Are eBay Sellers Haunted by Old Incidents Now Considered Defects?

by: Ming the Merciless

Even if a buyer contacts ebay and tells ebay they made a mistake, ebay refuses to remove the defect.

If USPS errors cause uploading delays, defects are assessed and may or may not be removed.

Ebay's bogus rationale is that INITIALLY the buyer was unhappy. Of course, that means the buyer might have been unhappy with another seller, got confused about which things they bought from which seller, and accidentally opened an irrevocable case which includes revised feedback.

It's examples like these that belie ebafia lame excuse that they could remove discounts by simply removing them at any time.

Of course they won't do that because they'd prefer not to lose all sellers quickly because The Ho and The Devil can't replace them overnight with all these trendy fashion designers who will soon learn about ebafia's rent and return buyers.

It will be fun to watch the designer abandon The Runway after the holidays when their high clothing comes back ripped, stained, and reeking of cigarettes and alcohol.

Quick! Someone call Tim Gunn!

by: Ric

"...For example, the protection does not apply to Top Rated Seller status and benefits or prevent your listings from being lowered in search.
...."

As we have known from the first announcement, the defect policy has been designed to persecute eBay's Top rated Sellers. The strategy of attacking their best sellers a questionable strategy even for eBay.

Instead of continuing to clean up low rated sellers on the site, eBay is approaching the problem from the top down. They will lower the status of their best sellers, then, when visibility declines, what were once sellers eBay celebrated as Top Rated will find themselves thrown in the eBay trash heap and pointed towards the exit door John Donahoe is only too happy to hold open for them.

Sadder still is the fact that eBay's C Level management is incapable of seeing this as increasing apathy among eBay's best performing sellers or that the policy will exacerbate an already prolonged downward spiral.



" At eBay, WE are not happy until YOU are not happy..."

by: Rexford

Ric is brilliant and on target as usual and Ming is correct when she states that eBay does not want to lose all of small sellers too quickly.  (Yes, they'd love to lose us immediately but they LOVE our fees.  They have to replace those fees before they finally kick all of us to the curb for good.)

Now I'm waiting for the Lithium girl to chime in and tell us how wrong that we are and "teach" us.   :)

by: Linda

''''For example, the protection does not apply to Top Rated Seller status and benefits or prevent your listings from being lowered in search.''''

I still have a defect from 9/2/13, maybe it will roll off today, maybe it won't. I really don't care anymore.

I have 3 other ''defects'' 2 from buyers that didn't know neutrals were bad but left glowing feedback. eBay has CHOSEN not to remove those even though the buyers have asked what can they do to help.

As for sales, well they do not exist. 0 sales in 7 days/over 430 items listed and hardly any views. (I think I'm being punished)

TRS/Powerseller/14 Year ebay vet with over 50k in sales being a low volume TRS ---

by: pace306

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HALSTON-HERITAGE-Jacquard-Tulip-Dress-Dark-Pin
e-/271575516406?&_trksid=p2056016.l4276

Notice something MISSING in this listing?

Can you guess what it is?

NO FEEDBACK NUMBER listed next to the name of the FASHION SELLER.

What a LAME LYING PIECE OF TRASH EBAY IS.

eBay knows (like I showed LAST TIME) the ABYSMAL rating their "fashion sellers" - so now they have just simply removed the numbers so no one can see their ratings.

Ina - can you confirm this please?

by: pace306

UPDATE:

The feedback number IS hidden on that listing page but IS obtainable if you click "see other items"

Want to guess thier feedback rating?

Items for sale from halstonheritage
halstonheritage (0)


YES ZERO


Yet they get treated like gods and the rest of us like trash.

by: WOODJUNGLE! ON EBAY

I just did a little IR.

I had to call Ebay on this Halson thing.

I asked the CSR why no feedback?
First thing the CSR is "this is odd"

Also said this is new.  As far as the designer collection goes.  He put me on hold to check. Twice.

Obviously, trying to figure out how to spin this properly.

Came back and told me it is an 'ebay fulfillment' like global shipping.

Supposedly, ebay handles all these sales, so technically, Halston is NOT selling on Ebay.  I went off on him.  He told me he completely agreed with me, and that this was brand new and he is submitting my 'feedback.'  I have a feeling this won't last.

by: HappyOne

Yes 0 Feedback but if you check feedback left for others 26. Store started 2/14/14. So EBay is hiding their feedback.

by: Map

Since the announcement of the new Defect rate. I have been very careful wording every listing so that the used item is correctly described and going to extreme when describing a part that will only fit the right side of the car by saying "fits right passenger side (Not the Driver side)".

There are enough people out there that do not know their left from the right and more do not notice that most trim parts are mirror image from the right to the left side and will not interchange.

I have remained a TRS and continue to offer 30 day returns and Ship same day.

I also slashed prices to achieve 400 sales in a 3 month look back. I was able to accomplish that and my defect rate went to 0.00 because I have only one defect for all of 2014.

In June, ebay offered me a promotion for a free month's fees on our ebay store up to $199.99 for free.

I accepted the offer because i had long awaited to see if there was more traffic at the top store level.

Found out that there is not any more traffic given to our listings than if we were at the mid store level.

July & August were horrible. Sales fell into the toilet. Traffic reports in my store vanished from the charts.

By accident in early August I called ebay for something and lucked out talking to someone that actually tries to help sellers. Have spoken to him many times before.

This rep asked how sales were and told him there were in free fall.

He checked my keywords pages in my store and noticed that the keywords were all gone.

What happened when I accepted the free month promotion and moved to the top store level when doing so it wiped out my keywords.

So for about two months my ebay store had its keywords wiped out and my hard work to increase defect rate to be at the 400 look back with 0 defects was also destroyed.

As of the August 20th evaluation I am on the 12 month look back with 5 defects and a 0.44%.

The sales pitch that ebay has promised was that the seller improve & get more chances for your products to be seen in ebay search.

It is not true.

The only listings getting visibility are new from scratch listings.

How many suckers fell prey to the free month promotion and had their keywords wiped out two months before the August 20th evaluation dropping their sales count which pushed them below standard because they were close to the edge?

I was once very close to making the Platinum Power seller level (300K in a 12 month).

Now several hundred dollars away from making the Bronze Power Seller Level (36K in a 12 Month)

Everything about our listings has never been better and I give the very best customer service with same day shipping.

No traffic TRS Forced out at the bottom with a near perfect Defect score.

When the Managed returns is mandatory all small sellers will go extinct because the liars who want free return shipping will always claim SNAD & it will not take many to put the seller under.

Every Business seller needs to prepare to exit ebay this year or bleed dry.

by: brokentoys19

Just noticed that too. They can leave feedback. Unbelievable. How many more are like that?

At what point do people just turn their backs to something so outrageously crooked as ebay?

man oh man what a scam it is.

by: Philip Cohen

Yeah, eBay must be offering their preferred merchants the option of a “no-feedback” listing service. “halstonheritage” has been an eBay member since Feb 04, 2014, appears to have numerous “sales”, but is showing “0” feedback! After all, we can’t judge eBay’s “preferred” merchants on the same basis as everyone else, now can we …

If you look at Halston’s completed listings you will notice also that eBay has dropped the “red” colouring of unsold items (too often looks too much like a bloodbath?).

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: Philip Cohen

And if this lack of customer feedback is due supposedly to eBay’s “fulfilling” of this merchant’s sales, then who is writing the “feedback left for others”? I suppose there is a list of standard responses that eBay programmatically rotates through, regardless. One has to wonder just how devious this utterly unscrupulous corporation can be?

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: sailormoon

Guys, just because the store opened in February doesn't mean they have been selling since then. If you look at their feedback, all of them were left in the last month, which by ebay's new vague feedback standards could mean yesterday or 29 days ago. But it's more likely that they really have just opened in the past few days, they have left positive feedback for everyone who bought from them automatically but nobody has gotten a package yet so nobody has left them feedback.
The 5-6 comments that were left in the "Past 6 months" are all the same user buying similar items so I am guessing that was a test run before the store was actually open for business. Which, I'm pretty sure you are not supposed to buy things from your own account but ebay will probably let that one go.

So in conclusion, I don't think ebay is completely disallowing feedback for them, but they clearly are hiding the zero feedback next to the name. When Halston gets a lot more feedback I'm sure it will magically appear. I am also sure this "hidden zero feedback" only applies to the new designers and not all new sellers.. to build confidence in these new brands. Buyers are trained to avoid 0 feedback sellers so eBay has conveniently gotten rid of that for these brands (I'm sure there are more)

Personally, I find the push toward expensive new clothing reprehensible. And I LIKE expensive designer clothing. But do we really need yet another place selling $300 unremarkable dresses? Locally, there are probably about 50 stores I could go to to buy similar dresses, whether on sale or not. I could also go to Amazon, or Gilt, or Net-A-Porter, or Nordstrom online, are any one of the billions of other designer clothing websites that exist. Why on EARTH why I want to go to ebay to buy the same crap I see everywhere else? Is the economy really so amazing that it makes sense to push $300 dresses, $100 shirts everywhere? Ridiculous.

by: Basset

I have 2 defects from one buyer, but the buyer is not the villain:

Buyer bought two items and then wanted a delay. Per my stated policy (due to ship time requirements) I refunded her payment, held items and invoiced her to re-pay when she was ready for items to ship. She did, items shipped timely, buyer got items, I got paid, eBay got fees, I got positive FB. No cancellation involved. All good right? EXCEPT first refund on the two items called two defects : (


BTW - I never have tried to get them removed, thinking it would be wasted time. If I ever have to call eBay's customer service again I hope to have a shaker of Martini in front of me.


@Map

Thanks for telling us your experience. I got that offer too, but deleted it. About a year ago I downgraded my store, but I keep getting offers for the $199 store. I have NEVER done anywhere near that volume. Don't they even look at accounts before they send those emails?

by: Philip Cohen

Yeah, “sailormoon” is right; looking at the completed listings, they appear to have listed and made their first sale only on Aug 20! And out of 1417 current listings there appears to be 19 sales which is a 1.3% STR which is shocking given that they are probably getting all the views …

Then there is 25 feedback (=1.8% STR), and how does some of the feedback show “Past 6 months” rather than “Past 1 month”? Indeed, the feedback for the earliest sale shows that it was made on Jun 30, not Aug 20; Jun 30, and still no feedback from the customer …

So, who knows, maybe feedback from some buyers will indeed eventually appear …

Buying your own stuff. That’s one of eBay approved marketing plans, from which they take their usual FVF …

Anyway the STR is currently <2%—whoopeeeeeeee!

“But do we really need yet another [online] place selling $300 unremarkable dresses?”

What I find amazing that people buy this stuff without attempting to try it on, given that the nominal “sizing” of garments these days is so erratic.

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: Island_Sam

We are not low volume seller, those defects still counted against us. We lost TRS after 8 yrs of impeccable customer service.

by: Philip Cohen

Always remember when dealing with eBay that you are dealing with a poorly written algorithm, a "machine"; it has no feelings, and cares not one iota about your feelings ...

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: DiscosDeVinilo

MAP got it right and said it all.
Retroactively going back 12 months and giving good sellers 'defects' for situations that were then allowed is akin to giving a motorist a speeding ticket for riding their three wheeler bike too fast on the sidewalk when they were six years old.
I know why E-Bay calls them 'defects'. It's short of 'defection' which is what a lot of E-Bay sellers will do if this nonsense continues.

by: Island_Sam

Having problems printing labels and answering messages on ebay, keep getting "Email send failure" error and timeout page when printing. About 4 hrs now. ebay's glitch machine is in overdrive.

by: Anonymous Annie

brokentoys19 asks: ''At what point do people just turn their backs to something so outrageously crooked as ebay?''

January 1, 2013

Linda writes: ''I really don't care anymore.''

I know the feeling. When I reached that point, I knew it was time to leave... and feeling that way made it easy for me to leave.