After a fairly challenging year, John Donahoe, who is eBay CEO lowered the upfront listing fee and increase the back-end fee for sellers. The so-called "success-based" model, which has taken effect since 2008, is meant to increase listings, but from what we can gather, it will do little more than enrage its merchant base.
"Sellers prefer this structure, as it lowers their risk if an item doesn’t sell," Donahoe said in a keynote speech. "Put simply, we will make more of our money when sellers are successful." This he said several years ago, but now it's even WORSE!
We’re not sure who Donahoe consulted, but sellers far and wide are loudly complaining that the new fee structure will increase the costs of using the auction site — the web is aflutter with calls for a "mass exodus" of "feebay." Ina Steiner, author of the Auction Bytes blog, calculates that the new fee structure could hike rates by 33 percent for many sellers.
eBay, by contrast, projects that new structure will lower fees for 60 percent of its sellers, assuming they’re eligible for discounts offered to power sellers who meet eBay’s recently revised criteria. However, now there are the DSR ratings. A seller who has been with Ebay since the get-go are now loosing their income because of a low DSR rating system. If a buyer just wants to retaliate it's as simple as ordering Apple Pie down at Rick's cafe. All they have to do is buy a $5.00 item, and give the seller a DSR of a 1 or 2. Detailed Seller Ratings are based on a 1 to 5. Can you even imagine just 3 of 1 or 2 ratings can devastate a Seller? This is unfair, and this defies all logic and sense. Why is Ebay destroying their base? As a Business Owner for years in the Furniture Business, and a long time Employee at Nordstroms Department Store. We treat the buyer with the utmost respect. However, the Business would not be a business without their base income coming from buyers. In Ebay, it's the Sellers who are the base. The buyers pay the Sellers and the Sellers pay Ebay their fees. Which are astronomical to say the least. Ebay needs to go back to the earlier years when it was fun. Ebay is no longer fun anymore. Ebay is being run by people who are more concerned with the stock price. I would strongly advise anyone who owns stock in ebay to sell it, and sell it quick. I can't see how Ebay can make money from their seller base when they are loosing it. No one can make an income when they are actually being told by Ebay that their sales will have to be reduced by 75% because they got a bad 1 or 2 on their dsr for the month. Can you even imagine that? A seller who has taken the time to buy, photograph, and list depending on ebay for their income, and being told by the web site they use so they can sell and make a living is ousting them out of income? Why? Because someone gave a 1 or 2 ?
This is how it works. When a buyer is ready to give feedback to the seller of an item they have received after paying for it, they are also prompted to leave detailed seller ratings from 1 to 5. 5 is the best and 1 is the worst. These are the catagories
1) Item as described
2) Communication
3) Shipping time
4) Shipping Cost
If a seller sells several 100 items and gets over 1.00% of 1's or 2's, they will be penalized. Yes...that's what I said. They will be told they are to REDUCE their sales by 75%. The seller doesn't have to worry about calculating his sales and keeping his sales from going above the 75% mark. No....ebay has the technology to prevent further listings from this seller. If the seller pays for a store, and has 300 items up for sale, they can be revised, and prices can be lowered, but there is no way to list items.
Now...this is the puzzler. Starting this month October 2010 Ebay now has "Buyer Protection". If the buyer is disgruntled, he can just go to the Ebay website, and file a claim that the item is not what he ordered. Immediately all funds will be placed on hold in PayPal. The sellers hard earned money is placed on hold which mean no access. So I ask, what is the point of DSR ratings, and Buyer Protection? What about the seller? Does the seller get protection? Here are some points for sellers;
- Do not keep more than $1,000.00 in your PayPal account. PayPal has the ability to freeze and hold all your funds until a resolution can take place between the buyer and the seller. If a buyer places a claim that a Steiff Teddy Bear has a worn spot, and isn't what was described, that buyer can get the funds back. They need to ship the Teddy Bear back to the Seller. Once the seller receives the Teddy Bear the funds are automatically taken out of the PayPal account and placed into the buyers account. The seller will get back the PayPal fees.
- Do not sell items for less than $10.00. The retaliation buyers who buy items for $5.00 just to give a low dsr to other sellers to oust out their competition. Most of the BUYERS are SELLERS.
- Ebay will not tell the seller who is the one that is giving the low dsr. I am not sure if Ebay can figure this out. Yet, the seller will be punished. Keep this in mind. This is very unfair, and all sellers who experience this write about it, and contact Ebay with their complaints. Don't be afraid of the rumor that if one complains they will be ousted out of Ebay. If everyone complained then how or why would Ebay destroy themselves? That's the question we all ask.
- Ebay is putting all their money into building up their website with marketing tools etc.. This is what the sellers fees are paying for. But do sellers really want that?
- All sellers should find other sites to sell their items on, and leave ebay because of the uncertainty of whether they are going to be restricted from selling.
Now about the October 2010 changes for Sellers and Buyer Protection that will drive Ebay further under the scathway.
As if eBay sellers didn't already have it bad enough, the Illustrious Potentate and CEO of eBay, John Donahoe, infamous for his “disruptive changes” that have sent eBay stock and sales plummeting to record lows; has basically announced to the world that if an eBay seller isn't a Top Rated Seller, he or she is a dishonest dirtbag---not to be trusted and certainly not to be bought from.
Here is an excerpt from Mr. Donahoe’s recent interview in USA Today:
Question:
“What can buyers on eBay do to protect themselves against counterfeits and fraud?”
Donahoe’s reply:
“Look for a top-rated seller. Every single transaction is rated on four criteria: Was the item as described; did it ship quickly; did it ship at an appropriate price; and was the seller cooperative. For every single transaction that seller does, the buyer rates them on those four criteria. If you go on to eBay and do a search on any page, you'll see a small number of sellers have received top-rated status. That means less than 1% of their buyers have ever rated them low. More and more buyers are buying from top-rated sellers.”
Now that’s a real shot in the arm for sellers who are already suffering from low sales due to the Best Match function that doesn’t work, and other eBay glitches such as the biggie right during the Christmas shopping season where buyers were completely unable to search, see items in eBay sellers’ stores or even look at other listings by the same seller.
Talk about a disastrous fiasco that cost sellers untold amounts of money!
But hey, this is about par for the course and what we’ve all come to expect from Mr. Donahoe’s disruptive changes.
In a classic case of adding insult to injury, eBay’s CEO has virtually announced to the entire world that if a seller doesn’t have the shiny gold badge icon that designates a Top Rated Seller…..you shouldn’t risk your money buying from them because they’re untrustworthy sleazeballs who will take your money and run, or rip you off in some other way.
Now, the first problem with this is that---true to form---John Donahue doesn’t even know what the four criteria are in the Detailed Seller Ratings.
It doesn’t ask a buyer to rate how “cooperative” a seller was.
The seller is rated on communication.
Hardly the same thing, John. But again, par for the course and right in keeping with all of your other ill-informed gobbledy-gook.
Nor does eBay’s reigning monarch have his facts straight on the percentages involved in being a Top Rated Seller.
It is not “less than 1%” of buyers who have left low ratings for a seller. Instead, it is less than one-half of 1%. A whole other ballgame.
One-half of one percent.
Think about it.
If a small seller encounters more than two unreasonable buyers in a year, they are not a Top Rated Seller. Taking into consideration that a large percentage of apparently satisfied buyers don’t leave feedback at all, (in fact, historically around 60% fail to leave feedback) then a seller with approximately 700 sales in a 12 month period who has even three people leave a low rating in DSRs is probably not a Top Rated Seller.
Never mind that a seller has 100% positive feedback, no negatives or even a neutral. Never mind that a seller has DSR ratings of 4.9s and 5s on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being perfect. Never mind how many years a seller has been on eBay and how many thousands of satisfied buyers there have been.
If they are unlucky enough to run across merely three impossible-to-please buyers in a year, out of hundreds of top rated transactions; or three sellers in their same category using different buying IDs to knock out some competition by leaving low DSRs……or more than two buyers leave positive feedback but are confused about the Detailed Seller Ratings and think that a rating of 1-2 is GOOD, which does happen, then according to John Donahoe, they’re an untrustworthy dirtbag and buyers should avoid them like the plague.
How nice.
But wait, it gets worse!
A “Top Rated Seller” is referred to by eBay as TRS. If a seller is a TRS, he or she is a Top Rated Seller with a nice gold badge icon.
Now, the next level down, the one for sellers who don’t quite make the microscopic cut for Top Rated Seller, is called “Above Standard Seller.”
So, if you are a Top Rated Seller, you’re a TRS, and apparently, if you are an Above Standard Seller, you’re a………guess what…..
ASS.
Isn’t that enough to warm the cockles of an eBay seller’s heart? You might not fall into that unreasonably elite top tier to be a TRS, but if you’re an almost perfect, honest seller who gives great customer service, you can still be an ASS on eBay!
Wonderful! Once again, John Donahue throws eBay sellers under the bus.
In Los Angeles we are now experiencing the rebirth of the large Antique and Collectible Markets again, and it is so much fun. However, the cost of gas and setting up takes time
"Every seller’s going to have to go back and review their business practices and see what this means for them individually," said eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman.
It isn’t just the fee structure that has sellers out of sorts: eBay also changed its feedback system so that sellers cannot give a negative or neutral rating to buyers.
"Sellers will no longer have a way to protect themselves against bad buyers, deadbeat bidders, scam artists, buyers who make unreasonable demands, buyers who don’t read the ad then demand a refund, the list goes on and on," one merchant wrote in a forum.
The company argues that the feedback system was being abused, and that it has provided sellers with several new tools to protect themselves from deadbeat bidders.
"We’ve seen a four-fold increase in unwarranted negative feedback left for buyers in a retaliatory way. Buyers have told us consistently that one of the strongest reasons for not using the site is retaliatory feedback," says Lieberman. "If buyers have a bad transaction, that won’t drive them away. What does drive them away is retaliatory feedback."
That has all changed now. The seller can no longer give feedback to buyers whatsoever. So if a buyer is really another seller in disguise ready to oust out competition, their is really no recourse for the ousted seller. Imagine that! Does that look like the trading experience one would want to be in?
I have experienced ebay for 12 years. I have taken the bumps and spills, the waves of income come and go. Most buyers are fantastic. A few are a complete nightmare, and I have come to discover most of the buyers are sellers. I left the medical field after 15 years when our cardiology department was being told how to administer medicine by Business professionals who never went to medical school. Now, it appears that ebay powerhorses think they know how to run this empire into the ground. I have also noticed other things, such as how our government is being run, and that ridiculous unconstitutional health care reform that is now being taken to the courts. What ebay is doing to their sellers is not right. It's like the saying "biting the hand that feed them". How this has come to pass is astounding! It doesn't take a business MBA to figure out that you don't punish the base where the income is coming from. So why is ebay doing this??? This is the question. More later....
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