Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

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AuctionBytes Blog
News and insight focusing on
ecommerce and the online auction industry
by Ina Steiner, Editor of AuctionBytes.com

August 31, 2007

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

By: Ina Steiner

Fri Aug 31 2007 12:08:54

This week, eBay revealed in its Blog the details of how it judges a seller's non-performance in enforcing its SNP policy. It's pretty interesting to compare this with the original announcement from Phillip Justus, and with the transcript from the interview with eBay T&S VP.

(Are they making this up as they go along?)

The section in the Blog post about low-volume sellers was confusing, and eBay kindly provided me with clarification regarding its low-volume sellers, but the logic has me scratching my head. Here's the update I got today:

A low-volume seller could not be restricted with 1 neg - they would need exactly 2 negs. Because of the way we've chosen to define this group, if a seller has more than 2 negs, they would not be a low-volume seller, and they would receive the 75% restriction.

So here's how I'm reading this. If I'm a seller with less than $3,000 in sales over a 90 day period and I get 2 negs, then for the next 14 days, I can't sell at all on eBay, but am automatically reinstated at the end of that period.

But if I get 3 negs, I can continue to sell on the site, though at a reduced sales volume, and after 30 days, eBay will decide if it will lift the restrictions on my account.

I had forgotten eBay had posted FAQs about SNP, so I just started reading them and found this gem:

Complete selling restrictions begin once you log on to eBay and not when an email notice is sent. So, if you received an email letting you know that you are restricted, you should log on to eBay as soon as possible to start the restriction. If you do not log on, the restriction will not begin and you may be restricted for a longer period of time than indicated in the email.

It would be nice if eBay mentioned that in the letter that goes out to sellers.

eBay's handling of this new SNP initiative is a poor example of how to communicate with customers. And the new approach to seller non performance should not have been retroactive - I can imagine sellers who would have treated feedback ratings differently if they had known eBay was changing its approach.

Comments (30) | Leave Comment | Permalink

Readers Comments

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: Another Wronged Seller

Wed Sep 5 03:20:58 2007

Donna.

Interesting. This is a similar response to the one I received about a month ago when I sent an email to Bill Cobb's office. I took the wording to be a veiled threat as well. Same advice to go through MFW.

What was interesting to me in this latest announcement from Ebay was the discrepency between what the criteria was and what actually was done to my account.

On 7-12 when the restriction was placed I had about 160 positives with a ''bad'' feedback percentage hovering around 6% ( no INR's or SNADS at all. With the latest announcement, I should have received a 14 day complete restriction that would be automatically restored after the 14 days. What I actually received was a 30 day complete restriction! Every email or phone contact I had all suggested using MFW. My problem was, I had NO auction listings up at the time, only about 115 store listings. Whan they restricted me, they also took the store listings down and also deleted my sales history from 7-12 going back to 6-7 so I didn't even know who the customers were. I also received several emails from customers complaining that my items had been removed from THEIR sales histories as well. Because the items/auction numbers were removed from my sales history it was impossible to go through MFW since the item numbers didn't even exist in ebays system anymore and when I tried MFW it kept coming up ''invalid item''

Last week I received an email ( after about 10 suggesting MFW) that finally said they could manually remove the negs/neuts if I could have the buyers who had left the negs/ neuts email this person in Bill Cobb's office. I tried to get their email addresses from the customers paypal records but 2 of them paid by check so I don't have email addresses for them and no real way to know how to contact them. I get the following message from ebay:

''The form is not available at this time.
You are attempting to communicate about an invalid item''

Ebay doesn't seem to get that there is no way for me to contact the buyers to request the MFW or to manually get the feedbacks removed by contacting this person in Bill Cobb's office.

I just love the fact that they don't even understand their own system and how it works. None of the advice I have been given by them has been accurate and is completely unworkable.

This is the definition of fiasco!

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: Renee

Wed Sep 5 04:03:21 2007

I am surprised that in all the complaints and issues being spoken about here that not one person has commented on how coincidental Meg Whitmans stock option sale occurred during this turmoil.

I agree with all of you about eBay's unprofessional handling of all this is. I also see Ms. Whitman's sale of stock options as a real measure of just how bad things are getting at the eBay camp.

I am an Education Specialist trained by eBay. Recently I took out some advertising for a few large classes I intended to have. I spent over $600.00 in radio and newspaper ads and had a total of 10 people call and only one person actually signed up. My course prices are substatially lower than those in the area and I only have three competitors who are 40 miles away.

I am also suppose to teach these classes for a number of colleges in the area, but so far no one has signed up.

My sales and feedback have dropped to zero and my prices are as low as I can make them and still make a profit. I have been selling since 1999, have 100% positive feedback and no one has ever complained about the quality of my items so the only thing that can explain all these problems is eBay themselves.

They need to undo everything they have done since the Summer of 2005 and put it back the way it was. One of my biggest grips is the double whammy if you need to do a reserve auction. If eBay wants people to start doing more auctions then change the reserve policy to match eBay motors. The listing fee should be based on the beginning auction price and we should just have to pay a .50 cent or $1.00 fee to make it a reserve.

My items are new and run between $50.00 to $500.00. I can not afford to list them other than fixed price or in my store because I just can't afford to loose money on these items. My sales are not that high to make me able to absorb such a loss.

I am already looking into alternative selling venues. If my sales pick up that way, I will be leaving eBay altogether. As for teaching my eBay classes, it is getting harder and harder to stand up in front of an audience and teach something I have doubts about myself.

Hoping for a change.

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: jsicolts

Wed Sep 5 12:05:05 2007

This idiotic email was received by us yestreday from eBay. :Dear jsicolts (jiavaro1@nycap.rr.com),

In order to maintain a safe trading environment, eBay may place selling limits on individual accounts. Your eBay account had been restricted per our Seller Non-Performance policy. We are pleased to inform you that you have successfully made the required improvements and your listings will no longer be restricted.

This restriction had been placed on your account because our records had shown that you generated greater than 5 percent buyer dissatisfaction based on negative/neutral feedback and Item Not Received complaints over the previous 90 days. eBay requires sellers to maintain minimum standards in buyer satisfaction. Our goal is to ensure that the marketplace is a safe and reputable place for our community to buy and sell.

What led to the restriction?

- Based on negative/neutral feedback and Item Not Received complaints over a 90 day period, your level of performance resulted in greater than 5 percent buyer dissatisfaction.
- Buyer dissatisfaction may be caused by:
- Item not received
- Item significantly not as described
- Item shipped late or packaged poorly
- Inadequate communication with buyer throughout the transaction
- As a result, your allowable GMV had been reduced to 75 percent of your previous 90 day completed sales.

What happens next?
Your account is no longer restricted; however eBay will continue to evaluate your account on a regular basis. Restrictions will be re-imposed if your customer dissatisfaction rate is again above 5 percent. By following the practices outlined below, we hope that you will improve your buyer satisfaction so that no further action will need to be taken. Please note that further restrictions may result in the suspension of your account(s).

What can you do to help avoid restrictions in the future?

- File Unpaid Item claims for transactions that received no payment. To do so copy the following URL into a web browser and follow the instructions provided on that page:
http://rebulk.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CreateDispute&CreateDisput
e=&guest=1
- Settle open issues with your buyers. You can access disputes in the Dispute Console from My eBay.
- To better understand buyer concerns and how to partner with your buyers in order to resolve open issues you can do the following:
- View emails sent from eBay in My Messages
- See all open disputes in the Dispute Console
- Learn more about the Item Not Received or Significantly Not as Described Process by visiting our site at the following URL:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/inr-snad-process.html
- Learn more about Mutual Feedback Withdrawal by visiting our site at the following URL:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/questions/mutual-withdrawal.ht
ml
- Describe your item?s condition clearly and accurately
- Show multiple original pictures of the item
- Package the item to ensure its safe delivery
- Clearly state shipping times to manage buyer expectations
- Proactively communicate with your buyers upon winning an auction, receipt of payment and shipment
- Reply to email and voicemail promptly and professionally

For more information about our Seller Non-Performance policy, please visit: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-non-performance.html.

If you require assistance with this matter, please contact Customer Support by replying to this message.

Thank you for your cooperation in this important matter.

Regards,
Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)

This was our response :
Topics

Message: We changed NOTHING. You should be ashamed of yourself. We send out orders with 1-2 days. The POSTAL SERVICE is the culpirit for delays and non delivery not us.
We did learn, however, there are alot better selling sites than ebay. We will tell everyone customer we have from now on what nonsense you pull on your sellers.
Sincerely,
jsicolts

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: the alert kitty

Thu Sep 6 23:14:40 2007

Ebay seems to be determined to shoot themselves in the foot. IN THEORY, all their initiatives should make things better, BUT virtually every change on the past 2 years have deteriorated my confidence in their ability to execute.
First 'bad decision' (for me) was the hiding of Bidder ID's for items over $200 AKA SMI - I need to know who is trolling (or shilling). I both buy and sell high tech, low volume items and 'know the ususal suspects' so that was ugly.

I was a 'beta-peeker' on FB 2.0 - seemed a good idea, but I kept asking myself how a seller could control the USPS' abysmal tracking system for Priority Mail - the service that Paypal & Ebay steer everyone toward. Half the time you have NO idea what's happening. I have had parcels delivered BEFORE they even show in the system.

Now this totally aribtrary 'measurement' of feedback. MY problem with this is: ''Since when is neutral a negative?''. In fact, why even HAVE neutral? BTW, I have a 100% Pos FB - but I still think this is a bad idea, and will lead to more FB blackmail.

OH and what about all the people that DON'T leave feedback? Maybe all those TRX with no FB should count as positives now?

OR How about FORCING buyers to leave FB? OH, that would drive them off, huh?

GEEEEE - do you think this stupid idea of trying to FORCE a wildy diverse bunch of sellers to conform to one standard. Obviously, NO-ONE at Ebay knows anything about statistical science, the law of large numbers, and populations.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID

Meg and Griff oughta retire cause they have lost their touch, oh and they can take that Rob Chesnut guy too.

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: Brent

Sat Sep 8 14:58:25 2007

If you want to see this policy change, stop writing on the message boards and start writing to the top investors of ebay. Here is a list of the real owners of ebay that have BILLIONS invested.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=EBAY

If 100 people will send a letter to everyone on this list, explain what is going on, give your user ids, copies of emails, etc, this thing will go away by next week. PROMISE!

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: ME!

Tue Sep 11 22:56:28 2007

Just leave eBay. You all know that in January they'll raise the prices again -don't you? The internet gets bigger every day. There's more "potential" money out there than anyone realizes. The government has looked the other way for awhile, but the time will come when eBay will DEMAND a social security number from all sellers - THIS WILL HAPPEN!! Those in politics right now are too old to worry about the internet. They're too old to worry about emails and blogs too. But where there's a tax to be had, a government official won't be far behind.
This new restriction on eBay has affected me too. I worry about retaliation feedback from my non-paying buyers, so I am now reluctant to leave negatives or even Unpaid Item Strikes against anyone. I sell toys, so many of my buyers are...shall I say, IMMATURE. They buy. Don't read. Don't pay. And don't care if they leave me a negative or I leave them a negative. All of this anger and confusion, buyers and sellers coming and going on different accounts, will only lead to one thing - A MANDATORY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!! Yes - It WILL happen...then try and hide your Paypal money from Uncle Sam.

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: kt

Mon Oct 8 21:18:04 2007

I am certainly focusing my attention to places other than eBay. The last couple years have made it not worth it anymore. Now this is just a joke. In my business, I get plenty of neutral feedback ratings which put me over 5% "buyer dissatisfaction," though my rating was 98.8% positive. Many of these neutral FB's were people who were not necessarily displeased. So now I'm suspended, refunded all negs in hopes for mutual withdrawl, paid squaretrade $30 a pop on the remainder, got it down to about 2.5%, and can't get them to reverse the restriction. They say the review every 30 days...well last one was SEPT 5th, here it is OCT 5, did everything they said, and GUESS WHAT??? still restricted. Surprise surprise. I ship every 24hr's, and lather buyers with with cash refunds...after eBay's big wet bite out of profits, I hardly see anything anyway...

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: KT

Fri Oct 12 19:46:35 2007

Donna, I have had the exact same issues. It is a joke. I thrown my hands up on this one. I square traded all my neg/neutral (neutral = neg) FB's, got the account to around 2.5% dissatisfaction. Now they won't give me a review. For the life of me, I can't figure out what they're trying to accomplish here...other than to piss off as may people as possible. Its weird...I had 2 reviews while trying to improve my FB, now that all the Squaretrade withdraws have gone through, and I am below their 5%, they wont give me a review. One email said they will restore after it is <5%, and another said they will change it when all neg/neutrals are removed from 90 days prior to the restriction. This is absolute insanity. My FB rating is 99% positive. Now every day I send a new humorous email to the worthless entity eBay refers to as ''customer support'' to see how many times I can get the same canned form response that does not answer my question. I am at around 12 right now, but it gives me a chuckle each time.

I would recommend a new account to get around this. But be sure you play the game by their rules. Good idea to send letters to the shareholders. Someone ought to create a webpage with form letters, contact info, facts & figures, web URL's evidencing injustice in the community which would encourage wronged ebayers to really send a barrage of information to all the right people. I would if I had the time, but who does, right?

But the real answer to this problem is a competitor in this highly monopolized market. Damn, if there was just ONE OTHER auction site that could take some market share in this monopolized industry! I have tried other sites and was just a huge waste of time, unfortunately. Don't you all just LOVE capitalism??? :D

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: sickBay

Mon Oct 15 18:53:29 2007

KT- You have me even more worried than I was five minutes before reading your post, if that were at all possible.

A little background, I've been a member for 4+ years, a silver PS, with 99.7% PF (1300+ feedbacks with 4 negatives only). Wednesday, I get an email about my account being restricted to 75% for 30 days. PS- I haven't been selling all summer until early October, so, basically my 90-day sales history, less 25% turns out to be about $240 a week.

A zillion phone calls later, Trust and Safety tells me to get my ''bad'' number down, and so over the weekend, I email my neutral feedback buyers (got 2 removed), and even got a negative removed (after giving FULL refund on merch that they've already used since July). Yes, well, by the way, 4 days after my notice of restriction, they decide to turn my powerseller status down to Bronze. So wonderful, gee thanks.. .now I cannot even SPEAK to Trust & Safety bc I'm not silver anymore? Unreal.

My score is down to 4.17% dissatisfaction. The 30 days is up November 10. Do you think they will pull on me what they did on you and ask that I remove negatives and neutrals that were given 90 days prior to the restriction?

Where is ANTI-TRUST? THIS IS DRAKONIAN to say the least. My Wall Street mind tells me that they are forcing Square Trade on everyone, advertising up the wazoo with ''shop victoriously''. Basically, they're gonna send their revenues off the charts. Wondering if they are slating eBay for a record quarter? Wonder when Ms. Whitman's options vest?

I'm IRATE about neutral feedback counting for something... ANYTHING. Where was the fair warning? Where was the communication? Executive office is sitting with their thumbs up their arses, laughing all the way to the bank.

Details on eBay Seller Non Performance

by: DAVID RIDDLE

Thu Aug 21 13:03:09 2008

THE RIDDLE OF THE “NON-PERFORMING” EBAY GOLD POWER SELLER!
“There are lies, damn lies, and then there are [eBay] statistics”.

On the night of July 17, 2008, without prior notice, eBay removed from their site all of my company’s 380 listings and sent me an email stating the reason for this action was: “seller non-performance”; this after more than nine years and tens of thousands of perfect selling (and buying) transactions on eBay!

On Friday morning July 18, 2008, after discovering that my listings had all disappeared, I immediately called my personal eBay “Gold Power Seller” representative’s phone number (only available to sellers with sales totaling more than $10,000.00 per month), and asked him how could this be? He said “this looks like a mistake” and said he would call me right back, and within ten minutes he did. He said: “I checked with the trust and safety people here and in the last “rolling” 30-day sample period it appears you had one “negative” and one “neutral” comment in “feedback”, and you dipped too low in one or more of the four categories of your DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings), so that places you in the bottom 1% of all eBay sellers for customer satisfaction, and they have restricted you from listing on the site because of seller non-performance”.

WHAT!!!! eBay made the decision to shutter my business of nine years based on their automated analysis of data from their voluntary buyer satisfaction survey, that they collected over a single 30-day sampling period, and included a total of only 42 of my transactions all of which were completed successfully. How could this be?
Addendum

After eBay’s “trust and safety” department reviewed the letter (printed below) on August 6th, I received two eBay “form” emails the early morning of August 7th: one reinstating my “selling privileges” , the other warning me I would be removed again from the site if my current 95% “customer satisfaction” rating (determined from eBay’s statistics!) deteriorated in any way in the next thirty days. The odds do not look good!

Note: if the following story seems unbelievable, be assured eBay’s trust and safety department reviewed and confirmed that all details relating to the eBay site are correct, and all of my statements can be corroborated.

First a history of who I am, and what I have accomplished using eBay as my business partner:

My name is David Riddle, I have been self employed for thirty six years as an inventor / designer / manufacturer and marketer of technical products in the fields of electronics, optics and mechanical devices, and have been successfully satisfying hundreds of thousands of customers long before eBay existed.

I decided to become a selling “member” of the eBay “community” in December of 1998 under the user name: DAVIDRIDDLE, and have since sold millions of dollars of re-manufactured and fully guaranteed products and services that I call “tools of creativity and productivity” to many thousands of very satisfied individuals and corporations around the world.

With long hours of work from myself and my staff in the past nine years, we have achieved a total eBay “feedback rating” of more than 10,800 customer comments with 99.5% positive responses.

This success is even more astounding when one considers that unlike the majority of eBay sellers that offer their used items for sale “as-is” without any guarantee of any kind, all of our eBay listings and sales are comprised of fully-guaranteed and calibrated specialized high technology equipment supplied to very critical and demanding professional customers.

We not only provide a money back guarantee on every one of our products, but also, more significantly we guarantee “suitability of application”; when our customer receives our products we guarantee the items will function exactly as we described, and will accomplish the task as the customer requires.

Every one of these complex technical products that we offer and deliver in perfect operating condition, requires hours of total hands-on analysis, repair, calibration and testing prior to being expertly packaged for safe shipment through what I call the shipping companies “trail of torture”!

We achieve these results through a commitment to customer support / assistance and guaranteed satisfaction before and after each sale, by providing a toll-free telephone number in multiple places in every eBay listing, in every email and document. This toll-free line is answered by my staff and me personally, nine hours a day, five days a week, from the U.S. and Canada.

This toll-free number is very rarely offered by other eBay sellers and is a direct communication link between potential customers, customers involved in purchases and inquiries of any kind; we vigorously promote “free, expert, customer service”– a rare commodity in today’s society.

Over the last nine plus years on eBay, our phone records indicate that I have personally spoken to and advised more than 45,000 customers, potential customers, and other eBay sellers from whom I have purchased. These “one-on-one” conversations provide invaluable insight into what are my customer’s needs and how they are thinking and feeling about my business practices. In addition, these all important conversations form the basis of my business decisions as to what products and services to provide and to whom I should sell them.

After all of our hard work, unrivaled commitment to our customers and demonstrated responsibility in business dealings, one can only imagine how I might feel being deemed by eBay to be a “non-performing” seller. I can tell you how I feel: disbelief, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. Sound familiar?

These are the emotions of loss and death: the death of my business and the loss of my passion which is happily advising and encouraging my eBay customers to turn their intangible ideas into tangible products and services by providing them with these tools of creativity and productivity while enthusiastically offering free expert engineering solutions and advice, whether they purchased something from me or not.

In addition to ending my business partnership, eBay’s decision has also stopped, something very dear to my heart, my altruistic program of offering a free school for primary and secondary “at risk” students (as I was in school) where I along with other volunteers will demonstrate and guide these students through the real-world process of “Invention and Entrepreneurship”.

The basis of this program depended on using eBay as a pivotal component in test-marketing student’s product ideas at low cost all over the world, then manufacturing only their successful creations and using the EBay site to sell these products, allowing these young entrepreneurs to personally profit from their ideas.

The facility plans included a fully outfitted “model shop” for prototype product fabrication, graphic arts / photo studio, video and audio production studio and computer business center all housed in a 2500 square foot portion of my building.

The students were to have used this facility at no charge, and, with the direction of myself and other volunteer mentors, were to experience the hands-on work of: “conception to execution to marketing to sale”-- the process that I and every successful inventor and entrepreneur uses. Now this dream may never be realized.

Now, a description of how eBay uses statistics to determine “buyer satisfaction”

eBay’s original method since 1995 for keeping track of satisfactory transactions on the site is called “feedback” where both the buyer and seller could voluntarily assign a “feedback rating” to each other for every individual “ended” auction listing or “buy-it-now” listing on the site; this feedback is normally non-revocable and accumulates for each buyer and seller from their first transaction to date. The available options are as follow: “Positive” (add one point to feedback score), “Neutral” (no score change), or “Negative” (subtract one point from feedback score)

In 2007, eBay added an additional component to the buyers voluntary feedback reporting; called the “Detailed seller Rating”or DSR. eBay promoted DSR as a way to provide sellers with a more detailed report of their buyers satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in four categories, each with a 0 to 5 “star” rating selection as shown below in the exact wording the buyer sees if they bother filling out the DSR ratings (remember, there is no requirement or reciprocal benefit for the buyer to fill out this section, as there is for regular feedback):

“Click on the stars to rate more details of the transaction. These ratings will not be seen by the seller.

How accurate was the item description?
* Very inaccurate, ** Inaccurate, *** Neither inaccurate nor accurate, **** Accurate, ***** Very accurate

How satisfied were you with the seller's communication?
* Very unsatisfied, ** Unsatisfied, *** Neither unsatisfied nor satisfied, **** Satisfied, ***** Very satisfied

How quickly did the seller ship the item?
* Very slowly, ** Slowly, *** neither slowly or Quickly, **** Quickly, ***** Very Quickly

How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?
* Very unreasonable, ** Unreasonable, *** neither unreasonable nor reasonable, **** reasonable,
***** Very reasonable

Remember – these detailed seller ratings are anonymous, so please feel free to leave honest ratings about your buying experience.”

I suggest you should carefully note what phrases and words eBay has chosen to use in the DSR survey shown above: “These ratings will not be seen by the seller”, (and again): “Remember - these detailed ratings are anonymous”, (and the five stars rating choice): “Very accurate”, “Very satisfied”, “Very quickly” (and) “Very reasonable”: I will comment on this in the following text.
My DSR ratings slowly began accumulating, and we were always showing “4+ stars” in all four categories along with our regular feedback running at its usual 99.5%. I naively didn’t pay much attention to this new rating system; I saw this as yet another one of eBay management’s many demonstrations of: “Look were doing our job by improving the eBay experience”– an exercise I’ve seen many times in the past nine years. Why would I care, knowing that our entire focus is on customer satisfaction and the feedback we receive every day is directly from the “customer’s mouth” in those one-on-one conversations through our toll-free help line? In addition, I personally called almost every customer that left a negative feedback to find out why they did?

Then, in May of 2008, eBay announced that they were changing the feedback system in the following ways: sellers and buyers feedback rating (positives divided by total feedback = %) would now be calculated with the data from only the past “rolling” year to date, eBay threw out more than 8-1/2 years of my satisfied customers!

More significantly, now only buyers could leave negative or neutral feedback for sellers, meaning sellers no longer had any means to note unsatisfactory buyers’ actions on the site; the reciprocal component of the original feedback system was lost (eBay claimed this change was to prevent sellers from threatening buyers with “retaliatory feedback” if the buyer decided to give the seller a negative feedback comment). Personally I have never given “non-performing” buyers negative feedback, I just simply called them and asked; what’s wrong?

If none of this seems to make any sense, then eBay’s other change to the feedback system will astound you. eBay decided that the “neutral” choice buyers and sellers typically had used in the past to denote an “average” transaction, not worthy of a positive, but not so bad as to give the seller a negative (and not counted in the feedback score in any way), would now be counted as a “negative”, subtracted from the sellers overall positive score, and without informing the person leaving the neutral it was actually a negative!

My personal feedback score went from 99.5% to 98.6% because of the truncated data points and the “neutrals as negatives”change. Apparently eBay received so much uproar from sellers about all of these changes, and especially this last one, they elected to rescind only the “neutral as negative”component and promised to make any negatives that sellers had received in this manner be removed retroactively “sometime in August”.

I am busy seven days a week meeting my customers needs; I don’t have time to spend perusing the voluminous eBay site for changes and announcements. Because my eBay power seller representative didn’t tell me, I missed the fact that to be a power seller, I would now be required to maintain a minimum DSR rating of 4.5 stars (90%) in all four stated categories. And most importantly; I would be barred from selling on the eBay site if my combined feedback and DSR scores dipped below eBay’s arbitrary threshold now determined from a single rolling 30-day sample period (not the newly announced 12-month period I assumed).

The following is where eBay’s statistics and the vagaries of the human condition (what I call “the ultimate variable”) collide:

Does eBay truly believe that their volunteer feedback and DSR survey can provide a highly accurate assessment of seller performance?

Are they confident enough to terminate long term power sellers using this feedback and DSR data based on so incredibly few samples?

Does eBay not understand that the repeated statements: “....will not be seen by the seller”, and ....”these detailed seller ratings are anonymous” will encourage more severe negative ratings?

Do they believe that people will voluntarily give sellers an all ”A” (5-stars) every time?

Do the buyers know an all “B” (4-stars) score in every category gives the power seller a failing grade?

Will most buyers who were clearly told there would be a two-week delivery time on a custom-made product order remember and give the seller 5-stars (“Very quickly”) on “shipping time”?

How can any eBay buyer possibly have any knowledge of what it costs in materials and labor to properly prepare and package products for safe shipment, or keep track of the always increasing actual freight and fuel surcharges and then expect them to select “Very reasonable” for “Shipping and handling charges”?

Did you get all A’s in school? Have you ever filled out a business satisfaction survey, or any survey for that matter, and given all top scores? How many warrantee card surveys did you not fill out when all you wanted to do was use and enjoy the product?

Are you human? Aren’t you more likely to fill out a survey if you are upset and then want to make sure “they” know just how upset you are by filling it out in the most negative way possible?

It’s very hard to imagine that eBay’s management could be so ignorant of basic statistical methods and the guaranteed inaccuracies of voluntary surveys conducted in the manner eBay is doing (for proof, Google “survey accuracy”). eBay’s methodology completely ignores the human condition, assuming that all buyers will behave like a computer, applying a fixed metric to each question. Are they expecting people to always be rational in a society where many of our citizens function mainly on an emotional basis!

Could eBay management possibly be this ignorant of reality and at the same time have such incredible hubris? Or, could this be eBay’s agenda to rid the site of all of the unique individual sellers who have been supporting them all these years, allowing eBay to profit by using its brand-name recognition to help push electronic shopping carts filled with new consumer products supplied by large corporations around the internet?

When I first discovered eBay, I immediately recognized this gathering of individual sellers and buyers as an historic shift for marketing and commerce; “cottage industry can now be global”. I jumped in with both feet, and as my success grew, I became a huge eBay booster, encouraging and helping hundreds of other business people I met to “get on eBay and take advantage of this huge opportunity to expand their market reach”. Many of those people I encouraged are now successful eBay Power Sellers using the site as their sole means of marketing and sales. What do I tell these people now? Many have called to offer support but also to voice their anger about the injustice and absurdity of what eBay has done to me, my employees and my business...

They also voice their fear that it will happen to them, as I am not alone in this: there are thousands of eBay sellers who have recently suffered from eBay’s current managements’ travesty of un-tested “improvement ideas” that produced only misjudgement and unjust actions; further damaging our beloved eBay community.

Is this anyway to treat your business partner? I certainly don’t think so, do you?
Call me toll-free @ 800-544-3746, 9AM-6PM, M-F, PST. Tell me what you think, David Riddle

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