4.8) warning buyers about delays didn’t work at all
-16 opened cases
–10 cases closed by buyers afterites turned up
–6 cases refunded
-4 negative comments
-3 neutral comments
Lost TRS around Christams,
Lost PS status last week and now I found out im BELOW STANDARD
This makes me think what next
seriously thinking of blocking the USA were having so much grief about delivery,
we have jumped through hoops of fire dragged ourselves across hot coals .flogged ourselves with nettles,we have even subjected ourselves to suffer contempt and contacted ebay support,
our feedbacks good our stars are great,
not good enough ebay say, a little sneaky warning flag pops up, and the ebay hounds of hell are howling up our bum with buyer protection cases
its a good job we dont give a monkeys
“It’s good news that eBay will review cases”
Its pathetic news,
mud slides, blizzards
floods artic weather ,and severe and abnormal weather over vast parts of Australia America and Europe
ebay should have simply 5 starred all DSRs for December for all sellers.
and this one takes the Biscuit
“!!!!For all other sellers who feel they’ve been unduly affected by bad winter weather and have proof to support your position”!!!!!!!
I LIVE IN THE UK FOR PITYS SAKE is that not proof enough
WHICH PLANET DO EBAY LIVE ON
Anything sent to USA from 22nd November right through December has suffered severe delays and am wondering whether it is worth all the grief to sell to them. I’ve just refunded something sent on 13th December which sounds like it was probably sent surface mail because of security issues.
I’ve totally given up on DSR’s, I just do the best I can and if that’s not good enough so be it.
One of our accounts has 45 low ratings for dispatch time 1.7%.
We posted everything straight away as usual, solely down to RM/weather etc.
eBay’s profits are up thanks to big retailers.
Big retailers have contracts with carriers who don’t want to lose their business so get goods to customers more reliably.
eBay has been telling small businesses to get stuffed for years, they’ve been milking the profits from small sellers to bring the corporates on board. I’ve been saying it for years, it’s damned obvious if you can read the signs.
eBay has three businesses which are incompatible.
1) Antiques, pre-owned, ordinary folks clearing attics and cupboards, home-based craft goods makers.
They moved to stage two
2) Car boot/market stall products, ex-catalogue, smaller businesses getting on the web for the first time and changing business models to suit eBay (selling cheap crap to compete).
A few people posting here are this category though many would deny selling cheap ‘stuff’. What most don’t appreciate is that their arrival downgraded the eBay experience for the existing buyers and sellers who sold mostly unique items that weren’t available elsewhere or absolute bargains because they wanted the space, didn’t want to bin it and most second hand shops have closed to be replaced by corporate charity shops.
3) This is the end game, an online shopping mall, Metrocentre + Bluewater + Merry Hill in one. Big corporates with economies of scale and price fixing. eBay is and will continue to act to positively discourage individual sellers, small business, medium business.
It will get worse and worseuntil there is some competition, well not competition to buck eBay up but alternate venues. The craftsy people have got etsy, medium business have got Amazon for how good that is (and I wouldn’t trust them for my primary income source). That leaves plenty of niches needing businesses to fill them, Goantiques were supposed to be taking on that auction market but not made much impact as far as I can tell. eBay aren’t interested in your business but they’ll take your pounds (and sell advertising for their corporate buddies on the pages that you have paid for).
eBay is the landlord that keeps on putting up the rent and reducing the access to your store. Why? – because they can and because they think they make more money for the bankers doing so.
We now have a dispatch time DSR of 1.18%, prior to December we only 1 low rating. Everything posted within 24 hours so all down to Royal Fail but how are we supposed to provide “proof to support your position” to eBay. This announcement is meaningless from eBay, they are not doing anything to help sellers, it is just talk.
I’ve just called ebay to request an account review due to the negatives and non receipt disputes received due to the bad weather, they have agreed to do so however I don’t hold much hope when I was told by the agent that I was not in a region Royal Mail confirmed as being affected by the bad weather. I’m in the North East, we had snow on the ground for 5 weeks, City Link have just started to accept deliveries here!
What a joke!
Thus far we’ve avoided low ratings but I fear that January/February could be a disaster zone for eBay sellers exporting to the USA during December/January. In late November the USA Homeland Security introduced changes to their airmail security procedures and those changes seem to have stalled inbound mail to the USA for weeks. AirMail and small packet rate items sent from early December onwards still seem to be floating around in the system when in the past it would take four or five days to arrive. The problems are exacerbated by the apparent absence of publicity within the USA about the delays. Almost every postal authority worldwide has issued advisory warnings about the USA delays but within the US there seems to have been almost no publicity whatsoever. We have issued more ‘non arrival’ refunds in the last three weeks than in the last five years combined, all but one of them of them to USA customers. Most of our USA customers have been marvelous, displaying the patience and understanding of a saint once they know what the situation is, I just wish that ebay USA done something to advise their buyers about the USA postal delays on international items.