If eBay have spotted an unusual pattern of low DSRs or negative or neutral feedback and removed them from your record they’ll be letting you know. They’ll also inform you if any resolution cases have been excluded from your seller performance record and if you have been protected by a standards grace period (normally this will mean you’ll be able to retain Top Rated Seller status even if in the past you’d have lost it giving you time to recover from one off drops in service).

To be honest I don’t know why eBay have never done this before – not the proactive monitoring and protecting accounts but letting sellers know when they’re looking out for them. Too often (and often rightly) we hear sellers complaining about sellers, it’s high time eBay started to let us know what they do do for us instead of it being a closely guarded secret.

Full details of the notification emails including when you might expect to receive them are on the eBay announcement board.

Tracking

The latest change is the requirement on eBay.com for future qualification for Top Rated Seller status. Sellers will need to ship 90% of their items with tracking and crucially to enter the tracking numbers into eBay within your stated handling time. For sellers of low value items who haven’t routinely shipped with tracking there’s a cost implication but the real burden of the change is manually entering tracking numbers into eBay. This is something that software can automate.

Emails

Bulk automated emails are now a thing of the past as eBay handle all emails on our behalf. This doesn’t help when sellers need to communicate with their buyers their only option is now templated emails sent manually one by one to buyers.

There are two main reasons why bulk emails are important – The first is emergencies in unforeseen circumstances such as inclement weather or courier strikes when a seller needs to let all their customers know that deliveries may be delayed.

Sellers of custom made items used to use bulk emails to keep buyers updated as to order status. Bulk emails make it so simple to select all orders for example which were requiring proofs to be approved or for requesting images or text for making the product. Lack of bulk emails has increased the workload and again the only solution is to turn to 3rd party solutions.

Inventory management

eBay’s duplicate listing policy now penalises sellers who mistakenly list the same fixed price product twice. Whilst there should be no reason for doing so mistakes happen and again automating the listing process with software is generally more reliable than manually listing items.

Feedback

There is no advantage to not leaving feedback as soon as possible for buyers as sellers can only leave positive feedback. However eBay’s feedback options are out of date. Currently you can automatically leave feedback on receipt of positive feedback from the buyer, or on receipt of payment. A sensible option would be to leave feedback on despatch and again this can be achieved with software.

Messages

eBay messages should really be replied to through the eBay My Messages console to ensure replies are visible to eBay customer support. Replying by email is possible, but in either case routing to multiple employees and keeping track of who is responding to which enquiries is a pain point for larger companies on eBay. Third party solutions can simplify this and ensure that emails are routed to the best person within the company to deal with them at the time the buyer’s message arrives.

As eBay increase the customer care requirements (and in my opinion they’ll focus less on feedback scores and detailed seller ratings and more on customer service metrics in the future), sellers will find it harder and more time consuming to meet the standards needed without using software solutions to ease the workload.

What other automation options would you like to see added to eBay? What causes you the greatest pain and which processes take the most of your time?

Condition is everything when making a purchase online, you can’t check the item yourself personally and far too many sellers rely on stock photos which make every item look brand new and pristine no matter how battered it might be in reality.

The use of stock images for used items is one of the things which eBay.com banned in their latest seller release. I wouldn’t object if eBay also insisted that sellers shoot their own pictures of used items in the UK – stock images give a false impression of the condition of an item as they’re always perfect.

Anything you can do to ensure your customers aren’t unpleasantly surprised at the condition. If a product is used (especially if it’s “well used”) make sure it’s specified as such and your description details any faults. At least now however, if your item is described as “Used” or “Refurbished”, buyers are being reminded of the fact when they come to leave you feedback.

The US see the same feedback tweaks as the US along with some more general selling housekeeping to tidy up the way sellers manage business and returns policies.

Fee Increases

Starting from the 1st of May the maximum final value fee for auctions will increase to $250. This will only impact fees on transactions $1,111 and above, and only applies to sellers who do not have an eBay Stores subscription.

Free Pictures

From the 2nd July all sellers get FREE pictures (add up to 12 per listing) with zoom and enlarge capabilities. There will be restrictions, pictures will have to be a minimum of 500 pixels on the shortest side and no borders or text will be allowed (bar watermarks for attribution).

For used items stock photos will not be allowed for the main image, you’ll have to take the time to shoot your own images (although this will be relaxed for Books, Movies, Music, and Video Games).

Top Rated Seller Requirements

Starting in June to achieve and keep your Top-rated seller status, tracking information or a Delivery Confirmation number must be uploaded to eBay on at least 90% of your shipments to US buyers within your stated handling time. If you don’t ship with tracking you can’t be Top Rated.

From the 1st of June only those listings from Top-rated sellers that include 1-day or same day handling and a 14-day or longer return policy with a money-back option will qualify for the greatest average boost in Best Match and 20% final value fee discount.

Also from the 1st of June the annual sales requirement for Top-rated status will be lowered from $3,000 to $1,000 to expand eligibility to more sellers who provide great service

Feedback

Similar to the UK there will be an automatic five star rating for communication. The conditions are you need to specify same-day or 1-day handling time, upload tracking information by the end of the next business day, and there is no communication between you and the buyer.

Also all Feedback and related DSRs left by a buyer for a transaction where the buyer had an unpaid item recorded, will automatically be removed, whether or not you are using Unpaid Item Assistant, as long as you required eBay Checkout, an eBay approved electronic payment method, and local pick up was not offered.

Selling housekeeping

Mirroring the UK announcement eBay.com sellers will gain the ability to manage custom settings for shipping, returns and payment information from one central location, rather than specifying the information separately on each individual listing. eBay.com sellers will gain the ability to specify a same day cut off time for shipping and sellers who accept returns will be required to have a minimum 14-day return window and offer a money-back option.

Catalogue and discontinued Motors features

Sellers of electronics will be required to match their products against catalogue entries when there is a match from the 2nd of May. From the same day Border, Highlight, Featured Plus!, and Listing Icon will no longer be available for purchase for Parts & Accessories listing and Motors Home Page Featured will no longer be available for Vehicles listings.

There will also be some category and Item Specifics updates in Clothing, Shoes & Accessories, Coins, Computers & Networking, Consumer Electronics, eBay Motors, Jewelry & Watches, Home & Garden, Tickets and Toys .

So goes the argument some buyers are better than others, some pay fast, some pay slowly, some are good communicators and others aren’t – eBay only works with both buyers and sellers so why can’t buyers be rated?

Going back just a few years most sellers will remember being able to leave buyers negative and neutral comments as well as positive comments. eBay did away with this quite simply because when a buyer received anything other than a positive feedback their buying activity on the site plummeted (or they just never made another purchase). eBay does need both buyers and sellers, but buyers are the people who are hard to find – sellers are queuing up to compete on eBay.

The Guardian discussed buyer feedback at the time buyer negatives and neutrals were retired, and dear Sue (who was never shy about telling it like it is) was quoted as saying “Who gives a flying fuck if you can neg a buyer? Does Donald Trump/Richard Branson/Jeff Bezos neg buyers? No. Have a think about why that might be“. Upsetting buyers isn’t great business and rating them with low stars would be just as bad as leaving a big red dot on their feedback.

Now we all know that some buyers are just trouble, but the vast majority aren’t. Every time I’ve heard of people sharing their blocked bidder lists I’ve gently smiled and passed on by (especially the time a PowerSeller discovered to their dismay that they were on another PowerSeller’s blocked bidder list ). The thing is I’ve had buyers who couldn’t buy from me because they’d “upset” another seller and had received unpaid item strikes or similar. Every time a buyer has approached me and politely asked if I’d allow them to bid they’ve been the perfect customer. Just because you have a bad experience with them doesn’t mean that I will.

Not only that but there are some sellers out there who quite frankly aren’t up to the job. Some sellers always think that they are right and the customer is wrong and it’s this group of sellers which made it imperative for eBay to protect buyers and stop sellers leaving them feedback.

If a buyer is genuinely trouble then buyer blocks should soon root them out – you can easily block buyers who have more than 2 unpaid item strikes in the last 6 months, who have a negative feedback score (nigh on impossible these days unless they’ve sold rather than bought) or who have too many policy breaches. Plus these days eBay themselves weed out prolific low DSR scoring buyers and do on occasion remove their scores from seller feedback.

Overall we need buyers. The UK eBay market is the most highly penetrated in the world (17 million visit eBay at least once a month – that’s about 1 in 3 of the total UK population!). There aren’t that many new buyers out there to attract to eBay so we need to do everything we can to avoid upsetting the ones we have.

Should we be able to rate buyers? Well no! Firstly because we can’t afford to upset them but more importantly because it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference anyway. I don’t check buyer feedback before they bid or click the Buy It Now button because I can’t. I don’t know who’s about to buy from me next. If I can’t vet my buyers until they’ve already purchased there’s no point retrospectively checking their feedback to confirm I’ve found an awkward customer when I’ve already discovered they’re awkward – I’ll just deal with them to the best of my ability and move on.

There are four DSRs buyers rate us on on eBay, so lets take a look and see which we can do something about and which really are in the lap of the gods:

How accurate was the item description?

I don’t think many sellers could argue that they’re not fully responsible here. However it’s worth noting more and more buyers purchase with mobile devices and see a limited view item page. I myself am guilty of buying from the top of the page and not bothering to read the full sellers description.

If you really want to ensure buyers agree with the quality of your description rely more on the title, the picture (s), the item condition and the item specifics than on the description lower down the page. Make sure any highly relevant information is at the top of the page, especially now you can have 80 characters in item titles.

How satisfied were you with the sellers communication?

Well this one is really down to eBay now. They’ve set up automated messaging on our behalf and taken away our ability to bulk email customers.

It’s a difficult one to manage with no automated messaging unless you’re using third party tools (which generally cost money!) and want to double up on messages sent by eBay. If there’s one DSR that you could argue is outside your control this is it.

How quickly did the seller despatch the item?

We all know that buyers don’t care how quickly you despatch their purchase, they’ll rank you on how quickly they receive it. I hear a lot of sellers complain about this DSR along the lines of “I posted it second class as promised and I have a 5 day handling time specified”.

To be honest buyers these days don’t care how long you need to pack an item or which postage method you use – the vast majority still expecting to receive their purchase tomorrow or the day after. I’d encourage all sellers to offer premium delivery services with an option to downgrade to cheaper slower services if the buyer wants to save money.

I know that’s contentious – faster services cost more, make you uncompetitive and less profitable. However you have to balance the service with your DSRs, search ranking and resultant sell through rates. This DSR scores a “could do something about, but possibly it’s not in my interests to”.

How reasonable were the P&P charges?

This DSR is a straight choice. Do you offer free post in which case don’t worry – you’ve got a five star DSR, or do you charge for postage, make a little more profit, have a (from observation tiny) disadvantage in search in which case you have to trust your buyers to consider your postage reasonable.

So that’s the four DSRs, P&P can be guaranteed if we wish, Description and Despatch time are under our control, Communications is pretty much out of our control without a lot of work or external software.

What do you do to keep your DSRs high?

I’ve heard of this before, eBay run many tests on feedback to trial the effects of how changes impact buyer and seller behaviour, but I’ve not seen this one live on any of my own accounts before.

So what do you think? Is it better to be rated on 1 to 5 stars, or do you prefer the “Very accurate, Accurate, Neither inaccurate nor accurate, Inaccurate, Very inaccurate” choices that I have at the moment?

Incidentally it’s probably also worth noting that if the seller offered free postage and packaging then they automatically get awarded a “Very Reasonable” for their postage DSR.

Your Lifetime Transactions

You can now view your total lifetime sales for your eBay account – both as a monetary value and the number of transactions. You’ll also see the date of your first eBay sale displayed. You can also choose to split the transactions by “Global”, “United States”, “United Kingdom”, or “Germany”. Generally for the UK or Global (if you’re registered on eBay UK then you’ll see your total sales in pounds sterling. If you select US sales then values will be in dollars or Euros for Germany.

Seller protection actions

The second feature available in the Seller Dashboard when viewed on eBay.com is actions that eBay have taken to protect your account. These include the number of feedbacks buyers left for you that eBay have removed, the number of opened buyer protection cases that eBay have removed and no longer count against your seller standing, and the number of times an unpaid item credit has been applied to your account.

We don’t know if either of these features will be rolled out to the eBay UK Seller Dashboard, but it doesn’t really matter – you can access them simply by logging in to eBay.com.

The grace period for high volume sellers is two months, and for low volume sellers (less than 400 transactions over the last three months) the grace period is four months. High volume sellers are evaluated over the last three calendar months and low volume sellers are evaluated over the last 12 months of trading.

If you can’t meet the eBay Top-rated seller requirements by the end of your grace period, you will lose your eBay Top-rated seller status and benefits. The grace period will end immediately if you lose PowerSeller status or if you’re evaluated as “Standard” or “Below Standard” during the grace period.

This is great news for Top Rated Sellers who have a one of blip in their feedback or DSRs, either due to a statistical grouping of low feedback/DSR scores or due to uncontrollable business events such as weather or loss of stock. Business certainty is something eBay are trying hard to bring to the site, and I don’t know too many sellers that won’t appreciate a little reassurance that one unpredictable event can’t ruin their eBay account.

As all sellers will well know buyers who take the time to request a return are very very welcome in comparison to buyers who simply start a charge back. Return requests aren’t counted against your Seller Standards, but if they’re not responded to promptly then the chances are that the buyers may choose a different type of resolution to initiate a return and this will impact your Seller Standards.

Regardless of opened cases it’s good practise to respond promptly to all buyer communications and it’ll certainly impact your feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings if you’re tardy in responding.

The best advice is if you see a return request and can’t access it then telephone eBay customer as they will be able to see the case details. They’ll be able to help you respond to the case and keep your buyers happy.