eBay

cumos55 · ‎08-07-2013

Link to

http://www.examiner.com/article/ebay-blocks-15-000-sellers-from-listing

Who is next?

king_of_kings_1970 · ‎08-08-2013

I know exactly why they blocked me. I have a low DSR rating for the United States. Canada Post is our only cheapest shipping. In order for me to ship tracking insured as Ebay wants it, I have to pay 13.93 Canadian for every item shipped. I can ship for 8 bucks CDN but it is uninsured so why would I risk a buyer claiming they didn't get their item, Then I am out shipping and the cost of item. Anyways, This is what I am charging the buyer, the actual rate. The buyer comes back and leaves me low DSR rating for this. Ebay wants me to take the hit on the shipping. If I did that, where is the room for profit. This has been my fight all along. They blantantly told me, they want everyone to offer free shipping.

king_of_kings_1970 · ‎08-08-2013

Added on to this. The buyer sees the shipping rate before buying, I believe the buyer does not have the right to leave low DSR Ratings if they buy the item, they are accepting the terms to buy the item, I even told Ebay as to why would they complain about the shipping as they take a percentage of it anyways. They would be losing more money by cutting shipping costs. They don't have a very smart business man at the helm.

rykkm · ‎08-08-2013

No argument there. It is not as if shipping would not be calculated until after the purchase was made. If it is clearly marked, how can someone complain about it. They made the decision to purchase the item based on it's overall cost (for B.I.N.), or how much they are willing to pay for said item (auction). Have you tried the "free shipping" option at all? I am just curious if that really does make a difference. I suppose you could also build in a higher price for your items, and sicount the shipping to compensate, like add $5 to price and knock $5 off shipping, at least for BIN items. Still, seems rather harsh penalty if you are charging actualy shipping cost.

Rick
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity" - Frank Leahy

73rhc · ‎08-08-2013

How long have you had this limit? I'm going on 14 months with no bad DSR since then. And no relief in sight. So I don't list anything. Maybe I will if my limits are lifted! One day.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-09-2013

@king_of_kings_1970 wrote:
I know exactly why they blocked me. I have a low DSR rating for the United States. Canada Post is our only cheapest shipping. In order for me to ship tracking insured as Ebay wants it, I have to pay 13.93 Canadian for every item shipped. I can ship for 8 bucks CDN but it is uninsured so why would I risk a buyer claiming they didn't get their item, Then I am out shipping and the cost of item. Anyways, This is what I am charging the buyer, the actual rate. The buyer comes back and leaves me low DSR rating for this. Ebay wants me to take the hit on the shipping. If I did that, where is the room for profit. This has been my fight all along. They blantantly told me, they want everyone to offer free shipping.

It's your choice whether or not to ship with insurance and tracking but chances are your sales would be higher and buyers would be happier with less expensive shipping prices. Many sellers use 'cookie jar insurance' which means that for every sale you put a virtual amount in the cookie jar. Then, if an item gets lost, you have your own insurance fund.

king_of_kings_1970 · ‎08-09-2013

Tried it an no success. I try to stay competitve and for a short time, as for What Ebay suggest, I cut the shippiog in half and ate part of the costs myself, My DSR ratings went way worse.

king_of_kings_1970 · ‎08-09-2013

4 months and counting, I keep getting reassurances from Ebay that is will correct itself. One can only hope.

73rhc · ‎08-09-2013

I was limited to 20 listings a month ( to a max of $240 ) for 12 months. Now they kindly upped me to 30 items ( to a max of $380 ) a month. So it's not very encouraging to list items these days. I got the same bovine excrement from them. And the beat goes on!

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-09-2013

@73rhc wrote:
I was limited to 20 listings a month ( to a max of $240 ) for 12 months. Now they kindly upped me to 30 items ( to a max of $380 ) a month. So it's not very encouraging to list items these days. I got the same bovine excrement from them. And the beat goes on!

You can list 30 items a month but you haven't listed anything in almost 2 months. Perhaps if you listed your maximum they would be more likely to raise your limits.

73rhc · ‎08-09-2013

Not likely. When I was limited to 20 items, I was listing the 20. Didn't help one bit. eBay says the DSRs last for a year. Has nothing to do with how many items you list.

pierrelebel · ‎08-09-2013

It is important to understand how limits work on eBay:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/sellinglimits.html

PJ is correct. Adding more listings, getting more sales and eventual feedback and DSRs will help increase and eventually eliminate the limits.

73rhc · ‎08-09-2013

Well, I can tell you from my own experience that it doesn't. I know what the policy says, but doesn't work that way.

reallynicestamps · ‎08-10-2013

Reading the comments on the original article, which is not exactly a model of journalistic evenhandedness, I was reminded of the pleasure a now defunct website called Regretsy took in calling its fans "fat, jealous losers" because that was the usual name butthurt sellers from the Doll site would call them when the sellers were called out on sketchey practices, like selling cheap asian jewellry as handcrafted, or the practice of "tragicrafting", adding the name of a newly dead celebrity to any random carp the seller was pushing.

The site may be archived somewhere. It is hilarious. Also often NSFW.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-10-2013

@73rhc wrote:
Well, I can tell you from my own experience that it doesn't. I know what the policy says, but doesn't work that way.

It might not always work that way but if you don't list anything, your limits aren't going to be raised.

73rhc · ‎08-10-2013

Actually, the limit will increase with time. As the the older low DSRs disappear.

rose-dee · ‎08-10-2013

@king_of_kings_1970 wrote:
I know exactly why they blocked me. I have a low DSR rating for the United States.

I'm trying to understand this based on your DSR profile on .ca which looks very good -- do you have another ID for U.S. sales? If not, this move by eBay is ludicrous and ill-conceived because in my view eBay's longer-term survival depends on smaller sellers staying (those sellers who have no website of their own to sell from with the same kind of visibility).

I don't blame you for feeling frustrated. How exactly eBay will profit in the long run from punishing (i.e. limiting) its best sellers because of shipping costs is a mystery to me. They will simply lose legions of sellers (especially Canadians, let's face it) who can't afford to absorb shipping into pricing or eat the cost of shipping out of their meagre profits.

I also agree with your comments on buyers being able to leave low DSRs after accepting clearly listed shipping costs.

It seems to me I've seen this discussion before and I am still of the opinion eBay is wrong and short-sighted on this matter. If a buyer agrees to a price and a shipping cost, he/she should not be able to leave an opinion on whether shipping was fair. If the buyer doesn't think it's fair or reasonable in the first place, look elsewhere on eBay. We already have limitations on shipping costs - they're called FVFs. We don't need draconian measures to punish otherwise decent sellers. Let the marketplace determine reasonableness, not the eBay police.

rose-dee · ‎08-10-2013

@pierrelebel wrote:
It is important to understand how limits work on eBay:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/sellinglimits.html

PJ is correct. Adding more listings, getting more sales and eventual feedback and DSRs will help increase and eventually eliminate the limits.

The key word is "eventually". That's the problem, and IMO the DSR system is inherently flawed. It is also misunderstood or dealt with in a trivial way by most buyers. EBay has done little if anything to address the system itself. We all know the problems concerning how "shipping cost" and "shipping time" is perceived.

Buyers see DSRs as just "opinion surveys" with little real consequence for the seller (if a buyer isn't also a seller, he likely has no idea how crucial they are), or they use DSRs as a forum for ranting and/or punishing.

An example from my own experience: I now accept that some buyers will leave lower DSRs for shipping cost even if they agree to it in advance, even if I've eaten a large proportion of the shipping cost. But how can a buyer say an item is "Not As Described" in DSRs when there are 24 photos and an extensive description in the listing?

This totally baffled me, until I realized that cell phones are likely the problem: people either don't see, or don't read, descriptions anymore. I see one poster mentioned 90% growth in cell phone use on eBay - more trouble to come!

A happy buyer will probably just tick off 5 stars on each line without thinking, but someone who believes after having agreed to a shipping price that he/she has been wronged, can strafe through all of the DSRs out of mere spite. All it would take is one such transaction to wreck an otherwise great seller's reputation, especially if that seller doesn't have thousands of transactions to absorb the averages.

Or, as we now see, eBay will punish sellers for buyers' lack of knowledge about the critical nature of DSRs(obviously not the buyers' fault), or for buyers using the DSRs as some sort of retaliatory forum, by slapping on limits. I am sure there are sellers who deserve such treatment, but this sounds like a pretty big net, and my guess is that it's just the beginning. We should all be worried.

EBay is basing its punishment of sellers on a seriously flawed system. EBay should redesign its DSR system so that it's exactly as critical to sellers as it is to buyers, i.e. a guide, not a demerit system. I give eBay 2.0 stars out of 5.0 for its actions in this regard. (And by the way, what possible meaning does "very satisifed" have as opposed to "satisfied" - yikes.)

73rhc · ‎08-10-2013

I only sell on .ca.

As for raising the limit. With the exception of the last 2 month, I was selling to my limit. This had NO effect on increasing my limit imposed by eBay. So, in theory, that might be the answer. But it in practice.