Comments on: eBay announce DSR console

By: Suggested Reading for 11 January 2008 | How to Sell on eBay | How to Make Money on eBay

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:09:29 +0000

[...] Tamebay is reporting that eBay UK has stated that they will soon be releasing a way to monitor your Detailed Sellers Rating. The ability to quickly monitor your Detailed Sellers Rating will be essential as eBay makes them more of the process of how search results are displayed. Most likely eBay will be bringing a similar tool to eBay US in the near future. [...]

By: northumbrian

northumbrian — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:57:56 +0000

I am disadvantaged too, I am English, living in Scotland, these DSRs are so unfair
LOL LOL LOL

By: Mark Classic

Mark Classic — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:55:35 +0000

When buyers mark the postage and packaging, it might not be just the cost they are marking.

How would two separate DSR’s pan out?

Example:

Quality of Packaging:
Cost of Postage and Packaging:

The reason I mention this, is that these are in fact two seperate issues.

We like Chris are VAT registered, so we are not the cheapest by a good 17.5%.

But we provide very high quality packaging (customers stated opinion in feedback).

Customers may also get the packaging for lest than cost and the item may have come in a Bold Washing Powder Box with fresh air as filler (this happens more than you would care to think – usually from private sellers in my experience).

So if you get a bold box with fresh air and get charged Royal Mails price, it is still going to be too expensive…

Does that make sense?

Not sure if the point comes across I am trying to make…

Mark

By: Chris Dawson

Chris Dawson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:19:54 +0000

I haven’t got a chance of being top for the P&P DSR. As I’m VAT registered and I have to (by law) charge 17.5% extra to hand over to the bottomless pit we call a government.

Of course there is no VAT to reclaim on postage so I’m disadvantaged compared to sellers that aren’t VAT registered and there’s nowt I can do about it. C’est la vie.

By: northumbrian

northumbrian — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:58:22 +0000

I dont care if I am middle top or bottom as long as my compitition sings from the same song book

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:10:00 +0000

I have been using ChannelAdvisor’s dsrwatch interface to check some sellers picked at random.
Shipping and handling stars are my own particular beef, and it’s those that I am focusing on for this observation.

Apart from a couple with Bottom for most of their scores (shooting star feedbacks too, tut tut), of all the sellers chosen scored a mix of Top and Middle, the shipping and handling ALWAYS Middle.

There was only one seller with Top for p&p and after a quick look at the charges, I could see why. Less than cost of stamp.
Yet I look at that sample of sellers and see 2 who give free shipping and handling, yet only score Middle.

It’s not right. I am sorry but judging sellers on a perception of what a buyer thinks a reasonable shipping and handling cost should be is mindblowingly bad. I have said this before and I am actually going to say it again. Most buyers have absolutely no idea of the costs in terms of time, money, and processing of orders. If I had an envelope mine at the bottom of the garden and an army of Pixies who worked for free I WOULD charge the same price that Royal Mail charges me.

Royal Mail are putting prices up in a few weeks. Which way will the average ebay seller jump? Put up p&p to cover increasing costs and lose existing foothold in search results? Take a loss on the increase and make no changes? Add the increase cost to start price or BIN price and lose a bit on extra on FVF and take a risk on it being unsold. Either way ebay win, which is what they set out to do in the first place.