eBay Premium Service delivery criteria was announced as being introduced from the 1st of July, but sellers have seen a notices on their seller dashboards that is to be applicable from Friday the 6th of July.
Listings that have eBay Premium Service enjoy maximum visibility in Best Match search results as well as a 10% final value fee discount. You can choose to offer eBay Premium Service for some or all of your listings.
eBay are introducing a number of changes designed to prevent sellers gaming the system and qualifying for eBay Premium Service when in fact they’re offering a pretty poor choice of delivery options. The changes won’t suit everyone by any means, but for sellers of average shoebox or smaller sized items there shouldn’t be much difference to the type of delivery options you offer anyway. What it will prevent is Chinese sellers offering free but very slow and fast but extortionately expensive options and yet still qualify for eBay Premium Service.
You will need to be an eBay Top-rated seller with a UK registration Address and offer 30 days returns or better to qualify for eBay Premium service. You’ll also to offer a free domestic delivery within 3 working days, a paid for delivery within 2 working days for no more than £10, and use a tracked service and add the tracking number to eBay for any products sold or £20 or more.
The eBay Premium service changes were originally due to go live on the 1st of June, but were delayed until the 1st of July. Now with the seller dashboard indicating that they will go live this Friday the 6th of July we’d expect the changes to roll out with the Friday maintenance updates.
7 Responses
Well that notice wasn’t exactly front and centre. Just found it now hidden away under the ‘Seller Level’ bit and then a small notification button to click.
I wonder if the tool that appeared last week briefly (and didn’t work) will make a reappearance any time soon?
I’ve previous posted that I couldn’t figure out if we were applicable for the new criteria as they were so complicated and the tools to help understand and amend listings were non-existent and broken. So we adopted a wait-and-see approach.
I went to check on 2nd July and all was good so assumed that was fine. I didn’t see any notice and the last headline in the announcements area of Seller Hub was the 1st July one.
Whether or not the policy is a good idea or a knee-jerk reaction to some strait-jacketed definition of how e-commerce works, I do not know. However, what is clear that this is just poor operational execution by eBay, and they must get better at this.
Worth checking as ALL our listings should have slotted straight in and none have! Ebay ticket has been opened and other sellers have apparently already called with similar issue! Listings are showing premium – Dashboard says none qualify for discount!
So is this a good idea or another stupid one?
Taking that I follow the guidelines and play ball, which I believe I do, my listings will be shown at he top.
Great…
So what about the other sellers that don’t play ball but will be listed with mine in the grouping / catalogue matching? They get seen as well…
How does that improve things?
Call me a cynic, but this knocks out using hermes as the free service which many do. So you end up paying more for a more expensive service…. Hang on, seller pays more… Buyer then has to pay more… EBAY gets more in fvf!!!
If you look at these ‘buyers tell us they want…’ New rules, they all end up generating more fees for ebay.
Strange really as ebay keep telling me buyers want everything faster and faster, yet express deliver is chosen in less than 2 -3% of our sales. People mostly opt for the cheapest or free option.
Nope…. This is just ebay trying to make more money covertly while ignoring all the glaring issues with the site.
I think eBay have seen what Amazon offer with regards to Prime and are doing what they think is necessary to keep up with them. Of course eBay are doing this to make themselves more money, but lets look at what you get as a seller…
1) 10% discount.
2) Higher in the listings (though I haven’t seen evidence of this yet).
3) It forces you to put a tracking number in, so the customer can follow it – which is great for your customers.
I do believe this is a good thing for the customer, and it does mean a few adjustments to us sellers. Ebay where really kind and changed all of my listings for me to ensure I get Premium (aren’t they good 🙂 )