How does Ebay define defects

[2014sportsterguy]

Thanks for a 101 review of selling defects? Why would we get a defect for a common refund? Maybe have to study Frigmond Freud before l get EBAYs nose out of joint.

[tobyshitzu]

defect for any full refund for any reason unless a cancel is requested using reason "buyer requested" and the buyer either agrees with that or never responds.  Only 2 choices for reason to send a cancellation now, one counts against the seller and one doesn't

The reasoning is a lot of cancels were sellers who had items for sale that were out of stock or didn't like the price of their auction, or sent items the buyer wasn't happy with

[mdf_jersey]

Isnt that the question though? Why does Ebay do what Ebay does. They have done a lot of changes and will continue to do changes that quite frankly, doesnt put a smile on my face. 

I sum it up like this. Ebay is a business. Anyone thinking otherwise, well good luck with that. They are going to do what makes them money. Period. You dont count, unless you are losing them money. 

As there are little more to just getting defects for a common refund,

one of the answers to why would they will give a defect for a  refund? Its a loss of money.

[mr.elmwood]

A "simple" refund triggers the concept that something is wrong. Without the assignment of blame, it defaults to against the seller. The defect is eBay's way of saying "find a way to blame the buyer".

The "defect" concept started with the Motorola Corp in 1986. That lead to "Lean Six Sigma".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

The whole concept has been around for 28 years and is used in all industries. The whole idea is to reduce defects in all processes. It works better in some industries than in others.

eBay's way of mitigating defects against sellers has been to introduce two, new, factors. Buyers are now being steered to email contact instead of opening cases. I said this would happen.

eBay has fine tuned the refund under Resolution Centre so that the seller can choose to refund and blame the buyer. eBay sends a cancel notice to the buyer, who ignores it as they do not care, and eBay closes in favour of teh seller after one week. I said this would happen.

eBay introduced the defect system and is now doing even more to mitigate it.

The things that are outside this stream are feedback and DSRs. Those are tied directly to the widget sold and directly to the customer experience. Those factors are 100% within the control of the seller. Thus, the seller can avoid defects by professional level selling.

The bar for the effect of defects is set fairly high. I said this would happen.

More sellers are getting more chances to stay and sell, and clean up their act, than before the defect system was brought in. Again, I said this would happen.

[rose-dee]

EBay instituted the defect system ostensibly on the grounds that they were eliminating the main factors which would predict that buyers would leave eBay or buy less.  

So when you look at what is stated to generate a defect, you have to look at it from eBay's viewpoint on that basis. The defect system wasn't designed as a means of making selling easier, or attracting more sellers to the site, or supporting the smaller seller.  It was meant to weed out sellers whose practices might put off buyers and/or scare them away.  

It's probably been effective in reducing the numbers of amateur sellers who don't study the rules and policies before selling.  My problem with the defect system as it stands is that it is weighted in favour of the big volume sellers with high turnovers, who can clean up their act every 3 months if they wish.  The rest of us drag any demerits around for 12 months.  

Granted, eBay has made some adjustments to the system (as Mr. Elmwood pointed out), probably in response to the outrage from legions of smaller sellers after the August 20, 2014 day of reckoning.  Yes, some defect factors are within a seller's control, but many aren't.  

Yet I wouldn't be at all surprised to see even further tightening of this system in the Spring 2015 update, with a new broom sweeping in.  I'm not sure how many more layers of rules and policies eBay can plunk on top of the already gargantuan policy edifice they've built over the past few years without the whole thing toppling, but maybe this new guy wants to erase everything on the board and start over.  

All I can say is -- fingers crossed.