eBay moot Top Rated Seller qualification review
by Chris Dawson
I’ve been contacted by several (including some very large) sellers who haven’t made the cut for Top Rated Seller and have seen their sales plummet. Some sellers have missed out literally by a few tenths on just one DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) but because the qualification periods can be up to a year it’ll be many months until old ratings drop outside the 12 month window enabling them to achieve Top Rated Seller status. Higher volume sellers will only have to wait for a maximum of three months before increased service levels are reflected in their DSRs.
On an update announcement this week eBay stated that they are considering throwing these sellers a lifeline. They’ve said “Since the launch of the new Top-rated Seller status we have been listening to your feedback. Some sellers have improved their service levels dramatically since the announcements and yet are unable to qualify due to the 12 month look-back period. We are looking into this to understand how many sellers are impacted and to review the qualification time periods.”
As soon as we hear more news we’ll post updates, but in the mean time best advice has to be to target your lowest DSRs and put strategies into place to continue improving them.
Normally the hardest DSRs to raise are the two postage related ratings and with current industrial action by Royal Mail upping service levels is currently an even bigger challenge than normal. For those that can though there may be a lifeline to Top Rated Seller in the near future.
24 Responses on "eBay moot Top Rated Seller qualification review"
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in other words they are pissing off too many good sellers ,and they are worried they bugger off to Amazon
Moving the goalposts already?
We missed out by 0.06% on one of our ids, and eBay sales are down slightly. However, we have seen a rise in sales on Amazon and our website, which so far outway the drop in eBay sales. If buyers can’t find what they want on eBay, they’ll buy somewhere else.
‘If buyers can’t find what they want on eBay, they’ll buy somewhere else.’
Spot on. It’s called Google, most humans no how to use it.
It speaks volumes when revisions are being mooted within a week of launch, but when the system allows one package with multiple items in it to penalise a low volume seller for 12 months, then there is an obvious flaw in the system.
eBay executives may get excited about management by chaos, but eBay buyers and sellers don’t seem to be quite so keen. I’m pretty sure that the stockmarket analysts will see this latest half-baked scheme as negative, too.
As a niche seller, eBay might feel that I’m just the type of seller that TRS is designed for. But I don’t feel that way, given the arbitray nature of the system. I’m happy to let my presentation, content and service speak for itself – I don’t need a rosette. The ‘all or nothing’ implementation of TRS is an unecessary and immediate risk to future sales.
While we’ll communicate proactively with our customers, I still imagine that the imminent national postage strikes will see off our TRS status pretty quickly – we’ll be just as good a seller as before, yet we may lose sales.
I suppose I should thank eBay for convincing me to focus a bigger percentage of our efforts on our own website. Not sure that’s the sort of ‘chaos’ they had in mind, though
we know of quite a few sellers that make quite a large chunk of dosh, simply by adding £1 to the cost of postage
ok they may not get the TRS status
but so many of the honest[barmy] hard working
sellers who charge actual postage or less are also not TRS
so if ebay are you not going to make you TRS, why bother being kosher, jump in the swill with the rest of the pigs
We will likely miss the next review also.
Our DSRs for dispatch are rising & there is nothing we can do about it whilst the POST strikes are on.
We received an email this morning, telling us a buyer had just received
their packet which was posted 1st class on the 25th September.
THATS 12 DAYS in transit.
Thanks Royal Mail for your crap service & our rotten DSR score for dispatch.
By the way the item was ordered on the 24th September.
How on earth can Postage and packaging charges be relevant if all your items are Free Post?
Our Dispatch time is the same or next working day and we communicate this fact to our buyers. The DSR rating should therefore be a constant score. However if Royal Mail let you down and the item takes longer than expected your DSRs at risk.
Like most volume sellers we use SMP and have automated email notifications. Same service to every customer, but different DSR marks.
If an item isn’t as described a buyer can send it back, so it’s in our interest to make sure that the description is right
It is a complete nonsense. We quite simply can not improve our service; we are doing our very best. I’m not bragging, its just good business. As a media seller our best business is return business, surely this is a far better guide as to a seller’s reliability and credibility.
I have already started contracts with various companies to search engine optimise and create new ecommerce websites.
eBay is not allowing me to grow my business with constant changes. I have over 400 products that I have not listed due to the stress of getting my DSR improved.
I ask eBay how does this benefit your commissions?
In short its total bull****. They are overly obsessed with changes now. Yes the initial DSR changes were good. This new Top Rated stuff is seriously flawed.
The present system seems harsh on the low qty/high value sellers (like seller non performance) but in my opinion as soon as you start to do more than a few hundred transactions a month it should not be that difficult to maintain TRS status most of the time(famous last words).
It will be interesting to see what kind of boost the the badge gives over the next few months.
the more transactions you do ,the more chance you have of coming across the nutter, the nasty, the barmy ,the more transactions you do .mores the chance you will make a mistake. or the post office will make a mistake
so I dont get the logic of its better and easier for high transaction sellers
to maintain TS status
It works on percentages
.
I’m quite happy that my major competitors are not TRS and are clearly losing sales. They are also those who slash the prices and make life difficult for the smaller sellers like myself. Hopefully Ebay won’t move the goalposts too much and allow them in.
Clearly TRS is going to be difficult to maintain if Royal Mail continue to offer a poor service, but i’m happy to cream the sales while i can.
We didn’t make TRS and after the initial 48 hours I thought we were done for.
Turns out we have had our best eBay week in months.
If the product is right the rest is easy..apparently.
+ you’ve got all that featured plus budget to go on adwords or to stay in the bank or ont the xmas bubbly.
I have tried to spend it Jimbo
been doing a few auctions but it’s a bit of a fecker tbh, I normally get bored after a tenner.!
in my 30 years as a retailer nothing has ever stayed the same ebay was good for us but we have moved on feedback 10000 plus we used to list 1500 lines now only 150 if we can be bothered.use your valuable energy building something else our website cost less per week and turns over more
Quite.
Steve
http://www.ethicalcompanies.co.uk
I have been using Ebay for years I am a Silver Power seller had raised search status everything perfect just have a couple of DSR’s under the top rated qualification and I have seen my sales plummet! This is so bad I am thinking about letting EBay go its sad but its just to much….. I liked the DSR’S but now its seriously flawed. Good luck to all…
It means one thing and one thing only, that the system is generating less income than they thought it would. No more than that.
The figures will have come rolling in to eBay HQ and someone has realised that it’s not going to sort out their poor financial situation, so they wull be pulling it or tweaking it so more dollar rolls in.
One of my clients has loads of glowing positive feedback with low DSR’s from competitors, around 45 which prevented him from being a top seller.
This is a shambles.
eBay did not even nod in the direction of the Royal Mail industrial action. I missed eTRS by 0.05%.
Call my crazy, but if I worked for Ebay and access to all the raw data, I think I could have put together a rather good model of how many sellers would have the TRS badge VS how many would not. I could, even do a report on the amount of fee’s that would be lost as a result of those sellers no longer being able to use the listing enhancements.
Going further, I bet I could even do a good prediction of the amount of sellers who would leave, stop selling and the amount of buyers who would be feed up at the changes to search and shop else ware.
Then again, I didn’t go to Warton or get me an MBA. So I guess I don’t qualify eh?
We missed out on TRS this month by going one over (0.1%) on dispatch time DSR, thanks Royal Mail.
I wonder why more people aren’t asking why the DSR requirements in the UK are so much higher than elsewhere?
We got 3 low DSRs for dispatch time and lost it. If were were in the EU we’d be allowed 5 and in the USA 4 low scores. This is scandalous when the monetary impact on sellers is so huge. Why don’t all countries have the same goalposts?!