Hello everyone,
Welcome to our last weekly session for November. Please go ahead and start posting, I'll be here for most of the day.
Here are the issues I am currently tracking:
- Gallery pictures missing from live listings (jt-libra)
- UPC codes suddenly not recognized on live listings (mjwl2006)
And the issues for which I have had news:
- SYI form stripping weight value when switching currency - The team is working to figure out a solution to this.
- Full shipping FVF charged on combined orders with discounted shipping (dutchman48) - The billing team is investigating on this.
- SYI preventing relist and Sell Similar if the original listing had a non compliant photo (pierrelebel) - problem has been identified and work has begun.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
So far, all the data we have looked at suggests that buyers are very, very fair when answering the OTS question when leaving feedback, especially when they buy from another country. You can see it for yourself on your seller dashboard preview. Just like you, every single seller who expressed worries about missing the OTS metric have a 100% on time, all-green reading on their dashboard. There is nothing, at this time, that suggests that our delivery estimates data is inaccurate enough, or that your buyers are unreasonable enough to bring you harm via the OTS metric.
Beyond that, please remember that the reason we don't hold seller accountable for a 100% record on any metric is because we know that sometimes, mishaps are inevitable.
I don't have any late shipping incidents so far however, out of 433 transactions for the year, my rate right now is based on just 10 transactions. That means that if I have just 1 late shipment, my late shipment percentage would be 10% so not only would I lose my TRS, I would no longer meet even the minimum requirements. If I receive another 5 or even 10 ratings in the next month, I would be below minimum requirements if more than 1 late shipment is reported. It's entirely possible that there will be a couple of late shipments over Christmas and considering the number of items that I will be shipping, 2 isn't a huge number. But it is a huge number when it is based on such a small sample.
With the current standards, the defects don't affect our status unless there are 5 different buyers that gave us low ratings or opened a case etc. I don't see any mention of a minimum with the new standards. Is that reasonable that just 1 or 2 transactions can affect our ability to sell? Has there been discussion about adding a minimum?
Hi pjcdn,
Great question, this is something we unintentionally haven't been doing a great job at specifying. Yes, there are minimums below which a seller's OTS metric simply won't count. I only know those minimums for the US program yet (9 late orders or less won't be computed for a seller to be Above Standard and 6 late orders or less won't be computed for a seller to make Top Rated status, where an "order" is defined as all items bought by the same buyer in the same day), I'm still working to figure out if the Global program will have different minimums or the same.
We will update our Help and Seller Update pages accordingly very soon.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
Another comment about the same subject...
A couple of weeks ago you said
"For lower volume sellers who are on a 12-months evaluation cycle, the OTS (On Time Shipping) metric will only get evaluated from September data onwards. Larger sellers will be evaluated on their past 3 months' data as usual.
If you wonder why September, it's because we think it's more fair to only use data gathered after we announced this change."
Obviously you can't base it on 12 months now because the question about late shipment hasn't been asked for that long but that means that until September, we are judged on the same percentage but on a smaller number of total transactions. When the new rating starts in February, the late shipping rate for TRS has to be under 5% based on 5 months of sales. In September, it is the same percentage but based on 12 months of sales. So basically the percentage is really less than 5% between February and September as it is based on just a few months of transactions. That doesn't seem right.
Obviously a move to simpler Standards measurement means there will be a transition period. Mathematically, you're right, but the data we have now shows that the vast majority of sellers won't be negatively impacted by the OTS metric, even now with only 2 months worth of data. With that said, I will need to ask the Standards team about how they modelled the impact on sellers between the months of February and September 2016, but since everyone is at home eating Turkey today in the US, may I ask that you remind me of this next week? I'll try to get you that answer.
@dutchman48 wrote:
It is going to be another gotcha, especially considering how few buyers leave feedback today. If the intent was not to gotcha, it would be base on total transactions, not feedback transactions.
This was the whole purpose of the change, to gotcha
Hi dutchman,
You'll have to explain to me what it means "to gotcha." 
Don't forget that the simplified standards rely heavily on tracking adoption, which is a majority in many regions other than Canada. So it's not true that these changes are made for the purpose "to gotcha" sellers who don't use tracking.
Besides, if I look at your seller dashboard preview, you show a 100% on-time track record since August. If our intent was to "get ya" we would totally fail. Congrats on the immaculate record, by the way.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:Making domestic delivery estimates better on eBay.ca is something we have been, and continue to work on. Until we're able to get the necessary investment to make that a reality, there is a bit of a silver lining in the fact that we have observed no such issues in the data we have been gathering since August.From the underlined comment, you appear to be saying that what we currently have for estimates are here to stay for the time being at least.
I have to assume that the "Did it arrive on or before date" question will be used to find out how good the estimates are. And be used to "fix" some that are deemed inaccurate based on some statistical model used to check them.
I know from my checking of delivery time estimates I started when they were introduced years ago (I tipped you off to their existence years ago) on eBay.ca for Flat Rate shipping, the estimates have not changed. These are for Canada Post non-tracked services Lettermail, Letter-post, Light Packet, Tracked Packet and Small Packet. These services are used the most by Canadian sellers because of the high cost of a tracked service.
I found out long ago that the Flat Rate domestic service Canad Post Lettermail with a 2 to 6 day estimate was ridiculous. I am in the Vancouver area on the west coast and only Lettermail regular size mail goes that fast if at any. Small thin parcels shipped Lettermail Oversize are very slow taking 1-2 weeks easily to get to the Eastern part of Canada. I switched to generic standard shipping 1 to 10 days to get a longer time rather than pad Handling time as suggested by eBay.ca.
It looks like to me that the current estimates from a study years ago are going to be used for judging sellers. They will be refined by the "Did the item arrive on time?" for the non-tracked service at least. Unfortunately, sellers will be given defects because the original estimates are wrong and only after enough data is gathered will they be fixed by ebay.ca leaving the first sellers sellers punished needlessly.
Pocomo,
As it stands, I have yet to see one single Canadian seller with even one late shipment recorded in the data. So I really can't adhere to the hypothesis that "sellers will be given defects because the original estimates are wrong" or that the changes will be "leaving the first sellers sellers punished needlessly."
When I say we are working to make the delivery estimates better domestically, I mean that we want to change the way they are calculated to be more accurate for every buyer when they look at a listing. With that said, we are still confident that what is in place today is not going to cause harm to sellers until we get to that point.
This concludes this week's session. Thanks for joining and sorry I can't keep it going any longer today. Let's reconvene next week, and if you're in the US, happy Thanksgiving!
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