The Coronavirus crisis is fast moving and every business is scrambling to make emergency plans to keep running and at the same time worrying about how to look after their employees and keep them safe. eBay recognise this and eBay UK have, as an immediate response, committed to protecting eBay seller standards for at least the next 90 days.
eBay’s aim is to protects sellers against challenges with their own health and cover shipping carrier protection for the next 90 days to give reassurance that they want your business to survive. Just about everyone will have challenges whether it be self-isolating and being unable to easily ship or if you do ship and your parcels are delayed by carrier restrictions. It’s worth noting that the seller protections announced today by eBay cover you globally across all sites, so if you are a Top Rated Seller on an overseas site that status will also be protected.
A message from eBay
“eBay realises that flexibility in business operations is essential right now. We want to reassure you that you will not be penalised for being unable to carry out usual operations. We understand there may be situations where you can’t get an item out the door as fast as normal or you have to unexpectedly cancel an order. So in supporting your needs, your Seller performance standards will not be negatively impacted during this period.”
– eBay
Murray Lambell, Vice President, UK Trading, eBay
Protecting eBay seller standards – the detail
eBay say that accounts will not be downgraded on the seller performance standards evaluation due tomorrow, the 20th of March. This eBay.com Coronavirus protection will remain in place until at least the June evaluation.
What this effectively means is that your performance level will not be downgraded for at least three months. If you were a Top Rated Seller as of the February seller performance standards evaluation and today your performance has dropped to Above Standard, you will retail your Top Rated Seller status. Similarly if you are Above Standard and have now dropped to Below Standard you will retail your Above Standard rating on eBay.com.
However on the flip side if your seller standard rating has increased you will still move up from Below Standard to Above Standard or from Above Standard to Top Rated.
Up to date eBay Coronavirus support and guidance
eBay have launched a new page to collate all advice, support and guidance around the Coronavirus situation, including links to Government support and health advice from the NHS. You’ll find the most up to date eBay Coronavirus support information on this page so bookmark and check back regularly.
11 Responses
What would really make a difference is waiving the shop subscription fees for a month, so I can switch off without losing my entire database.
Behave eBay will just stop your rankings falling cos that does not cost them anything.
They are not really bothered about how you work or if you can.
They will tweek everything that has no cost to them.
1) Delay item specifics. Free to eBay
2) Protect your seller ratings. Free to eBay
3)***** Free to eBay.
4)******Free to ebay
see how many you can think up while self isolating it will keep you entertained
total bollocks, disingenuous bunch of bum holes
costs ebay nowt
Good first move – clear communication. Of course anyone with a 12 month “look back” or even a 3 month “look back” on standards will want some assurance that any of the affected months will not suddenly downgrade then when the world returns to normal.
Stopping collecting fees (carry on charging them but let the balance build up) would be a very sensible next step — it would be an easy way to put liquidity back into the pockets of those who are able to keep selling and avoid the catastrophe of failing to buy more stock and/or laying off employees and/or moving our of warehouses. Almost certainly something central govt would fund as well.
Cutting business seller fees would of course be a super way to re-energise the marketplace after the storm — I suspect that would be too bold a move for eBay to take with current corporate leadership, but it would be the right one.
Amazon has just shown the contempt with which it hold s the small sellers who depends on FBA to survive. eBay’s core strategy should always be to b the “lifeboats” to which disgruntled sellers flock. There’s a real opportunity here to seize share.
Would ebay be able to promote items for sale which are available to buy in the local area?
Whilst deliveries continue and I hope that they will, (it is great that the drivers are being recognised as key workers), I think that ebay could promote items which are available in buyers local town/city area which will help local people connect (respect the social distancing of course!) and will take some pressure of the big delivery companies as many businesses/sellers could do a local delivery themselves.
who gives a monkeys chuff about seller standards ,
our turn over has dropped off a cliff ,
we need tangible help, not a bleeding monitoring of the situation
Typical ebay. Send out a message (albeit without as much MIT management guff as normal) referring UK users to DWP options or advice sites but the best they can do is to protect seller ratings.
Our friend Jon (above) is quite right. Ebay should make the same magnanimous gestures other large or very large companies (and some smaller ones too) have done during these tricky times and take a bit of a hit for the team…..
Pigs seatbelted and ready on the runway
Is he sitting behind a shower curtain or what… eBay must keep profiteering from all those crazy prices for 20ml of hand gel so their employees can afford a proper office desk to work from home.
I would prefer ebay to work on long term plans and issues so we have more sales coming in. Today it’s 70% down to our usual trading day.
as usual ebay dress up not kicking you in the nuts, as a favour
Ebay ……. we’re not worthy of your magnanimity…….. thanks for……… NOTHING, absolutely nowt. No help, no positivity, no plan…….. just the usual dressing up things as they are doing sellers huge favours. Complete joke of a company
There’s people dying out there ebay and your spouting guff about seller standards and metrics. What a spiteful and shameful company you are.