Apologies to readers if I sound like a nagging wife on this topic. It’s one of my hatred-addictions for eBay policies that facilitate the very “crime” that eBay Trust & Safety staff have used as a whipping post for unneccesarily punishing honest sellers.

There are two forms of item location abuse on all eBay sites - the intentional, and the institutionally created.

Intentional item location abuse is performed by sellers for a number of reasons, and in a variety of ways. For example, a seller might seek to game the internal eBay search mechanisms by stating an item is in the domestic country of the site on which they are listing, when in fact it is located continents away.

Those intentional abuses are easily spotted if you’re experienced and observant, but it’s the institutionally created location abuse that is more insidious, more stressful for the honest seller, and the result of criminal negligence by the eBay programmers, not to mention generating the same appearance as the intentional location abuse to the casual user.

When a seller registers and verifies their address, the eBay system notes the country of residence that the seller has input - this is not foolproof…

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Apologies to William Shakespeare, but after the winter and spring of discontent comes the summer of reflection. It appears many eBay sellers are seriously questioning whether they should continue using the company’s sites, and those questions are not related solely to fees, but a growing awareness of the dirty tricks being played on them.

One seller has written to me, and I quote them below with identifying data changed to generic information -

I usually have 500-600 store format listings running at any one time. The prices range from around 100, nickel-&-dime multi-item listings (to help with total items sold counts), through several hundred listings in the site-wide ASP range of $10 - $30, up to items running in the hundreds of dollars. This has always been a good mix for generating both revenue and PowerSeller status.

Back in January it was announced that from the summer, stores format on eBay.com and eBay.ca would have introduced a minimum per item price of $1 and I mentally noted it, but it then took so long to arrive that I forgot about it because no reminders were issued.

Now, weeks after it was put into force, I find that many of my sub-$1 store-items are still auto-relisting according to Selling Manager Pro (SMP), and according to my Seller Account, I’m still being invoiced the insertion fees, but those US & CA listings are not visible anywhere on any of the sites to buyers - they are only visible within SMP, which had caused me to believe they are live on the site for buyers to find. I stress this only affects store items under $1.00 price per item.

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Both North American eBays - Canada and the USA - have announced two weeks of cheap listing fees for fixed price listings.

On both sites from July 16th to July 29th (inclusive), insertion fees for Fixed Price (FP or BIN) lisitngs are fixed at $0.25 in all price tranches.  Listing upgrade fees and other options, including final value fees still apply.  Some Business and industrial categories are not included.

The announcements don’t state if multi-item listings are permitted, though they usually are on these sites’ promotion days.  Try a test listing to find out.

Unusually, the Canadian offer applies to non-residents, something the site has frequently disallowed in past years, but has been opening up to more frequently in 2008.

If you’re outside the US or Canada - watch the eBay exchange rate daily for your currency against the $ - eBay UK updates their exchange rate around 11am during BST, and it is now diverging rapidly from the exchange rate used by PayPal - even though they are both supposed to pull the rate from XE.com

The weak US dollar means that as long as eBay UK are exchanging at under 50-pence to the UK Pound, UK sellers will benefit from rounding down and save an extra 1-2 cents per listing.  Watch you Seller Account daily billing to see where the exchange rate is at.  (I’m betting that exchange rates on eBay will move counter-intuitively to the money markets for the next fortnight, and bump the dollar over 50-pence for better fee receipts for dot com).

Ed

Despite everything that eBay UK Trust & Safety markets about links in emails, PayPal UK sent me a marketing email last night offering several tantalising buttons to click.

The one that caught my eye was the teasing tagline of -

You list on eBay and we’ll pay your fees

PayPal is offering six lucky eBay sellers the chance to have their combined eBay and PayPal fees paid for them. For a year!

Having thoroughly checked the mail header to ensure it was from PayPal, I clicked through and was given the following explanation -

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I’m beginning to wonder if that little “5-Stars” logo was designed as an in-house joke by eBay staff.  Certainly, there’s mounting evidence that the “1 Big Difference” is in how sellers are being denigrated, both by eBay and by eBay buyers, since the introduction of punishments and rewards linked to DSR ratings.

There’s no doubt that one of the most controversial topics of the year, on eBay, has been the introduction of using the Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) feedback from buyers, and how it is used to determine a seller’s visibility in browse & search, and in many cases, the amount of fees they pay to eBay.

The controversy is further compounded when you look at what eBay tells buyers, and how that differs from what they tell (and use against) the sellers.

When leaving feedback, eBay tells buyers that the DSRs should be rated as follows (please note - descriptions in italics with a question mark are where I’ve had to guess the description because I cannot find a public statement of the exact wording used, if you know the correct list, please let me know so I can complete the table.) -

Part of the problem with those descriptions, as any psychologist will tell you, is that the very nature of people will make them normally opt for the rating that is one less than perfect - there’s always room for improvement, right?

You would think that a corporation the size of eBay would know and understand that, and make allowances for it, wouldn’t you?  If you do, you’d be wrong.

There have been countless posts in eBay forums, and in blog sites off-eBay, regarding a new system eBay are introducing, that put’s eBay’s assessment of a seller (based on current DSRs for that seller) right up front in buyers’ faces.  In some announcements, it’s reported that a seller with a DSR of 4.0 or less for one of the four DSR topics will have a big warning at the top of their listings stating, “Warning - this seller has a low rating for (DSR topic)“.  In other posts, users have witnessed that same warning when the DSR score is 4.5 or less. 

Why are eBay trying to stop sellers selling?  Why are they tainting the seller in the buyers’ eyes before a bid is even placed, or the buyer has scrolled down to the item photo and description?

eBay UK says that sellers must maintain 30-day average DSRs of 4.6 or higher in all four of the DSR categories in order to qualify for the FVF discounts.  In the US it is 4.6 for the lower rate of discount and 4.8 for the higher rate of discount.  Additionally, any seller with any DSR below 4.3 will be disadvantaged in search and browse - placed at the bottom of the listings returned for buyers to view - and any seller with a DSR below 4.0 will suffer selling restrictions.

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