eBay Kills PowerSeller Program: 'A Sad Day Indeed'

by: AddyUp

"print a special certificate"

You would think a thank you card and a bar of chocolate would be the bare minimum after all the money they must have made for ebay,

by: iheartjacksparrow

@AddyUp - But that would cost eBay money, which they won't tolerate. Much better that you pay for paper and printer toner.

by: toolguy

I'm going to be blunt and straight forward to the facts.

MANGLED PAYMENTS suck!

Paypal is a trillion times better than eBay's MP, maybe even a zillion times.

by: Covid-20

Gosh, I'm gonna lose a weeks worth of sleep over THIS one.  A dog with a different name. laughable.  

Power seller = Top Rated Seller = ????? = Whatever!

by: Michael in BC

As a seller since 1996, this is just one more thing I'll miss.  It took a while for me to reach Powerseller, but I actually made gold level for a while, and retained silver level for years.  Like others, I tried the link to print the "certificate", filled in the few boxes, and watched the message that it was being processed...... until it timed out, and I wound up with diddly-squat.  Like most things on eBay, it's broken, and to quote Mick Jagger ........"It's all over now".

by: Silver Ice King

I was both a Top Rated Seller as well as a Power Seller for many years on Ebay and being quite truthful being a Power Seller had lost all of its luster many years ago and really was only good for having its own discussion board where topics could discussed more openly with others who had a similar view as they were larger sellers  on Ebay.  When Ebay changed the FVF discount from 20% to 10% for the Top Rated Sellers I immediately changed many of my terms including shipping time to be more in line with what made things easier for me rather than make Ebay look better.  Being a Power Seller used to have a lot of benefits to it, including the ability to purchase health insurance through an Ebay sponsored plan (I did not use it as I had my own health insurance through my job), but almost everything went away years ago other than having a separate folder where we could discuss topics from a different perspective than on the regular boards.  

To me this just seems like another Ebay ploy to try and get more of their higher volume Sellers to change their policies to qualify for Top Rated Sellers which make Ebay look better to their buyers which is all Ebay really cares about anyway. I doubt that very many of the the remaining Power Sellers will make any changes to their way of doing business so all this will do is be one more thing for their larger sellers to remember Ebay taking away from them as that Board could be useful many times.

by: CanBrit

How many nails are in a coffin? They'd better save a few for their own.  

by: Shanna

Those idiots at eBay have a new screen at the PS certificate download point:



Thank you for your interest

The PowerSeller Certificate experience is undergoing maintenance. We should be back up within 24-48 hours.


Click the clipboard below to save this link to return at a later time to create your personalized certificate.


What are the chances that eBay can fix anything in 24-48 hours?

by: Ric

Have not bought or sold on that God forsaken site since they motivated me to quit 6 years ago.  

If I needed something and eBay was the only source, I would do without before I would enrich those Wall Street azz wholes with a purchase from their hot stinking mess of a marketplace.

I proudly and thankfully quit on eBay before they could quit on me....enough said.

by: pace306

Im one of the people who sent this in as news ......

Being a "Power Seller" today means absolutely nothing - theres no better CS, theres no better handling of issues, you dont get paid any faster if you are in MP and the list goes on - you get nothing.

And as mentioned - even the stupid certificate doesnt work - its just another item in a long line of things that dont work (mostly eBay employees) on the platform.

Boy I remember "back in the day" ... me & my %20 discount, I moved alot of items, never had less then %98.9 at worst - mostly %100 and had eBay "support" when things went wrong.

I USED TO BE a bigger cheerleader then Tool is/was - until they tried to hurt me on purpose (aka the Skullcandy incident where I had to get lawyers involved to make eBay back off)(oh and they admitted I never did anything wrong).

Im I surprised that eBay is closing yet another program that "helps" sellers, NO - thats what eBay does. ANYTHING that eBay thinks helps sellers - to save eBay even 1 penny gets/will get closed.

After all - where do you get the $35million from - if not off sellers backs?!

eBay 2021 isnt eBay 1998 (when I started). Its a mere shell of a company - doing pump & dump games with Wall Street, acting like the Mafiosos they love to imitate (they admitted they pattern themselves after watching the Sopranos) ...

"Badges? We dont need no sticking BADGES" .... just stay out of our way and let us make sales - you guys know nothing about it anyway!

by: steveylang

The 10% or 20% off was the only thing that mattered to me. How many types of labels and ratings do we need? Just have one good system, a little bonus or discount to motivate sellers to ship fast and maintain a top rating seemed like a win-win-win for buyers/sellers/EBay but I guess not.

The broken certificate is the icing on this clusterf*ck cake...why i do I need to fill out a form telling EBay my name and when I first became a Powerseller anyway? I presume you sent me the email because you know who I am, and not a mass email to everyone with an EBay account???

by: cfrphoto

The Top-Rated seller program discriminates against sellers of inexpensive items not cost effective to track. The Power Seller program was based on sales volume or dollar amounts. Top-Rated seller requirements come at a cost many sellers are unwilling or unable to pay.

by: Junk in the Woods

Power Seller Program has been meaningless for years.
It added nothing to eBay's bottom line, so why should they continue it.

Now they can devote that much more time to separating sellers from their money. I'm sure they will come up with new and improved ways to fleece their real customers (sellers).

I am so sick of eBay, I've moved half my business off of there already this year, another 25% by the end of the year. Will maintain a presence there in the future as a dumping ground for all the junk I would be embarrassed to sell elsewhere.
 

by: plcombs

The Powerseller Progam has been more or less dead for years,they just decided to bury it and drop a tomb stone on it.

by: Philo

Was a powerseller for 20 years straight.  Still have my window decal and certificate when the program launched.

by: Marie

This shouldn't have any real effect on any seller one way or another.  There was only one benefit left for being a PS and that was the grace period on FB.  They have moved that benefit to those that are TRS.  So most aren't losing anything at all.

As others have said, PS hasn't meant anything for years.  And buyers had no idea who was PS and who wasn't as there were no badges that they could see.  So that status was only between the seller and Ebay.

by: Jono77

It's the only thing eBay give away free. Little stars and meaningless badges.

by: Snapped

A shingle, once an aspiration, hung with no little pride, because individual experience mattered, and business ‘loyalty’ was reciprocal to mutual benefit.

Let go. A “successful past” purposefully made moot and devalued by defection to worship paper and plastic gushers from foreign shores to sate the clamoring maw of disingenuous greed and the mass consumer. Rusted by an acid rain of oversight that erodes away value and now, identity, so all bays now become shelves in the master’s cellar.

RIP little blue ecstatic powerseller(tm) man, you’ve been unplugged for good. That big ol’ sun behind you has ‘evolved’ into a black hole of greed for every seller dollar. Besides, eBay could use the bandwidth and real estate that de-rezzing your little decapitated icon will free up.

by: HardWorkingSeller

Not really a sad day.

eBay has been letting it be known that this program was well beyond its retirement date for some years now.  It has almost no relevance (apart from being part of TRS qualification in Germany IIRC, which won't apply to most US sellers).

It irks me that people tout the fact that they're a PowerSeller while their feedback and DRSs suck.  What's the point of badging lousy sellers?

My guess is that they're clearing the decks ready for the launch of DSRs 2.0 maybe in the Fall Seller Update?  Personally, I'm open to a better system of measurement that separates those sellers who actually take care of their customers, provided that it's objective and transparent.

by: railady

I wonder if this is another ''net'' to catch sellers to force them into Managed Payments ??? I refused to respond to this email for fear of being placed on a ''list'' that will get hit up with orders to join or else.

I am not a Power Seller - my listings do not have that special badge. I have bounced back and forth between being one and not.  On occasion in the past I have been ''elevated'' to that title.  I'm confused because while there is no badge on my individual listings, when I look up my account, there has been ''Power Seller'' designation on occasion.

I stopped responding to any kind of request from eBay that doesn't directly involve my listings or account. They won't pay any attention to me individually and the likelihood of them using what they get from me for something that I actually may not want, is overwhelming.

So I am keeping my head down and trying to avoid notice as long as I can.