eBay have just announced that Seller Dashboards have been updated with a preview of the standards due to kick in on the 20th February 2016. This gives you the first chance to see how your metrics stack up against the new eBay criteria.
eBay will also be communicating directly with sellers, letting them know how their accounts are doing under the new system with data based on the 28th October.
Some sellers may see their account status change under this projection. Whilst many sellers will retain their eBay Top-rated, eBay say that their team will be working to support sellers whose accounts lose Top-rated status.
It may seem strange that eBay are reducing the number of defect causing events down to just two and that may cause a loss of status and it shouldn’t affect high volume sellers who are on a three month rolling assessment. If it does then you have almost four months to make sure you’re meeting the new standards.
What’s changing?
From 20 February 2016, the following will no longer count towards your defect rate
- Buyer Feedback.
- Detailed seller ratings (DSRs).
- Returns requests that are successfully resolved with your buyer.
- Items not received requests that are successfully resolved with your buyer.
Instead, eBay will use only the following existing criteria to determine your defect rate
- Seller-cancelled transactions.
- Cases that are closed without seller resolution.
Will you lose Top Rated Seller Status?
The sellers who are most likely to be impacted are low volume sellers who’s ratings are measured on a full year’s look back period. The reason for this is the number of allowable defects is falling so those as far back as March 2015 will still be on your account when the new criteria kick in on the 20th February.
We think it’s unfair to penalise sellers for defaults on criteria which will no longer cause a defect after the 20th of February. However the reality is if that’s you, that you either need to raise your sales volumes to become measured over a three month period or simply sit it out until old defects drop off your account after 12 months. Hopefully it will be relatively few sellers who are impacted.
eBay will update your dashboard preview every day, so we’d recommend sellers check regularly and download reports to identify any areas that may need attention.
On Time Delivery Metric
Starting today would also be a good time to make sure that you’re familiar with eBay’s new on time delivery metric and check out how you are stacking up. As this is a new metric it will be interesting to see how both sellers who have tracking automatically monitored by eBay and how sellers who ship untracked items are faring.
The good news is that late deliveries won’t be classified as defects. The bad news is that eBay may choose to limit the despatch times and shipping speeds that you promise if you are over promising and under delivering.
46 Responses
Lol.
The only two defects we get are:-
Seller-cancelled transactions.
Cases that are closed without seller resolution.
We cancel a transaction when we are asked to, such as this morning. Buyer changed mind. Cancellation request sent, still no idea how that is a defect, we’ve never cancelled a transaction in 10 years because we don’t have stock and yet we’ve had 4 defects for this in the last month.
Never had a case closed without resolution since 2002. At least we are safe on that one.
WHY ARE YOU PUTTING UP WITH IT?
Seriously, such rubbish. Do this, do that. Bullied into this and that, while the outlets/chinese rule. Vote with your feet.
A year ago I left eBay. Paid $29 to Shopify monthly (Who GOOGLE LOVES) and sales have never been better. Type my product into Google and bang there I am. In under a year! Selling 3 times more than on eBay without them breathing down my neck.
Now I AM my own boss. No playing to eBay’s tune, who prefer the Chinese sellers over me. eBay single handedly is creating a BUYER vs SELLER. Its a TOXIC environment.
Ask yourself this…. when you want to buy something…. most people go to GOOGLE. Pay Google the £2400 a month fees and get your product out there. eBay CAN and WILL drop you whenever they want. No stability. All these managed marketplaces want you to believe they are bringing you customers…. Google does this better than anyone and cheaper! Think of your future….
Iv just phoned Ebay CS to get a “not delivered on time” removed,tracking is with APC and shows dispatched next day as per listing so fits criteria to remove.CS had no idea what i was talking about and said they would review the transaction and any messages etc and see if low DSRs can be removed,,what low DSRs?
Fills you full of confidence that CS have no idea about the new policy.
This is getting a bit ridiculous now. Currently we would meet the required criteria to be Top Rated but a lot of customers have selected that the orders did not arrive in time. One thing we have noticed is a slight delay in the Royal Mail service since they started to test the new barcode system. We can understand this as they have a lot of testing to do and parcels will be handled slightly differently from now until Spring when it is launched.
This means eBay is going to penalise us for using a service which we have very little control over. This button that asks the customers if an order arrived on time is extremely unfair to sellers. We do everything possible to get orders out on time and we usually always succeed in this. However we have no control over Royal Mails standard delivery times. There are benefits to this system however asking the customer about the delivery date is nonsense. Most people won’t remember by the time they come to submit feedback and it is basically a little button to have a dig at a seller for any reason.
Please look at the comments above regarding sellers leaving eBay. You are making it extremely difficult for sellers and the company is totally dependant on us. Unlike other companies, we have to be in the warehouses working hard to dispatch goods to keep up sales for both ourselves and you. Yes it has to be a great place for a buyer but without us there is nothing to buy. Help us help you!
Another small point is the new green banner that pops up if you opt to send a message to a seller regarding a purchase. This banner is all about making returns easy. Returns are easy and it works fine. It is as if the first priority is to show the customer that they can return the goods for a refund and then eBay will return the final value fees. Why?
We do not make returns difficult and nobody ever has a problem.
Everybody on this site is a seller. Give us the support we require to make eBay stronger.
If only those 2 specific criteria are to be used, WHY are Ebay carrying on with Feedback and DSR’s at all???
There is inbuilt bias into all this.
How many satisfied Ebay buyers will simply ignore the button about on time delivery?
But you can bet that anyone not getting an item within Ebay’s dodgy delivery deadlines will scream about it.
And what about people who catch up on feedback every few weeks or so?
Now then, did I get that parcel on the 16th or was it the 17th……
And why inflict the sins of the carrier on sellers when they’ve done everything possible at their end?
But Ebay have their hands over their ears. Can’t hear you! Not listening! La-la-la-la.
These changes haven’t got rid of the unfairness, they’ve concentrated it into 2 criteria !!!
I only have one with .28% but I do object to the wording ‘not posted on time’. Yes it was posted on time.
It seems that nobody at eBay can understand the difference between despatch and delivery. Or an estimate and a guarantee.
totally unfair we use royal mail
and apparently our dispatch late is over 20 percent which is impossible because we pack until 4.30pm for a royal mail collection at 5pm!
its terrible especially for people who use untracked royal mail this issue needs to be addressed.
“And what about people who catch up on feedback every few weeks or so?”
Guilty. Once a month maybe, or when I have a bad experience, I just expect a good experience these days so don’t really think about feedback.
Has anyone’s seller central updated since 31/10/2015.
Nothing has updated since then. We need to keep on top of our current TRS but eBay haven’t updated. All the focus now seems to be on the new standard, however we still have 3 months of this current TRS standard.
Just picked up a new defect for doing the right thing. Customer opened a case INR for a £1.99 item which was sent without tracking, so we resent with tracking which means we made a loss. eBay then use the tracked details of the resent item to confirm the item was delivered late and duly marked us with the defect. It would have been much easier for us had we just ignored/refunded the customer and placed them on our BBL (oh yeah, we also got a negative to boot!). This all feels biased and unfair, how can we possibly square the circle – go figure?.
Our eBay sales keep dropping and now represent maybe as little as 25% of our sales, yet eBay generate about 85% of the problems we encounter, other venues just aren’t pre-obsessed with this defect crap and focus their efforts into generating sales. We are more than capable of sorting our customers problems and don’t require this meddling from University dimwits (…that have never had a ‘proper job’), messing with our customers/business. Selling on eBay really has become an uphill grind, roll on the day when we remove our listings completely.
Sellers should only be held responsible for the things within their control, like prompt despatch.
Ebay will only get the message if sellers reject yet another set of unfair rules and leave.
Things only get changed when there is a groundswell against them.
The abolition of slavery and votes for women only happened because it became unacceptable to do otherwise.
Ebay need to get this message from sellers loud and clear.
This board has suggested the changes are relatively fair and an improvement.
The posts here seem to disagree.
Perhaps Tamebay has become a little bit, er, tame.
One final thing. There is a feedback form to Ebay when you check your performance against the new “metric”.
This will only be up for another day or so, so it is REALLY IMPORTANT that you fill it in and tell Ebay what you think of these changes.
Don’t be rude, keep it factual, but make them LISTEN !!!
My report says:
Report summary
Transactions that weren’t posted on time: 2
Transactions removed: 0
this wording is from the reports panel.
I have proof of postage that all my items have been posted on time.
We can’t afford to offer tracked delivery, royal mail don’t have a clue exact time the parcel gets to the customer’s door or where anything is? I pay a fee to royal mail and they don’t deliver sometimes. No compensation or refund. Thats against the law? they take money but don’t deliver?
It’s also open to fraud and false results from competitors who can easily sabotage good sellers accounts.
My worst fears realised. As soon as I read the new criteria I knew being judged no whether-or-not the buyer ticks on time would cause massive problems.
I average 2 to 3 defects per month under the current system (most undeserved). I have 10 on the new standards! All for late delivery. This puts me at 3.28%, so dangerously close to the 4% allowed for top rated. I’ll now have to spend much more time arguing over defects with eBay CS!!!
6 of the 10 are tracked, 4 of these delivered on time, with 2 a day late. 1 of these a failed delivery attempt the day before and the other Northern Ireland. Of the 4 untracked, 1 left feedback on the expected delivery date, and 1 left feedback the day after delivery date with the comment “Many Thanks!!!…Quick Delivery!! AAAAA+++++!!!”.
All 10 left positive feedback with no comments suggesting they were in any way unhappy with the service received. My cut-off time is currently 1pm, but most orders received up to 4:30 are dispatched same day. I even often upgrade the order to a faster service than the one selected (and paid for).
If anyone from eBay is reading this, I can assure you I will be leaving eBay for good is I lose my top rated status due to this nonsense!
In the September chat session, at least 2 staff members stated categorically that Certificates of Posting would be accepted to appeal against a late mark on the delivery metric.
During yesterday’s chat session, staff were evasive on the subject, and 8 hours after it finished, a staff answer was added, stating that they would NOT accept Certificates of Posting as proof of posting.
It is absolutely sickening to see sellers being treated this way. No other marketplace in the world does anything like this.
Wrong move eBay. Listen to the people that keep your company going. It simply does not make sense to focus 100% on the buying experience. Yes it has to be good but if you penalise the sellers for instances totally out of their control and see more and more comments like above of people leaving eBay, surely you see the mistake you are making!
Has anybody managed to get one of these defects removed yet?
I’m thinking of clear cut cases here, like tracking shows dispatched and delivered on time, yet customer marked as late.
I know these don’t come into effect until Feb but the new standards will use the historical data that is now available in the dashboard. So now is the time we need to be getting them removed.
Again all we can do is wait and see how this works out
All I know is I’ve got my top rated back on the new dashboard whereas before I was almost below standard !
I always send tracked and signed within 1 working day so if it works I shouldn’t have anything to worry about right?!
To be honest I’m past losing sleep over eBays rating nonsense, it changes every week, just focus on running business.
I am confused!
On my seller dashboard, the other defects are based on how many transactions we have had. For the delivery on time metric it looks like the percentage is taken from the people who have left a response only and this pushes my percentage up so that I am just in the Top Rated bracket.
I thought that if customers did not leave a comment either way it would be counted as being delivered on time but it seems they just discount it all together.
This seems really unfair when all other defects are counted on total orders.
For me it’s the delivery metrics that drop us out of Top Rated. Having reviewed the list I notice a couple problems.
We use Royal Mail. ebay system clearly does not recognized delivery attempts. RM can show delivery attempt within 24 hours of order and yet we still get a late delivery mark.
When it comes to untracked items & it relies on buyer input – ebay system does not remotely crosscheck the facts, such as a buyer leaving feedback only a day later saying something like “speedy delivery” (yet for some reason still ticks late delivery).
Do I block a buyer like this – even if he/she has purchased several times in the past?
The new system as outlined at present apparently takes no account of delayed posting due to combined postage. Several of my key customers in the US for example, accumulate multiple purchases over anything up to a 30-day period. So this now shows up in my projected Late Delivery metric as a 42.8% defect! I have complained and wait to see if this situation changes or not.
Tracked 48 Royal Mail deliveries only get recorded when FINALLY delivered.
This means that if our customer is out then we will get a Negative mark for a late delivery – even if they go on to collect form their DO, get a re-delivery or the parcel is returned to us.
eBay only seem able to differentiate this if:
a) they add “attampted delivery” to “delivered” – and take the earliest of these two dates or
b) wait for sellers to appeal the defects – and correct the metric retrospecively.
One way requires their IT time – the other saves them money as sellers drop out of TRS discounts…
We love eBay – and spent a lot of time working on the last seller metric system to get it right. We are now faced with excellent metrics in the current system – but the prospect of appealing dozens of transactions a week in the February release…
We would suggest the current system is not changed (even though we preferred the one before).
Does anybody know when we will have access to 2d barcode information from royal mail?
Using this barcode we can prove we posted the item ontime.
Royal mail say Spring 2016? that could be anytime from march 20th to june 19th!!
Ebay are bringing these standards in by Feb so there is a gap where we could lose top rated seller..
I can’t afford to send my items tracked.