Here is an idea from one of my readers, eBay seller, econsignonline2009, to make the current feedback system more fair and palatable to sellers:

econsignonline2009 sent this as an open letter to eBay

Sellers may not leave a negative or neutral for buyers, I understand that, nothing I can do about that, nothing you will do about it.

Consider this really FAIR idea: if a buyer wants to leave anything other than a positive, require that they send an email to the seller, and get a response from the seller. Fair is fair; regarding the issues bringing the need for the other than positive feedback so the seller has the CHANCE at least to respond and rectify the situation. I know that this is not hard to program, eBay has the technology!

Want to make eBay sellers happy, TRY THIS!

It is kind of like counting to ten… I feel it will better, the community and build buyer seller relationships, encouraging MORE TRAFFIC AND MORE SALES. Which of course you know will result in MORE INCOME for eBay!

Clearly, eBay is moving towards driving more and more communications through the eBay message system. I predict that soon that will be the only way sellers and buyers will be permitted to communicate. If this happens, then this idea will be not only feasible, but easily accomplished.

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Brian Burke, Director of Global Feedback Policy (don’t you love those titles at eBay) announced that eBay will roll out feedback revision on October 20th.  All of the details are not known, but eBay did reveal the basics.

If you receive a negative feedback or a low DSR you can contact the buyer and attempt to work out a solution. For example, you could tell the buyer that if they return the product you will give them a full refund in return for them agreeing to remove the negative feedback. Once you and the buyer have worked out your issues, you would send them a feedback revision request through eBay. If they agree, then the feedback is removed.

This is a far from perfect system, but it is certainly better than before. One thought that occurs to me is that unscrupulous buyers, knowing how the system works, will basically use it to hold up honest eBay sellers. They will get an item, say they don’t like it or some other spurious complaint, leave negative feedback and then hold you up for a discount if they agree to remove it.  Fortunately there types of buyers are rare –but they are out there.  I hope as part of this program, eBay will watch to see if certain buyers are leaving and revising feedback.  That would be pretty easy to spot if eBay wants to do it.

But, as I said above, this is an improvement over the current system, so we can be grateful for that.  The other part of this that I like is that eBay will also include the ability to revise not only feedback, but a poor DSR score too.

Other Bits and Bytes from the world of eBay

Sellers are still stressing out over the new electronic payment rules. Frankly I don’t have a problem with this one. We do about 150-175 sales per month and we only get the occasional check or money order. The larger issue is with those who sell very expensive goods. But in all honesty, if most of your products are under $300-$500 range, I don’t think this is a huge issue and I don’t really see sellers losing much business because of it. And it gets rid of the counterfeit certified check scam that has been prevalent on eBay. This scam has collectively cost sellers millions of dollars over the past few years.

Buyers leaving DSRs will get Free Shipping Reminders.

eBay also announced a new facility whereby if you offered free shipping and a buyer is about to leave you a DSR about the shipping cost, a message will pop up reminding them that you offered free shipping.

eBay Return Policy and handling time Policy delayed.

eBay announced that they will delay enforcing the requirement that all sellers state a return policy and a handling time policy until after the holidays.  Sellers who use automated launching software and online systems were struggling to implement the policy so eBay gave them a short reprieve.

Washington State joins other states in screwing online sellers.

This was the first quarter where online sellers in Washington State were forced to track and calculate sales tax by city and county. Prior to this, WA you filed your sales tax at the rate in the community where you did business.  Different counties in WA (and other states) have different sales tax rates.  So in the last quarter we sold 580 items, but only 16 of them were delivered to WA state residents. It took my wife Karen, over 7 hours on the computer to research, calculate and fill out the tax forms. Seven hours of work for 16 transactions and a total payment of $25.63 in sales tax sent to the state.  It will probably cost the State of WA at least that much to process the data and send the tax payment to the communities. For example, one of the payment went to Pierce county in the amount of 32-cents.  How much will it cost the government to get that 32-cents to Pierce County? There is a movement by the states to make this a national policy. Can you imagine what that would do to online sellers.

eBay Implements Fixed Shipping for Books, Music, Movies and DVDs

We are knew this was coming, but the rates don’t really make sense. For example, the rate for textbooks is $4.00 –the same as an audiobook. But the typical text book is heavy –2 to 4 lbs., whereas a an audiobook or a DVD weighs less than 8-ounces but ships for the same price.

That’s all for now,

Skip McGrath

www.skipmcgrath.com

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Neutrals will no longer be calculated into a member’s feedback score and eBay will introduce a system so buyers can change negative feedback comments left for sellers.  Here are the details:

Recalculating Feedback percentages without neutrals

Effective in late August, eBay will no longer count neutral feedback as part of the Feedback percentage. eBay will  recalculate Feedback percentages retroactively for users worldwide. In the interim, eBay announced that no one will lose their PowerSeller status as a result of neutrals being included in their Feedback percentage.

Buyer/Seller Resolution Process

By the end of October, eBay will roll out a new process to help sellers resolve issues with buyers, even if, or after, the buyer has left negative feedback. eBay’s announcement stated:

“Everybody makes mistakes – buyers and sellers alike, and buyers should have a mechanism to change feedback if they make a mistake or if the seller rectifies an issue in a timely manner. Unlike with our previous Mutual Feedback Withdrawal system, our new process will enable buyers to change their feedback of the seller, not just withdraw the rating. We’ll provide more details of this new process in the fall.”

Lorrie’s announcement also stated that eBay is working aggressively to remove feedback from buyers who are involved in unpaid item disputes.  According to the announcement, eBay has removed more than 60 percent of the negative/neutral feedback left by buyers in an unpaid item (UPI) process.

Lorrie’s announcement also hinted that more changes are coming.  Last week I opined that eBay not only needs to listen better but they need to take a further step and actually involve sellers in the process of improving the buyer experience. That post, What eBay Could Learn From Boeing Aircraft, got so may hits it shut down our server for a while. (You can scroll down and read the post below if you haven’t seen it).

A lot of emotion and drama could have been avoided had eBay actually involved sellers in a collaborative process before rolling out the new Feedback and DSR system. It’s not too late for them to do so.

So this is some good news for sellers. There are still many issues revolving around DSRs that need to be fixed and I can only hope that eBay will address these next –and quickly.

Other News and Notes:

Paypal Disputes – PayPal disputes will soon be available on member’s eBay dispute console. This helps as sellers don’t have to wait until the next time they log into PayPal to learn if a dispute has been filed. You can access your dispute console from the left hand navigation links on you’re My eBay page.

External Links – I mentioned this in my last newsletter, but a lot of people aren’t getting the message. eBay no longer allows members to link to outside websites from their About Me page, Reviews and Guides or eBay blogs. If you have any links up there you need to remove them immediately. Violations can get you suspended by eBay.

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Keynote puts a human face on new CEO, John Donohoe

The 2^nd day of eBay Live kicked off with the Keynote address. This was the first time many eBay sellers have seen the new CEO, John Donohoe. It turns out John is an OK guy. He was born and raised a few miles from the Chicago convention center. He introduced his parents and gave a talk that stressed his plain speaking Mid-Western values. He is not as charismatic as Meg –but he comes off as a solid guy and I believed him when he says he is committed to the growth and success of eBay.

Lorrie Northington, head of eBay marketplace, had the harder job. She had to deal with specifics –DSRs and Feedback. When Lorrie got to feedback she was roundly and loudly booed by a large segment of the audience. I have been to every eBay Live since 2002 and this is the first time I have heard more than the ocassional boo.

I hate to use a sexist reference, but to Lorrie’s credit –she took it like a man. When the booing stopped she looked the audience in the eye, said she understood, and then defended her position. Facts help, and Lorrie delivered one very interesting fact. eBay tracks feedback daily. Lorrie reported that since May 19^th when the feedback changed, the number of neutral and negative feedback comments left has neither increased nor decreased. Admittedly the time sample is quite small –and I would like to see the numbers after a couple of months –but I have to admit the early results are encouraging.

Two Important Announcements

Lorrie also announced a new level of DSR fee discounts. PowerSellers who maintain a 30-day 4.9 score will now receive a 20% discount on fees. Granted this will only impact a few sellers but it really does incentivize sellers to work hard to keep their DSRs high.

The other announcement is that up to now only Power Sellers were advantaged in search by having good DSRs. Going forward, if you keep your DSRs over 4.6 everyone will get enhanced search placement –thereby making it easier for newer sellers to reach power seller status.

There is also some news from PayPal but I need to check on a few details first. I will speak with the PayPal folks tomorrow and let you know the details then.

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The concept of “the level playing field” has been a long standing policy at eBay. For year, large sellers have lobbied eBay for reduced fees for those who list products in high volumes. Last week, eBay reached a deal with Buy.com. The eBayInk blog broke the story over the weekend and reported that Buy.com had launched 150,000 FP listings, in categories like Books, Music, DVD, and Computers. And, what is really interesting is that although Buy.com’s payment method on eBay is PayPal, but on Buy.com they only use PayPal’s competitor Google Checkout. It makes me wonder if part of the deal will be for Buy.com to start taking PayPal on their website.

Buy.com’s eBay username is Buy.  Their current feedback rating 56,202 at 99%positive. Their DSR scores are 4.8 on communications and shipping and 4.9 on Item as described. When I looked this morning the had 507,462 items listed on eBay in both stores and fixed price auctions.

For some time I have been forecasting huge changes at eBay as the new management takes hold. The new management team has made it pretty clear they are focused on “improving the buyer experience” and making eBay over to look more like the “retail experience” one finds on Amazon and other eCommerce sites.  This begs several questions:

• Will eBay eventually abandon the auction format altogether?
• Will eBay eventually abandon the sale of used goods including antiques and collectibles?
• Will eBay announce tiered listing fees for large sellers or continue to seek out and do private deals with large sellers?

eBay has ended eBay University and other training efforts to teach new sellers how to sell on eBay. Do they even still want new sellers or is the future going to belong to only retail chains and large sellers. eBay Live should be very interesting this year.  I really hope that eBay makes their future plans clear and stops talking in code so sellers of all sizes can plan their futures accordingly.

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The Seller dashboard is actually pretty cool. It does give you a good look at your standing in all of the categories that can affect your business.  If you want to see your dashboard, log into My eBay. Look in the left column navigation under My Account. Then click on the link that says Seller Dashboard.

If you would like to see my seller dashboard I have done a screenshot at www.skipmcgrath.com/ebay-seller-dashboard.com.

The dashboard itself will not really help you improve your standings, but it can alert you that you are about to have a problem. For example, you can elect to see your DSR ratings for the past 12 months or the past 30 days. If you just look at your rating for the last 12 months you may not know that you are in danger of falling. But if you look at the last  30 days that will alert you that you have some hits that could affect your rating soon.

eBay Reacts to feedback from eBay sellers on Feedback

eBay would not admit how many sellers lost their Power Seller status when the new feedback rules went into effect earlier this week. However, it must have been a lot, because today eBay announced that they would give Power Sellers until July 21st until actually pulling the Power Seller status to give these sellers time to improve their feedback scores above the 98% positive feedback threshold.

eBay also noted that they have not yet removed feedback left by members who were later suspended. The announcement said they are working on that and it should be accomplished by early June. So if your feedback was affected by someone who was later suspended your score will improve when this change is made.

Although most of the noise is from eBay sellers whose eBay feedback scores dropped, I did get a few emails from sellers who had a negative or two in their record that were more than one year old. These sellers saw their feedback improve.

With any new policy there are always some folks who fall into a big black hole. I got an email from one poor fellow who took a breather from selling on eBay for quite a while. Consequently his total number of feedbacks for the past 12 months was quite low although his overall score for the past several years was high. But because eBay now only looks at the past 12 months and he had a neutral about 6 months ago, his score dropped from 99.9% to 87%.  With that score it is going to be really hard to get sales and therefore improve his score when people who don’t really know any better see a feedback score of 87%.

In another story related to feedback, there was a story on the eBay message boards that an older gentleman in Seattle had a heart attack and died in front of his computer when he saw his 100% feedback score fall on Tuesday.  Since I have 100% feedback and a lot of my readers know I am in Seattle, we got a lot of email wondering if I was the seller who died.  My feedback did fall from 100% to 99.9% and some would say that I qualify as “older”–but I want to assure my readers my heart is fine and I am not the guy who died.

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Most of us don’t like the new system, but it is here and there isn’t much we can do about it.  eBay has done one thing under the new policy that can help.  They have created a page where sellers can go to report abusive buyers and non-paying bidders.

The new page is located at: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/report_problem.html. Every eBay seller should bookmark this page.

There are links on the page to take action in five different categories as well as links to the policies and tips for using them to your advantage.  the five categories are:

Unpaid Item
You didn’t receive payment for an item you sold on eBay.

Feedback Extortion
The buyer is threatening to leave negative or neutral Feedback for you unless you provide goods or services not included in your original listing.

Feedback Abuse
The buyer included your name or phone number in a Feedback comment or is bidding on your item solely to leave you negative Feedback.

Unwelcome and Malicious Buying
The buyer does not meet the terms you’ve outlined in your listing and is not permitted to bid on or buy the item.

Customs Fraud
The buyer is requesting you to provide false information on a customs declaration form.

Report Another Problem
Get help with other eBay transaction problems or safety concerns.

Each title on the page is a hyperlink that takes you to a form to report a problem. Under the new feedback policy, if you report a bidder and that bidder is suspended or removed from eBay, then eBay will remove any feedback left by them and adjust your score.

Under the old feedback system a lot of sellers used to avoid filing a non-paying bidder request because they were afraid that the NPB would give them a negative feedback. In fact this happened a lot and was a major seller complaint for years. With the new system I will not hesitate to file an NPB request.

Lastly one of the things I often see when I get hit with a non-paying bidder or bidders that are doing something strange is that they don’t have correct contact information listed in their eBay account.  When this happens I report them to eBay and they are almost immediately cancelled. If you look up a member’s contact information and there is obviously a phony address or phone number just report them to eBay as this is one of the leading tip offs to fraud.

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Did I get a negative feedback last night? NO. What happened was eBay’s new feedback policy rolled out overnight and they now count neutrals as negatives when computing your feedback percentage.

The other interesting thing that happened this morning is that literally thousands of eBay power sellers lost their power seller status this morning.  You see it takes 98% positive feedback to maintain your power seller rating.  There were tons of sellers, including over half of the top 100 sellers on eBay who are no longer power sellers.

This is interesting because as part of the new policy changes eBay made some great improvements to the eBay power seller program including greater charge back protection, more help with non-paying bidders and fee reductions for power sellers who maintain a high Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) score.

Our mid-May newsletter will be out in a couple of days and we will have more information on the changes and the likely impact on eBay sellers.

Skip McGrath

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On May 19th the eBay feedback changes announced in January will go into effect on eBay US. Some highlights are:

• Sellers can no longer leave negative or neutral feedback.
• The positive feedback rating (percentage) will only be based on the last 12 months of transactions.
• Neutral feedback will be counted as -1 for the purposes of calculating the positive feedback rating percentage.
• Repeat feedback (weekly) will be credited in your feedback score (this will be retroactive back to 1996).
• Members will have 60 days (not 90 days) to leave feedback.
• If a buyer doesn’t respond to the Unpaid Item Process, their entire feedback (not just it’s impact on your rating) will be removed.
• Buyers will have to wait to leave neutral or negative feedback for sellers “with a track record.”

On this last point, they had originally said 3 days, and have just changed the waiting time to 7 days. They also finally defined “track record” as active PowerSellers with over 12 months on eBay. This has sparked more unrest from smaller non-PowerSeller sellers who feel that they are being pushed out to make room for the huge corporations.

Another change is to the Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback program. Many sellers predicted that the “alignment of Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback to the new feedback system” as announced in January would mean the program being cancelled.

We (at least I) had hoped that at the same time they would introduce a way for buyers who accidentally left the wrong type of feedback to be able to change or delete it. This was one critical use of the MWF program. Unfortunately, when eBay announced yesterday that the Mutual Withdrawal from Feedback program was indeed being cancelled (effective May 19th), they did not implement any program or procedure to cover these “accidental” negatives and neutrals.

SquareTrade dispute resolution will no longer be allowed either. I think SquareTrade has seen this coming for a while. Their business has moved far further into the warranty business and away from online dispute resolution which is now a much smaller part of their overall product offerings. In fact, it’s barely featured on their homepage. It remains to be seen if the SquareTrade Seal program will continue.

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The new president of eBay Global Marketplace Operations, Lorrie Norrington, announced a few changes to the new feedback policies today. Most sellers (myself included) have been concerned about the inability for sellers to leave neutral or negative feedback.

eBay instigated this policy so that sellers could not threaten negative feedback to buyers. But this works both ways. The power is now with the buyers and there’s nothing stopping them from doing the exact same thing to sellers.

Thankfully eBay has listened to the numerous eBay sellers who have commented on this, and has made a change.

Feedback extortion is against eBay’s rules and should be reported to eBay (using the Contact Us link). Norrington says, "When we identify a pattern of abuse, or the evidence is clear from your report, we will remove the negative or neutral feedback — retroactively."

Another change is to the Unpaid Item Dispute, and is also in the seller’s favor. Currently, if a buyer does not respond to the Unpaid Item Dispute, neutral or negative feedback left by that buyer for the seller will be removed. That’s great, but all a buyer had to do was respond and say "yup, I’m not going to pay." and then leave you a negative and there was nothing you can do about it.

Now eBay is making it a bit more fair. According to Norrington’s annoucement, the feedback will now be removed "if the buyer does not specifically call out poor seller performance, item condition or transaction problems during the UPI process."

This is a step in the right direction, and it’s good to see some modifications to the policies that bring some balance back to the table.

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