I’ve long said that eBay DSRs are increasingly out of the control of sellers and it appears that eBay agree! They’re going to give an automatic five star rating for the communication DSR under certain conditions.
From the 29th March if you meet the following criteria you can get an auto five star feedback, which makes sense as eBay now largely handle routine communications on your behalf anyway:
- Tracking is uploaded or the item is marked as dispatched within 1 working day after payment has been received
- Stated handling time is 1 working day or same day
- The payment method is PayPal, making the payment date visible to eBay
- No communication took place between the buyer and seller from 14 days before the transaction up until the point that Feedback was left. This includes messages within My eBay and any opened cases
eBay will also be removing feedback for any unpaid items so long as the only payment method was PayPal and you didn’t offer local collection.
21 Responses
Surely all of these criteria apply to the dispatch DSR.
Why is it that communications is receiving the automatic 5***** treatment?
Is this a business seller news mistake?
I completely agree with Gary on this.
Communication is an issue if you are marked down when you are in constant contact with a buyer throughtout their issue. However the above applies to dispatch times not communication.
If I dispatch on time and within the specified and outlined times on a listing dispatch time should be automatic 5 stars? eBay you are mixing across DSR’s? CLARITY?
I think the reason for these criteria is to ensure that they buyer has the fullest communications possible.
If a tracking number is uploaded to eBay then we can assume that the buyer should have been made aware of this by eBay. The item will have been despatched promptly and eBay will have informed the buyer of this and of course payment via PayPal means that payment notification emails were properly triggered.
If there’s no tracking number uploaded and the item isn’t marked as despatched promptly (and I know many sellers still don’t bother to mark items as despatched at all) and if the buyer pays by say cheque, then eBay haven’t a clue if you kept the buyer informed or not.
??
“No communication took place between the buyer and seller from 14 days before the transaction up until the point that Feedback was left.”
This means that you get an automatic 5***** for communications if you *don’t* communicate?
And what has dispatch time to do with comms anyway?
This just doesn’t make sense….
Especially as, surely, part of the ‘communication’ process involves answering buyer questions about your items – which, almost by definition, occurs in the 14 days pre-sale.
What’s going on here?
I suppose it can also be questioned how many sellers mark an item as despatched when in fact it has not been. Now is the incidence of this type of practice going to increase on the back of this incentive?
I would say that if you enter a tracking number then a buyer (and ebay?) can check if an item has actually entered a postal or parcel network.
It must surely be in ebays interests and as an incentive for sellers to reward this dispatch effort with 5****?
ebay would not even have to monitor this as buyers would soon report to ebay if a seller is entering tracking numbers before items enter the postal network. At this stage ebay could then issue warnings and apply sanctions.
All things considered it does show up flaws in the DSR process as ebay, by not considering automatically granting 5**** for despatch, are acknowledging that actually sellers are being marked on delivery. And whilst ebay do sometimes come across as control freaks delivery is one area that is completely outside even their control!
In a lot of ways, DSRs shoot eBay in their own foot.
Because they have labelled the star categories like Ofsted inspectors would, to make it harder to get the higher grades, they make it look as if eBay sellers are a pretty poor bunch.
If eBay’s problem is in attracting sellers in the first place (as we were told a few days ago on this forum), then surely people who are browsing the site are already there with a view to buying something. Seeing DSRs is actually more likely to put someone off buying who has already decided they want to buy – people who have not come to the site will not see the DSRs anyway.
So all the DSRs do is to reduce the number of closed sales….
Discuss 😉
Thinking about this those selling “one off” used collectables have got little chance of getting through the 14 day hoop. It is simply impossible to think of every question a potential buyer might ask.
The only way is to plonk your email address right smack bang in the middle of every listing with BIG arrows pointing to it and in BIG highlighted words “CLICK HERE TO SEND QUESTION ABOUT THIS ITEM” which then opens up a pre-populated outlook express thereby bypassing ebays controls. Do ebay really want to encourage this?
Anyway for me adios auto 5**** as I don’t want to encourage even more questions!
The feedback process is truly flawed and the communication DSR’s aren’t usually the problem area.
Given these changes then, we ought to say that a seller uploading same info. should also benefit from 5 star dispatch ratingS!?
Must dash, just been hit by 2 negatives from a rival. Feedback stinks!
Thinking this through the only relevent criteria for the auto 5**** for communications is if you don’t communicate.
If you do then the buyer can rate you which to be honest seems reasonable. After all if you communicate with your buyer and do not act professionally then you would be rated accordingly so it is important for ebays quality standards that buyers can rate.
It seems unreasonable that you can be rated if all communications are handled by ebay so there is some logic in this.
However who is to say that ebays communications are better than you own? ebay seem to think so.
Really if you don’t communicate and all comms are auto generated then 4*** surely should be the standard award. It should only be possible to obtain 5**** if you do communicate as the buyer is benefitting from a personal touch.
evidence that the DSR system and the thinking behind it is flawed.
Moving on it is the rest of the criteria that in reality has no logic in the world of communications DSR’s.
The really worrying thing is if eBay’s software programmers work with the same flawed logic as their project developers then this goes some way to explaining some of the issues with the nuts and bolts of ebay. This does not bode well for the future.
I hope there is not a plague of politeness
All those “thanks for my item” emails will not be so welcome.
I think what eBay are showing here is that the don’t have the guts to auto 5 star two metrics in one seller release.
Only point 4 relates to communication. Communication by my definition relates to your ability to communicate with the buyer via eBay messages, your chosen platform and in the case of an issue.
Your ability to resolve and work with the buyer to make good a transaction. Due to a parcel being lost or damaged or out of stock. The first 3 points refer to the DSR – Dispatch time. As a seller your ability to sell the goods, take payment and get the item out to the buyer as quickly as posible via the advertised method, after which point it falls into the carriers hands and out of your control.
I.e. you have dispatched in 1 handling day as advertised. Any delay due to RM/a Carrier falls under your agreement with them. Therefore Item as described comes into play.
If the sellers dispatches the goods quickly after payment and confirms dispatch and provide tracking information or details of postage.
You should get auto 5 stars for your dispatch metric.
Once a rating becomes automatic, what purpose does it serve?
This idea is to help the DSR’s of the outlets who send thousands of packages out daily from a packaging production line and who don’t expect to receive or answer emails.
Did you think it was for the benefit of sellers who give a personal service?
See. It all suddenly makes sense…
Do you ever get the feeling that all this has got somewhat out of hand?!! I vote for a break-out of common-sense and a clean-sweep of simplification. I’m worn out just reading about all the complexities involved with DSRs
Well if they make the dispatch time auto 5 stars too which they should do if you hit all your targets, maybe it would be a simplier idea to just do away with DSR and just keep the good old green, grey and red dots like in the old days, whats the point of having DSR if they are all auto anyway.
TYPICAL EBAY = action first then brain into gear half a mile down the road
Buyers cannot easily contact you directly with this set up.
Manage communications with buyers >
Manage Questions and Answers Edit >
Show Q & A ? Yes
Allow potential buyers to contact you ? NO
Talk up encouragement to dumb down.