SNP: 1 month grace before suspension introduced for eBay UK

July 18, 2008

eBay have just officially announced a one month grace period for any seller falling foul of the seller non-performance (SNP) policy for the first time.

Rather than face an immediate site suspension they will be informed that they’re in breach of the policy and given a month to bring their account back into good standing. This is great news and hopefully will keep the dolphins out of the eBay nets. It also means that one upset customer can no longer threaten your eBay business - by the end of the 1 month warning period their feedback will have dropped out of the 30 day feedback and DSRs used in the SNP calculation.

If a seller breaches the policy for a second time within a six month period then they will still face an instant selling restriction or suspension.

eBay have also expanded the Seller Dashboard to include a new Buyer Satisfaction Rating (BDR) to enable sellers to track their performance. This includes negative feedback, neutral feedback, low DSR scores (1 or 2 star ratings) and any buyer protection claims closed in favour of the buyer.

BDR is important not only for SNP but also can affect your standing in search - sellers with low BDR will be disadvantaged under the new Best Match search results. Sellers will be considered in breach of SNP if their BDR drops to “poor” or “unacceptable”.

The only part of BDR that is hidden from sellers are the DSR ratings, sellers should be aware of any other factors that could affect their standing. If eBay would change from anonymous ratings and enable sellers to see where they’re falling down it would be a valuable tool to assist seller increase customer satisfaction.

By keeping DSRs anonymous sellers have no clear understanding which transactions or which buyers are marking them down and sellers are unable to target specific areas or product lines for improvement.

Overall it’s a welcome change though - removing the fear and uncertainty sellers have felt with the knowledge just one or two buyers could earn them an instant 30 day suspension is great news.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 21 Comments 

PowerSeller minimum DSR standards coming in July

June 9, 2008

Many eBay PowerSellers have noticed in their Seller Dashboard a note that from July 2008 a new criteria to determine PowerSeller eligibilty will be DSR scores.

Currently there is no indication of what minimum DSR score levels will be used to qualify as a PowerSeller in the UK but sharp eyed TameBay reader Suz, from designer_clothing_4_u might have found a clue - the US PowerSeller Portal sets a level of 4.5 minimum for all four DSR criteria. The scores are based on the last 12 months, not the trailing 30 days, so eBay are aiming for longstanding good service, not a short term improvement in standards.

To be honest I’m impressed that eBay have taken up the gauntlet to improve PowerSeller requirements and for introducing benefits that make the badge more meaningful than simply indicating a seller with a high turnover. Whilst there will probably be a few sellers that no longer qualify for PowerSeller status in the short term, when they regain their status it will be a signal that they really are an elite seller.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk, eBay.com | 28 Comments 

eBay UK Seller Dashboard launched, broken

May 31, 2008

eBay UK have announced the long-awaited upgrades to the Seller Dashboard. Sellers can now see where they score on a range of eBay measures:

  • PowerSeller status: what you need to do to move to the next level, or whether you’re in danger of dropping down the ranks
  • search standing: are your listings being disadvantaged in search?
  • seller discounts: did you get one last month, and will you get one next time?
  • account status: have you paid your seller invoice?
  • policy compliance: have you broken any eBay rules? how many are you allowed to break each month?
  • DSRs: are you better than average or worse? Scores are now being calculated to two decimal places, and you can see your average over 30 days and 12 months.

This should have been introduced months ago when all the policies changed, but we’ll let that go: it’s an incredibly useful tool for sellers and should finally make it possible to keep an eye on all the things you need to think about to be a success on eBay (except perhaps actually making a profit - you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself).

But it wouldn’t be a new feature on eBay if it didn’t come with a glitch, and the Dashboard came with a real corker. Numerous sellers yesterday reported seeing messages that their accounts were in breach of unspecified policies.

Click screenshots to embiggen. Thanks to iposters and Board_Surfer.

According to one Account Manager, the problem was caused by “was caused by the tool retrieving data from an incorrect location within our systems”, and should now be fixed. But in the current climate, this is a glitch that should never have been allowed to happen.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 11 Comments 

How I increased my P&P DSR by 2 points

May 30, 2008

It’s been over a year since DSRs raised their head on the eBay landscape, and I have to admit to start with I treated them with pretty much the healthy contempt I treated feedback with.

I never used to look at my feedback, and remember with horror the morning I woke up to a message on the PowerSeller board saying “Sorry to see you got negged”. It wasn’t so much that I’d got a neg that caught me off guard (and yes it was undeserved :P ), it was more the fact that someone else noticed before I did.

There really wasn’t much cause to look at feedback in those days, so I never did. Taking the attitude that if I gave customers great service feedback would look after itself it was one of the least referenced pages of my eBay real estate.

DSRs didn’t make much difference either. Sure eBay were banging on about how they would become relevant in the future but mine were ok, or so I thought.

Then one day eBay introduced seller discounts and the possibility that competitors could be advantaged in search compared to me. Overnight DSRs and feedback had became very important.

My DSRs weren’t that bad though, but what gave me a jolt was that my Postage and Packing DSR was 4.6, any lower and I wouldn’t qualify for seller discounts.

I immediately set about examining how I worked, with the sole aim of improving my P&P DSR without impacting any of the others which have consistently been in the 4.8-4.9 range.

The big question is “Was I one of the fee avoiding postage gouging baddies”, and in truth I have to admit that I was. Certainly I’d never considered myself in that light, and to this day my postage costs are higher than many competitors due to two factors: Everything I ship goes on a priority tracked service and that costs, and I’m VAT registered so have to charge VAT in addition to the basic packing and shipping costs.

That aside I always rounded postage up to the nearest £1 for Royal Mail items, and for courier items the heavier the item the more I charged, even though I was invoiced a flat rate up to 30kg. I figured that buyers would be more than willing to pay a higher price to have a 25kg printer delivered than they would a 2kg docking station. Plus in truth on a lot of items I simply guesstimated the cost with a healthy margin of error - pure laziness on my part.

Ruthlessly I went about cutting postage, on the heaviest items by as much as 25% and it’s paid dividends. Some items I have switched to cost effective Royal Mail, instead of shipping via more expensive couriers, but that’s been a slow process as next day delivery is not guaranteed - Protecting my dispatch DSR was a priority and buyers don’t rate sellers on how quickly they ship, simply on how long it takes the parcel to arrive.

As a result of the changes my P&P DSR has risen from 4.6 to 4.8 with my other three ratings all remaining at 4.9. One of the most useful tools has been the Seller Dashboard (even though it was the lite version), as it enabled me to monitor changes over a short period of time. A change in postage prices could be seen in DSR ratings within about two weeks of making the change.

So what does this mean for me, and what does it mean to eBay? Well in truth I have to say that DSRs have made me a better seller, or at least have made me act like a better seller. Whilst profits are down very slightly it’s not much, I’ve simply lumped the difference onto the selling price and the difference in fees is more than covered by Seller Discounts.

My aim now will be to further increase my P&P DSR from 4.8 to 4.9, again without impacting my other DSRs. Whilst there may not be any immediate benefit, when Best Match fully rolls out in the UK those with the highest DSR scores will benefit most.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 37 Comments 

Expanded Seller Dashboard goes live on eBay UK

May 28, 2008

The expanded Seller Dashboard has gone live on eBay UK, and it is the all singing all dancing version showing DSRs to 1/100ths.

Their only appear to be two differences to the US version - Search Standing is only “Standard” or “Lowered”, with no “Raised” (To get standard visibility your DSRs need to be all 4.4 or above, in the US it’s 4.6 on P&P for standard and 4.7 on all 4 DSRs for raised). The second difference is that there’s no Buyer Satisfaction rating on the UK version. Buyer Satisfaction is measured from your DSRs, your overall Feedback rating, and any buyer protection claims against your eBay account.

I’m not sure why Buyer Satisfaction ratings aren’t included in the UK dashboard, as the help pages state they are used to calculate whether you have earned Standard or Lowered Search standing. This part of the Seller Dashboard on eBay.com is blocked for UK registered users.

Overall the Dashboard is a great utility for measuring your eBay performance, and now it’s like on the UK site I’m guessing there will be a lot of users visiting the utility over the next day or two and a lot of threads on discussion boards ;-)

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 18 Comments 

eBay.com seller dashboard now displays 1/100ths

May 27, 2008

Logging into the seller dashboard on eBay.com now reveals your DSR scores to the nearest 1/100th. It should now be clearer if your score is edging upwards or downwards over a shorter period of time.
For those who have seen their scores fluctuate between two decimal places you are likely to see your DSR score in the 1/100ths hovering around the x.x5 mark and being rounded up or down.

I would caution against giving your scores too much weight over a short period of time. Just one or two feedback DSR scores received could show large swings, especially over a 30 day period unless you receive vast amounts of feedback. However if you monitor the dashboard over an extended period of time you should be able to see if your scores are trending up or down.

The UK Seller Dashboard is expected to go live this week, and to display scores to 1/100ths by next week.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.com | 5 Comments 

The new Seller Dashboard on eBay.com

May 23, 2008

The new expanded Seller Dashboard is live on eBay.com and I like it! Not only does it supply a lot more detailed information but it acts as a guide to the areas you need to improve in.

The dashboard covers five main areas - Search Standing, Discount Level, PowerSeller Status, Policy compliance and Account Status. For US users it also give an indication of Buyer Satisfaction not available if you log in with a UK account.

Detailed seller ratings now come with three viewing options: 12 month vs eBay 12 month average, 30 day vs eBay 30 day average, and 30 day vs your 12 month average.

Each rating has a hover over which tells you exactly what your rating is and how you’re performing, and if one of your ratings is slipping it’ll be highlighted in red.

Possibly the most useful part of the expanded DSR console is to be able to compare yourself with the eBay Average. You probably already know if your DSRs are slipping against a rolling 12 months, but if you’re above the eBay average you’re likely to be doing well in all areas including being advantaged in search.

Search Standing is calculated from a mix of Buyer Satisfaction and DSRs, if you have raised Search Standing your listings may receive higher placement in search when sorted by Best Match. Importantly there is a note “Even if you already have a raised search standing, continue to improve your detailed seller ratings to increase the visibility of your items.” so raised Search Standing isn’t a given, unless you have the highest DSRs on eBay.

Buyer Satisfation on my account is rated as “Good”, but that section of the Seller Dashboard isn’t available in detail to UK users.

The part of the expanded Seller Dashboard that deals with Seller Discounts will be most familiar to UK users. This was effectively the first part to be introduced to the UK and is currently the only part viewable from the UK site.

PowerSeller status has been included in the Seller Dashboard. Although this information is also available rom logging into the PowerSeller Portal it includes in addition a track of Policy Violations in the last 60 days and whether your account is in good standing.

The final two parts of the Seller Dashboard have already been covered above - Policy Violations indicates if you’re in danger of account restrictions and even if you’re rated as Good, it warns a violation could still result in your listings being removed. Account Status shows any over due amounts and if you’re account is past due, or on hold.

Overall the new Seller Dashboard appears well thought out, comprehensive with the ability to click into each section for much greater detail, and a useful addition to enable sellers to monitor themselves.

Until the expanded dashboard is available in the UK you can log into eBay.com to view it ;-)

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.com | 25 Comments 

eBay.com scrap choice and multiple listing policies

May 19, 2008

eBay.com have just announced that with immediate effect the choice policy is to be scrapped. This means sellers will be able to offer a choice of size, colour and configuration on a single listing.

This should result in significant cost savings for sellers who up until now have had to use multiple listings to offer choices to their buyers. It should be noted that if a choice is offered failure to supply will be considered a violation of the Seller Non-Performance Policy.

Also in June the multiple items listing policy will be relaxed to allow sellers to list an unlimited quantity of identical items, previously the limit was 15 identical items.

Although a seller can list larger numbers of identical listings eBay’s new Finding will limit the number of listings presented to buyers from a single seller. No more than 10 identical listings from a single seller will appear on a search page, however this is sure to please sellers who routinely list multiple listings so that their product always appears in Ending Soonest sort.

It’s not known when these two changes will become official UK policy so sellers this side of the pond should wait for an official announcement to avoid listing infringements. As Best Match hasn’t fully rolled out in the UK it may be some time before the policies are introduced.

In the same announcement Mystery Auctions are banned, a new Search & Browse Manipulation Policy is announced, and a new Links Policy is to come into force in July.

Finally the new expanded Seller Dashboard is to go live in the US next week and sellers with 4.7 and above on all 4 DSRs over the last 30 days will start to be advantaged in search. This will be tested in a few categories before being rolled out across the site.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | 10 Comments