eBay changes to how listings qualify for the Premium Service Badge haven’t rolled out as smoothly as sellers would have desired. There were a number of issues prior to the changes and new issues have arisen since the changes.
As an example (and I would like to stress we are not picking on the particular seller in question, it’s an eBay disaster and not the seller’s fault), I today browsed search results and found a listing for men’s shorts advertised as offering eBay Premium Service.
However, when I click into the listing it does not offer eBay Premium Service and it doesn’t even have a free postage option. Incidentally it also carries the eBay ‘Fast and Free’ badge which is also incorrect according to the postage options offered.
For avoidance of doubt, to qualify for eBay Premium Service sellers must:
- Offer a free domestic delivery option within 3 working days
- Offer an express delivery option within 2 working days for no more than £10
- For items over £20, all of the delivery services must be designated tracked services and valid tracking must be uploaded within the dispatch time (this includes auction-style listings and Best Offers where the final price is over £20).
The changes to eBay Premium Service were advertised in advance, but left sellers with no tools to identify listings which needed updating. There was no way to test in advance and it appears that the changes may not even have impacted live listings but kick in for new or revised listings only leading to further uncertainty and confusion for sellers.
eBay also have yet to update their help pages. Follow the link from the seller dashboard and you see this page:-
https://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/top-rated.html#listing
but that’s different to this page:-
https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/business/ebay-premium-service
Other issues which sellers are telling us is that shipping settings don’t work for them. Examples are that cut off times are global for your account, handling times are set for a specific listing and don’t take into account which carrier is to be used – you may need to book a special courier for some destinations, buyers still can’t search by delivery date and there’s no three day tracked courier option which is what is the minimum standard for free postage for the eBay Premium Service criteria – you can’t even select it.
eBay are asking sellers to jump through ever tighter hoops but they’re not giving sellers the tools to do so. Whilst sellers will often complain about eBay’s increasing standards and often point out that that buyers of their products often don’t want them, the reality is that in many product categories a proportion of buyers will demand a premium service. Offering eBay Premium service as an option for sellers is the right thing to do overall but all the time it’s broken, buyers can’t easily find listings that offer it, and sellers aren’t provided with the tools they need it really doesn’t matter what service eBay demands it simply can’t be delivered.
Lessons need to be learnt from the change to eBay Premium Service standards. eBay were great at informing their sellers that the changes were coming. However we would like to see five changes for future roll outs:
- We believe the site should work and mismatched listings as per the screen shots above should never occur.
- We believe eBay should provide tools to enable sellers to identify listings that would need amending well in advance of changes being implemented.
- We believe that eBay should provide tools for buyers to search for eBay Premium Service listings and similar service offerings.
- We believe eBay should go further and provide search tools for buyers to search by delivery date (e.g. ‘I really need this item tomorrow’).
- We believe more flexible shipping options for handling time and cut off times combined with buyer search options would help sellers deliver a truly premium service rather than just a badge.
37 Responses
Not surprisingly, it’s a bit of a mess.
Random items do not show the premium badge when they should have it.
The ebay seller dashboard advises 299 of our listings do not qualify, with a link under that to bulk edit those listings, so that they do qualify. When you click on it, it brings up just 2 listings, not 299. Of those, 1 is out of stock (so don’t care) and the other is known (custom item, so longer dispatch time), but what about the other 297?
ours is the same,says only 105 out of 107 are eligible for premium,so click on the two that arent and its just redirects to the home page,so no idea which ones they are!ive checked each listing individually and all say premium!bemused again!its getting worse all these glitches and hoops to jump through
There’s also a massive glitch today, 3/4 of our 10.000 listings are showing as not eligable for premium service yet when you click through on Seller Hub to see which listings don’t comply, nothing is available only a handful of freight or collection only items which is expected and normal.
They say they think there’s a glitch in their system, there is now 😉
Having re-checked the see and edit listings link about an hour ago, it then provided 7 listings that it said weren’t eligible.
I changed the postage options from 2nd class / 1st class to Royal Mail 48 / Royal Mail 24 and submitted them. It said they now qualified.
The page for seller level in seller dashboard still says 299 don’t qualify. Clicking on the link now does nothing. There’s something about java not being enabled, before the page resets.
Why do they mess with stuff? This always happens.
The Dashboard shows:
1 of your active listings qualify for benefits
4,205 listings don’t qualify for benefits
The listings all show the premium badge.
And they all use the same policies (shipping and payment).
I was on the phone with eBay on Sunday about it and after 30+min the customer service rep admitted he could not understand why the listings would not qualify. He was going to escalate the request to the tech team. When queried, he said I could expect a resolution within 90 days.
Since changes have gone live I have spotted numerous glitches, none of which should really be affected by this. Some our products won’t search with product branded name, my daily sales graph has not updated since Friday and more listing seem to be missing images. Sales have also dropped but this could be weather/ football related.
These days Ebay has the feeling of an old car you have spent fortunes to keep on the road
your reluctant to trade in because you have spent much time and effort With,
promising yourself the next time its going
Great…!
Yesterday, all but 12 of out listings qualified for the premium service as those 12 are collection only (Washing machines!)
It is now showing that nothing qualifies for premium service. Everything else we sell is shipped the same day if bought before 12 on a 24h service, or the day if bought after 12 on a 24h service. All tracked of course.
You click on the ‘see and edit listings’ link, an error message pops up and then it shows just the 12 listings which don’t qualify.
Once again, standard for eBay. Bloody useless.
All comment above i agree with. If i was a new ebayer i think i would just give up!
They engender unrealistic expectations in buyers and then dont give sellers the tools to fullfill them.
In the uk you almost always end up in the Philipines when you try to contact ebay. They have a different culture and although polite are not given the tools and are not up to it.
When we used to get through to the Irish reps at least they were of more help.
Ebay talk of seller standards – what about ebays standards. I give then 2 stars!
We shut down our entire eBay operation. Because of these new changes. There are issues with system those never been addressed properly. Support Representative doesn’t even know what is going on.
Final value gone to 14% for being below standard.
I would ignore this for the moment unless your account is at risk, clearly just yet another disaster release for eBay. They put it back a month because it wasn’t ready, then it was another 6 days late and then they released it regardless.
They always do this, every single time.
We’re quiet on their platform as a result, just how it is and probably no point even ringing Dublin.
So I have
190 of your active listings qualify for benefits
153 listings don’t qualify for benefits
All listings use exactly the same policies.
I have 3 business policies
1. Postage
2. Payment
3. Returns
How can they be different?
Maybe its just me being negative….
To be honest with the constant stream of glitches, scammers and ‘sorry i never thought to read the title let alone the description’, headaches… we have decided that the tiny discount they offer just isn’t worth it. We can either try and cope with scammers and glitches or we can work to provide higher service levels… we don’t have the time to do both.
So Ebay…. suddenly i’m not worth being a premium seller. Funny thing is i doubt it will hit our sales at all…. look at the level of sales people with 95% or less ratings have. Nobody cares about badges and top rated this and that…. as for the talk of buyers want faster delivery, well b.s, 95%+ of our buyers always chose the free or cheapest option. fast delivery is rare.
It’s still messed up for me. My seller dashboard says:
‘104 listings don’t qualify for benefits
On 104 of your listings, offer delivery services that support tracking on items that cost more than £20, a free delivery option that delivers within 3 days, an express delivery option that delivers within 2 days and costs no more than £10 and, a 30-day returns policy to save even more.
See and edit listings’
So, I click on ‘See and edit listings’ and it pops up saying ‘Processing 12 listings’. 12, not 104. Then it pipes up and says:
‘Review alerts
Some of your listings can’t be processed (see below).’
And gives me an empty box to look at. So I press continue and it presents me with just the 10 listings. And no, those 10 don’t qualify anyway….
Same here Dave, and some of our fees are over £4K a month…… I know we are small fry in the big world of reality online sales but the “customer service” from eBay to us is next to non existent.
Nearly a week ago, our ebay seller dashboard was advising that 299 of our 451 listings did not qualify, with a link under that to bulk edit those listings, so that they do qualify. The link did not work properly, only generating a few listings that apparently didn’t qualify.
Of those listings, by changing the P&P to settings to Free RM48, cheap RM24 upgrade (under 50p to £1) and next day courier for under £10, the result was they now did, as per the ebay confirmation message after submit had been clicked.
So, on Friday evening, as that link didn’t work, I thought I’ll just go into active listings and change everything there. Bulk edited so everything is now set to Free RM48, cheap RM24 upgrade and next day courier for under £10. There were about 50 listings that didn’t get this change, as they are heavy/courier type items and already have next day courier delivery as the free option.
Now that should mean all is well, everything is ebay premium service. And if I log in through another account, I can see the premium service badge next to all the items. Yet the seller hub has updated to advise that now only 5 qualify and 446 don’t.
I’m hoping it’s the seller hub that is wrong, seeing how it’s full of dead/bad links and other errors. But really, I’ve no clue. Can’t trust what ebay says
I’m going to stick my neck out now and make a prediction:
The next time ebay upgrade something, or bring in a new change, it’ll go wrong!
@tyler – the help page is appalling isn’t it.
I’ve just had a customer pop in and pick up his purchase. Obviously, I have no tracking details that I can add to the sales record. I guess I’ll now have to pay eBay more for the privilege?
I’ve now got only 5 showing as premium, out of 450+ in seller standards, but, they do all have the premium badge if viewed in search from the buyer perspective. I’ve been told by ebay CS that if they’ve got the badge, they’re good and to ignore the seller standards, it’s not been updated (known tech issues) but they’re working on it.
Feel a bit better about it now. Ideally you’d want it to work, but if they know and they’re telling people, I can’t see a surprise didn’t qualify charge when the invoice comes in.
Are you reading it right?
Under the growth tab ours shows ‘Qualify for eBay Premium Service’ 2. It actually means there are 2 listings that need to be edited in order to qualify.
The page is now showing:-
“A technical issue is causing ‘number of active listings eligible for premium service benefits’ to display incorrectly for sellers in UK program. We’re aware of this and are working to fix it as soon as possible. Your benefits aren’t affected. We apologize for the inconvenience.”