Should eBay Absolve Sellers Penalized Under Old Standards?

by: Shop and Ship

I read the Feedback left for other Sellers; and I communicate with Sellers I buy from about their "Negatives". All I want to know is if they were having problems 6 weeks ago - like self-sticking bubble mailers with bad seams - is it under control now? We can all agree that eBay needs to - and can - create a more trustworthy feedback system than what it has now. "More objective"? What part of it is "objective" now? It's disturbing to hear eBay CS say that communications from Sellers are "subjective" and unreliable, or that photos are suspect, but the Buyer's posted comment is accepted at face value even after admitting in an eBay message that they left it for the wrong Seller? The "analytics" that sift through posted comments must be a joke when a DVD Buyer writes "this music concert video sucks". Why should a Seller get dinged with a "Defect" for "Where's My Item" when eBay label tracking shows it's been sitting in their post office box for 2 weeks? Not just on eBay, but anywhere, the mark of the Seller is not that they never have any problems or issues, but that they resolved them to the customer's satisfaction with or without help from eBay or PayPal. I still believe that the Buyer's Negative Feedback should be discounted by the percentage of transactions they have left feedback for in the past. A Buyer who never leaves feedback should not be allowed to occasionally leave snarly comments and a neutral because USPS delivered the package outside the eBay projected window.  

by: gizmo

I dont see why anyone would come back. Ok well never flog you again, we promise. I cannot trust this venue , or their screwed up so called changes. Its deadbay as a whole who cannot be trusted , not just a few. Theyre just looking for quieter ways to screw sellers over. You beat me once , shame on me , you beat me twice , death to you.

I have no love or trust for this so called venue. I believe they are , & will get whats coming to them. Run sellers , run! And never look back.

by: mcposty

There will be no absolution. For when they make things retroactive, they truly show they dont care about sellers.

by: Anonymous Annie

Of course, that would be the fair thing to do. But, for the sellers who were affected by eBay's myopic and Draconian policies... those sellers should probably ask themselves if returning to eBay is the SMART thing to do.

by: Katertot77

I was booted for too many open cases because they directed any question about returning an item into opening a case. I wouldn't go back to that dump if they paid me. I moved my business to another site which specializes in clothing and although business is a bit slower it's picking up and I'm treated much better. eBay is in trouble and they've gotten away with bullying their sellers too long. I won't miss them.

by: Ric

eBay's previous seller ratings system was intentionally designed to cull the number of sellers on the site.

Now that this mission has been accomplished, eBay is revising the way they rank the sellers who managed to survive the purges of the Donahoe error.

Make no mistake however, this is not eBay admitting that their previous system was draconian, nor does it necessarily reflect a admission that the past system was unfair.

eBay's management likely reviews this system change as a reward to those sellers who survived the past carnage. It does not however, reflect that current management that intends to allow previously dismissed sellers to return since the eBay management team is proud of how they "cleaned up" the site.

by: mcposty

A reward? You realize the new system will be worse off then before due to automatic defects for no scans?

Plus its going from being booted at 5% to 2% defects

And losing top rated is .05% instead of 2%

This new system will further rid of people and top rated statuses across the board.

This is by no means a "reward" to those who "survived" the current defect policy.

by: Ebay's Slow Death

It's like Ebay likes to pat Sellers on the head with one hand, and slap you silly with the other!

Whatever Ebay gives, they take away elsewhere.

by: moto-science

Who cares ?  Sales on Ebay get slower and slower with every month.

by: sasikat9

In all likelyhood all those so called booted sellers are on Ebay selling.  Its not hard to open an account even after being booted. So the answer is NO.

by: maxmad

now that's funny,

until you ACTUALLY have New Standards, there is no such thing as ''Old Standards''

 

by: Map

great question.

Just another sign that the new owners are going to be nicer than the current criminal oppressors.

Ebay will probably never address this question because the sale of ebay has not been announced to the share holders yet.

These types of changes we are seeing are the setting up shop for the new owners to operate 'their" ebay on day one.

by: Ming the Merciless

Ebafia operates within its own self created ethical vacuum.

What ebafia should do is not what it will do.

Reinstatement should be evaluated on a case by case basis by a human being with common sense if any of these exist at ebafia corp.

by: Santini

Jim Cockrum puts it succinctly:

"Regardless of what policies eBay puts into place, the new “rules” don’t matter if the shoppers aren’t showing up…and Amazon is KICKING EBAY’s BUTT in that department, so it’s a bit of a non-issue to me."

by: Volvo351

Clearly it would be patently unfair to keep those sellers off the board after admitting that the old defect system was a huge mistake.

But, when has the Two-Headed Monster ever worried about doing what's fair?

by: hopeforthebest

They didn't say it was a mistake - they said it was an improvement.

Now instead of defects maybe being somewhat under our control, we're going to be completely at the mercy of the USPS scan system, and Ebay's ridiculous delivery estimates.  

by: hopeforthebest

And yes, they should make the changes retroactive, but whenever have they done that?

As one of the previous comments said, traffic is non-existent.

I've moved most of my purchases to Amazon, and I'm far from the only one.  

by: Ming the Merciless

When ebafia first introduced their defect disaster, they made the defined "defects" retroactive for one year.

So the day the "defect" policy became operative, some sellers had already exceeded the permitted number of defects.

Ebafia makes policies retroactive whenever it $uits them and their agenda.

by: handmedownheaven

After selling for 12 years, maintaining 100% feedback and 5.0 on DSR, we were booted because of 2 neutrals.  One neutral said '' excellent seller, will do business with again.  Why would I ever trust them again?  They did us a favor.  We have had our own website selling the same type of items we had before.  No fees, no supervisor, no nothing.  Plus with your own website, you get SEO results.  Not ebay results.

by: IDKwhoIare

What?  Absolve people for the old system and set precedence for absolving those creamed by this new metric when they figure out they overreached with 2015 Fall Update?  I think they are trying to get rid of TRS Plus and some more small to Med Sellers, but will end up with more Seller losses than they planned on.  The whole thing has not been thought out OR they did and are well aware of how deep the knife will cut.  Who knows with this ''venue''?

I came back to selling on eBay in March and have made 25-50 sales a month.  3% defect rating for me is 0.75 to ONE package not scanned Accepted/Picked Up or lost or not delivered in the estimated time per a month. When the new defect system comes online they will be using retroactive data collected for 12 months (3 months for those currently judged by that time frame).  We have only known that we need to adjust what we do since this month.  Six months of history without knowing what counts?  

The day in February that this metric comes online they will kick me off. Not because I don't do a fine TRS job and have all the 5s, 100% pos, blah,blah - but because I did not fight my local PO & insist they scan in my packages from Mar thru August, because they lost 3 so far and because eBay's estimated delivery is NOT based on your handling time + PO delivery time.  They over-promise shipping speed at every instance.  I already had to change handling from 1-day to FOUR days so I can stay within their ship time estimates 95% of the time...that is not 97%.

Of course I really don't know if they will kick me off.  They have been very vague about the consequences of falling below the 97%.  Limit my search exposure anymore & I will be non-existent anyway.