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.

“One tool I have been using for the past 4 month which is wicked is this Yahoo Pipe. This allows me to monitor via RSS feed my positive neutral and negative feedback on a drop down on my browser. Useful for eTRS and general monitoring of your status. I can also access this information on the go with my Blackberry RSS feed syndicator”.

The tool is a Yahoo! Pipe, which are tools to allow you to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. This tool has been set up to monitor feedback simply by entering an eBay User ID and eBay site.

What you can also do with this tool is monitor a competitors feedback via RSS. If you want to know how much feedback your competition is receiving and want to monitor multiple competitors accounts you can set them all up as RSS feeds in your RSS reader. From then on, whenever any of those competitors is left feedback, you’ll be notified of it in your RSS reader.

Normally we don’t publish anonymous stories, but in this case we’ve chosen to withhold the sellers name to ensure that the parties involved can’t be identified. This in their own words is what happened:

A fellow seller seeks to damage my TRS status

I like many professional full time sellers have experienced difficult buyers and have needed to contact eBay Customer Services to seek assistance for the removal of a Feedback comment or resolution of a problem.

On each previous occasion the problem was easily identifiable and eBay provided a mechanism for resolution. Some I won and some I didn’t.

However I recently experienced a “Smiling Assassin” – a fellow seller who deliberately sought to sabotage my Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) by leaving three positive feedbacks along with 3 low score DSR marks for communication.

This particular seller was grief from the very beginning and it was only because I anticipated some back stabbing that I managed to identify and correct it.

The seller sells media items as do I and openly stated that were buying to resell, something I have no problem with. It appears that they had received a ‘PayPal Coupon’ and wanted to use it to purchase goods for resale. I combined 4 separate orders and sent an invoice to which the buyer replied “Sorry I thought I could use my ‘PayPal Coupon’ to pay for all the items, but it seems that I can only use it for a single item. I will send you a Postal Order by Recorded Delivery for payment.”

Firstly I only accept PayPal as a payment method and why, I asked myself, would a seller who accepts payment by PayPal not use their PayPal account regardless of any coupon.

Needless to say no Postal Order arrived and repeated requests for the Recorded Delivery tracking number were ignored. Nine emails down the line (apparently I am a poor communicator!) I had had enough and filed a non payment claim in the eBay Resolution Centre.

Payment by PayPal followed immediately.

The feedback

Amongst the various emails between us this were comments from this buyer thanking me for “prompt responses and being helpful” and they left 3 positive feedback comments.

However a few days later upon checking my Dashboard I noticed a blip and my communications score had jumped up by 3 taking me close to the loss of Top Rated Seller (TRS) status.

eBay customer support

I contacted eBay Customer Services and informed the agent that I thought I had been the victim of ‘Malicious DSR scoring’ and named the person I suspected. To my surprise they confirmed the identity of this buyer!

I should point out that I was fuming angry and informed eBay Customer Services that I was quite prepared to take this buyer to the small claims court and would blog about this incident (yes I admit I used the threat of TameBay) in order to get the removal of this DSRs.

To cut a long story short after much discussion and consultation with supervisors eBay Customer Services agreed to remove the DSRs (took 36 hours to clear.)

As I previously stated I have no problem with a fellow seller purchasing and reselling my products. However when that fellow seller has TRS status and seeks to damage my TRS status with malicious DSRs and gain an advantage over me I get bloody angry.

My little example really shows the danger of anonymous DSR and the need for eBay to better police feedback and DSRs.

Once eBay removed the DSR scores I contacted the seller and told them exactly what I thought about them and they were full of apologies. Unfortunately they haven’t been suspended.

Final comment

One final comment – as a regular moaner about eBay Customer Services I have to say that on this occasion they came up trumps – “Thank you, eBay Customer Services”.

Rather than being greyed out the five stars for P&P costs are automatically filled in, but there are instructions for the buyer that if postage wasn’t free then they are welcome to adjust the score to the level that they think fit.

The rule in question is the suspended accounts policy and in particular the question “Can I or a family member open a new account while my account is suspended?” which is answered “No, you can’t register a new account or use an existing account while your account is suspended. We may also suspend new or existing accounts that were opened by anyone in the same household as, or associated with, a suspended user.”

eBay are actually very good at linking accounts and will probably already have linked your business account with your private account and those of any close family members. However the good news for sellers is that in recent times eBay are much less likely to suspend an account and more likely to apply selling restrictions to the offending eBay User ID.

The thing that is of interest to me however is the apparent uncertainty that sellers feel when trading on eBay. In order to run a business a company needs a level of certainty that they’ll be able to continue trading and currently eBay still don’t appear to be able to provide this.

For many sellers it only takes one or two buyers to leave a low DSR and your account will receive selling restrictions. In reality it takes a minimum of three buyers to scupper your DSRs, although if you already one or two low DSRs then you may be on sudden death where just one more unsatisfied buyer can kill your account.

Feedback has always been the most emotional part of eBay trading and always raises strong feelings when discussed in forums. The problem is that you may be a superb seller giving fantastic service and yet the odd buyer may disagree with every other buyer purchasing the same product receiving the same service.

Then there are the buyers who it appears are almost impossible to please. The feedback shown here is from a real buyer who is new to eBay. They seem to be exceptionally unlucky as 4 out of their first 13 transactions have resulted in them leaving non-positive feedback. In the general scheme of things these buyers are few and far between, but it’s certainly not an uncommon situation to see buyers leaving a high incidence of neutral and negative feedback which is outside the expected norms for the sellers involved in the transactions.

Sellers have to be sanguine and accept that sooner or later they will meet a buyer who simply can’t be pleased. It might happen once a week, once a month or once a year depending on the volumes you sell, but sooner or later a buyer will leave non-positive feedback or a low DSR. The lack of business certainty arises from the fact you can’t ensure the few poor feedbacks you receive aren’t evenly spread out over the course of the year.

Whilst you might be a fantastic seller if you’re unlucky enough to sell to three or more buyers in a short space of time who all leave non-positive feedback and low DSR scores your account could be in danger of selling restrictions. The law of averages says that the feedback won’t always be spread out evenly and sooner or later an unusually high number of poor feedback scores will be bunched together.

Sellers need certainty on eBay. Sellers have mortgages to pay, warehouses to run, employees to take care of and bills to pay. Sellers often have to order stock months in advance and they need to know that they will still be in business when the stock arrives and invoices become due.

Whilst eBay has come a long way in providing a more stable business environment for sellers in recent years they still need to do more work to reassure sellers. Business continuity and the certainty that you’ll be able to trade next month are what sellers need in order to invest in their eBay business.

What else eBay could do to reassure sellers that their businesses on eBay are safe I don’t know. Feedback has to remain the opinion of the buyer, otherwise it’s worthless. However a statistical blip on your feedback record shouldn’t be enough to put your business in jeopardy.

Since then DSRs have become less and less useful. Firstly sellers are still unable (officially) to identify bad buying experiences due to the anonymous nature of DSRs. Secondly the DSRs are becoming automated thus worthless.

First the Postage and Packaging DSR became available as an automatic 5 stars simply for offering free shipping. So long as the buyer doesn’t pay for carriage you get an automatic 5 stars.

Second on eBay.com under some circumstances the Dispatch Time DSR became an automatic 5 star rating. If you specify 1 day handling, upload U.S. Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx supported tracking information by the end of the next business day and tracking shows confirmed delivery 4 business days from when the payment clears then eBay.com bans the buyer from rating you and gives you an automatic 5 stars.

Now eBay have taken over communications with buyers. They’ve removed all bulk email capabilities and handle all payment, dispatch and feedback emails to your customers. It’s time for eBay to make the communication DSR an automatic 5 stars in all instances bar where the buyer sends a message to the seller. If they buyer doesn’t initiate any communications then the seller has no need to communicate and it’s hardly fair for the seller to be rated on eBay’s standard automated emails.

Finally we have the Description DSR. Arguably this can be ranked by the buyer, but eBay are rapidly moving towards a catalogue based inventory. I’m seeing ever more new products listed against eBay’s catalogue information with no (or at most minimal) seller description added. If a seller is listing against eBay catalogue data (which is now mandatory in many categories) then there’s an argument for an automatic 5 star DSR for the catalogue data as it’s out of the seller’s control.

As 50% of DSRs can already be an automatic 5 stars, and as the communication DSR most definitely deserves to be an automatic 5 stars, do they have any value left or should the be retired in the near future? When the DSRs are greyed out and automatically awarded just what’s the point of having them?

Depending upon which method you’re using to leave feedback a failure message will be displayed either simply stating “Can’t leave feedback for the selected listings” or “We are unable to add your Feedback for 1 transaction”.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon. Once the glitch is corrected you’ll need to go through your past transactions and manually leave feedback for those missed today.

Whilst it’s great that eBay are adding additional carriers to those already available on eBay giving buyers and sellers more choice on how they receive and ship there items simply adding FedEx doesn’t go far enough.

There are already options for “Other 24 hour courier”, “Other 48 hour courier” and “Other Courier 3 Days/5 Days/3-5 Days” on eBay. Adding a specified courier such as FedEx does two things: firstly it lets the buyer know exactly how their item will be delivered and secondly it enables you to enter the tracking numbers for those couriers into eBay.

Currently the tracking numbers entered into eBay aren’t automatically emailed to buyers, which is a massive failing on eBay’s part. However tracking numbers are at least displayed in a buyer’s My eBay showing them that the item has shipped.

What’s more important is defending Item Not Received claims, if you entered the tracking number within 24 hours of the shipment and importantly before the buyer opened a case for non-receipt, then eBay will consider protecting you against negative feedback and even judge a buyer claim in your favour, if the item is shown to be delivered.

This is especially important as opened and unresolved buyer protection cases are now counted against you in seller performance. You can lose Top Rated Seller status or even receive selling restrictions if too many buyer cases are opened. Any protection against seller performance strikes is invaluable and well worth the effort of entering tracking numbers into eBay.

On eBay.com they go even further, if you specify one day handling time, upload tracking information by the end of the next business day after the buyer’s payment clears, and eBay knows your package arrived within 4 business days then you’ll also get an automatic five star DSR for despatch time.

On eBay UK you can currently only enter tracking numbers for a small number of selected carriers – currently on the pull down list to add tracking numbers, there are only five carriers available in the UK. What would be better is a free text field to be enable you to add whichever courier you are using to dispatch your parcels. To make this user friendly an option could be added in eBay user preferences so that once you added the information it appeared in the pull down list for all future shipments.

Even with the five carriers currently included on eBay there are gaping holes. For instance Royal Mail Tracked is a product which has been available for a couple of years, and yet it still doesn’t appear in the list of postage options. Allowing users to add their own courier services would give sellers the ability to add Royal Mail Tracked manually.

This differs on eBay.com as you can add the carrier in a free text field which is perfect.

Why eBay have a feature which is invaluable for giving buyers reassurance that their items is posted and en route and yet not make the feature available in the UK just doesn’t make sense. Even worse failing to email buyers the tracking number for those that are currently available on eBay is ridiculous.

Adding FedEx is a small step in the right direction for providing tracking numbers on eBay. This year I’d like to see eBay UK open their marketplace up to allow tracking numbers from all carriers to be provided to buyers and lets see them start to include the tracking numbers on dispatch emails.

They say that the majority of buyers responded with a great deal of patience and understanding and that their analysis of detailed seller ratings during the affected period shows no discernible increase in the number of sellers who were rated poorly for dispatch time.

Whilst there isn’t a need to review all sellers they have said that they will intervene in a limited number of cases where eBay Top Rated sellers are at risk from losing their status, due to low ratings on dispatch time that are inconsistent with their previous selling history.

For all other sellers who feel they’ve been unduly affected by bad winter weather and have proof to support your position, you can request an account review after the evaluation of your seller performance.

It’s good news that eBay will review cases and today is a particularly timely day for the announcement as it’s the 20th that Top Rated Seller status is reviewed each month. Have you gained or lost Top Rated Seller this month and if so was it down to despatch time or was it one of the other three DSRs that have improved or been hit?

Well you might think so, but you’re probably wrong, at least you’re wrong for the $2 billion sales taking place on eBay’s mobile apps.

The detailed seller ratings you may think you’re being rated on are

• How accurate was the item description?
• How satisfied were you with the seller’s communication?
• How quickly did the seller dispatch the item? and
• How reasonable were the P&P charges?

If your buyer is leaving feedback using the eBay Mobile App what they’re actually rating you on is:

• Accurate Description?
• Seller’s Communication?
• Speed of Delivery? and
• Reasonable Postage Cost?

One of the crucial differences on the third detailed seller rating is the difference between buyer perception and what they’re actually being asked to rate. Buyers are asked how quickly the buyer dispatched their item, but what buyers generally are perceived to rate is how quickly their purchase landed on their door mat. With the eBay Mobile App they really are being asked how quickly the item was delivered and not did the buyer dispatch in the time they said they would.

There’s also another difference between the eBay Mobile App and leaving feedback on eBay. The two images shown show feedback for the same transaction. Notice if you leave feedback on eBay you’re unable to rank the buyer for the postage costs? That’s because it was free post so the seller is automatically awarded five stars.

On the eBay Mobile App you’re still able to rank the buyer on Reasonable Postage Cost, although hopefully this doesn’t actually count against the seller.

It’s interesting to deduct that which ever eBay employee constructed the feedback section of the eBay Mobile App had the same misconceptions as buyers have. One can only conclude that much as eBay insist that buyers should rank you on dispatch time even their own employees construe that to mean speed of delivery. To quote the words of a (now ex) eBay employee “I wouldn’t say it’s contradictory, just inconsistent”.

Just so you know the likelihood of your buyers using the eBay Mobile App: more Brits are shopping through the eBay app than anywhere else in Europe and an item is purchased on average every two seconds through the eBay Buyer App in the UK.

They do say that they would like customers to be aware that mail volumes in parts of the network are higher than expected as a result of continued severe weather disruption during December and large seasonal mail volumes. This means customers may experience some delays to mail being delivered in some areas.

The big concern for eBay and Amazon sellers was how any delays due to the snow coupled with the Christmas rush would affect their feedback. Pre-Christmas it was probably too early to tell, as if a parcel was delayed the likelyhood of receiving feedback and the corresponding low DSRs prior to delivery was low. Now that all items have been delivered however, it’s time for the feedback to start rolling in.

Have you noticed an unusual number of low DSRs or non-positive feedback on either eBay or Amazon and did the steps you took to keep customers informed of delays work?

Via AuctionInsights

* 5-star DSRs given automatically for free and fast shipping.
* Buyers leaving feedback now reminded of your specified item condition and delivery dates.
* Streamlined hub makes it easier to report your experience with a buyer. You have access to it at your fingertips—in the Feedback flow, Feedback Forum, from your Seller Dashboard, Contact Us and in the eBay Buyer Protection hub. New Seller Dashboard module shows the number of times Feedback and Buyer Protection cases were removed from your account as a result of your report and eBay’s detection systems.
* Added checks prevent buyers from opening Buyer Protection cases too soon.
* Escalated Buyer Protection cases found in your favor are removed from your performance record.
* Threatening to use Feedback to get refunds, goods and services not included in an item description is now specifically prohibited by eBay policy.

Over the last couple of years there have been many feedback changes designed either to protect buyers or to raise the standard of service that sellers give. It’s good to see some rebalancing to protect sellers from the odd rogue buyer.

On eBay.com they’re promising five star DSRs not only for verified free post (as is now the case on eBay UK), but also for despatch time.

If you sell on eBay.com and eBay can verifiy that free shipping was given then you’ll get an auto five star for the P&P charge DSR. In addition if you specify one day handling time, upload tracking information by the end of the next business day after the buyer’s payment clears, and eBay knows your package arrived within 4 business days then you’ll also get an auto five start DSR for despatch time.

It’s worth noting that the auto despatch time is almost certainly limited to carriers that are integrated with eBay (USPS, UPS). That means it’s unlikely to be introduced in the UK in the near future.

There’ll also be a new reporting hub where sellers can report poor experiences with buyers. The information won’t be visible to other site users eBay will be able to use it to take action which could include buyer suspension or restrictions and their feedback and Buyer Protection cases removed from your account.

There will also be some updates to protect sellers against opening resolution cases too soon. Additional checks will be in place to ensure a reasonable window of time for delivery before a buyer can open an eBay Buyer Protection case for an item not received or item not as described. When sellers upload tracking information and delivery is confirmed, buyers will not be able to open a case for item not received.

Even some opened cases will be removed from sellers performance records. Any escalated case found in the seller’s favour will not count toward seller performance requirements. For Item Not Received cases, your seller performance requirements will be protected if you uploaded tracking information to eBay before the case is filed, ideally within 24 hours of the buyer making payment.

It’s great that having increased buyer protection and seller performance standards over the last few years that eBay at last seem to be realising that sellers also need additional protection. Whilst measuring seller performance makes sense, the standards are often perceived as draconian and weeding out buyers who have unreasonable expectations is a very welcome move.

We’ve now got a screen shot showing this in action, the seller has had a low DSR removed by support because it was inconsistent with their normal level of service. According the the screen shot low DSRs are only counted if they are from 2 or more buyers, or for high volume sellers from 3 or more buyers.

If you feel that you’ve received any low DSRs which are inconsistent with your normal performance it may well be worth telephoning PowerSeller Support and asking them to review them with a view to removal. Let us know if your seller dashboard has been adjusted to remove any unusual low DSRs.

To be honest it had never occurred to me that this wasn’t possible on eBay.com, but if you want to filter someone’s feedback in the mean time when you’re viewing feedback on the US site simply edit the URL from eBay.com to eBay.co.uk and you’ll be able to filter feedback today.

eBay don’t publish any figures on rates of feedback, so it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on. Then a couple of people reported that the screen that says “are you sure? please contact your seller before leaving non-positive feedback” had disappeared from the feedback flow.

There’s been no announcement of any change, so you’d think this was just another glitch in eBay’s glitchy site, and that it’d be back shortly, and in the meantime, sellers would just have to spend their time explaining to buyers that it’d be really rather nice of you to revise your feedback, if you wouldn’t mind, thankyouverymuch, if you could just not destroy my business with your random clicking… But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

It’s not a bug. It’s deliberate.

The eBay UK Community Manager has now confirmed on a PowerSeller Board thread (you’ll need a PS sign in to read the thread, though the number of removed posts makes it close to incomprehensible) that:

The removal of the page presented to buyers attempting to leave negative or neutral Feedback is not a bug. The Feedback team have found is that this message was not effective and discouraged buyers from leaving Feedback. In fact, the majority of the buyers who encountered this page abandoned the Feedback process altogether. This page was removed from all eBay’s global sites during the month of March. By removing this page, we aim to encourage use of the Feedback system and enhance our ability to differentiate and promote sellers who consistently deliver the best experiences on eBay.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Feedback team that discouraging people from leaving non-positive feedback was exactly what this page was designed to do. Buyers who neg are unhappy buyers and won’t come back. Buyers who contact their seller and get their problem sorted possibly *will* come back. That’s what we want, isn’t it?

eBay have trained buyers for years that “negative feedback protects them”. It doesn’t. It might protect the next guy – the one who’d've bought and not got their thing if they hadn’t been publicly warned off. But the buyer leaving the neg – it hasn’t helped them.

You’d think eBay would figure this. Whatever we think of some of the detail of the new buyer protection policies, the fact that the company themselves are putting cash on the line to refund some buyers – that speaks to me of them taking a new responsibility to make all transactions have a happy ending. But this – this “go ahead and neg, we’re not going to stop you” – this does nothing to help anyone. It leaves buyers out in the wilderness, thinking they’ve done all they can to make their complaint known. And that’s a huge disservice.

eBay: you already acknowledge that hasty negs are bad, right? That’s why buyers have to wait a week to neg PSs. Please, put this page back. You can make it more helpful if you like. “It looks like you’re about to leave non-positive feedback. If there’s a problem, here are some other things you should try first: contact your seller; contact eBay; contact PayPal. Here is an outline of your legal rights under the Distance Selling Regulations and Sale of Goods Act. And if you clicked the wrong button, please just stop.” How can that do anything other than help to create happy buyers?

As the trial’s been running for so long now, eBay will be running with some version or other of this: the trial now will be more about the minutiae of the wording than the general form. The sliding scale of 1-awful to 10-outstanding feels better than the current DSR labelling, where 4 is called “good” when in fact, it’s not. Of course, 1-10 is a big change from 1-5 or negative-neutral-positive, that could well encourage buyers to abandon the usual habit of “top marks across the board” which for so long has been the norm on eBay: it’s hard not to start imagining a storm of “I did everything right so why 9 and not 10″ threads on eBay forums, but what will really matter is how eBay use the new system as part of their range of carrots and sticks for sellers, and that – obviously – we don’t yet know.

I haven’t blurred the details of this transaction out of the image because the seller was superb. Go buy their stuff.

Outlets are held up by eBay as the creme de la creme of their sellers, with a highlighted link from the top of every page on the site, special ads on the home page and pushes from other areas of the site. You’d think these big, heavily-promoted names would be offering the best service possible, but as we’ve seen again and again in recent months, many of eBay’s favourite sellers are offering a second-rate service far inferior to their smaller competition. You’ve seen them, the 97%s, the DSRs sliding towards 4.0, the literally hundreds of negatives left for people who are still trading on the site, still labelled the cream of the crop. By every convention of the 15 year history of the site, some of these Outlet sellers are TERRIBLE. What can eBay be thinking of?

My guess is this: they’re thinking “wow, our buyers are demanding”. And they’re right. eBay buyers are the most demanding people on the internet, and if you need proof of that, go read those Outlet sellers’ feedbacks again, this time imagining it’s your business. Most of them say things like “item out of stock, seller refunded me”. If you run your own website too, you know that happens: stock control isn’t an exact science, and when you’re trading across multiple channels, it can become a truly dark art. On your website, you apologise, refund, the matter is over. On eBay, you get negative feedback.

Rather than lamenting this craziness, we could try rolling with it. eBay is the only site on the internet where everything you see is guaranteed to be in stock, you could say. If we’ve got it, you can have it. Yes, eBay will hold some of the biggest names in UK retail to account, for you, and make sure you get treated the way you want. You send them an email, they mail you back. And yes, we’ve checked their terms and conditions are legal. Shop on eBay and you’re guaranteed a pleasant experience.

This would take work, though. My guess is, it would take more realism from eBay’s business development team than is currently happening. It would certainly take more guts than eBay’s management are currently showing, to say to these huge, huge names: get off our site. You’re not good enough. You’re not offering the kind of customer service that tiny little one-person companies in back bedrooms can offer, who manage to keep 100% of their buyers happy. So go away. Come back when you want to play by the rules.

eBay’s uniqueness isn’t about format or fees – it’s about feedback. It’s time to take feedback seriously again. We should stop messing about with ridiculous tenths of a star controlling fees that make no difference to the quality of the site. Bring back the power of the red dot: too many negs and you’re off. And I don’t care how big you are.

I was asked a few weeks back, what I’d do to improve eBay. This is it. I would make it the best damn place to shop on the whole internet. Because everyone would play by the same rules. Buyers would know that whomever they bought from, they’d have a magnificent experience on eBay. You could call it, oh, I don’t know, a level playing field or something…

Part 2 of this post will follow Monday-ish

Image credit: © Avesun | Dreamstime.com

Royal Mail say that they are doing all they can to maintain mail services to customers wherever it is possible for them to do so safely. They are continuing to accept, prioritise and wherever possible deliver premium services including Special Delivery, but the delivery guarantee has been suspended for items posted yesterday and today.

Royal Mail have regional recovery plans in place which include moving and delivering any mail delayed in the order it was posted. In the mean time in some areas it’s not safe for some business collections due to road conditions, but businesses are encouraged to take their mail to Post Offices or mail centers.

Although the entire country is affected to some extent, the worst affected areas are South West and South East England, Wales, Scotland, North West England, Yorkshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Wiltshire