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The latest changes at eBay may encourage the opposite behavior from sellers that the online marketplace wants to encourage.

Humanity has its flaws and foibles, but no one should underestimate the ability of the common person to find the easier route to profits when given a set of choices. If that ability could be distilled and sold by the gallon, the oil industry really would go the way of the dinosaur.

In the updated seller policies, eBay mentions Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) a few times. The better one's DSR, the better the discounts a seller could enjoy on Final Value fees for an auction.

Ina Steiner's excellent AuctionBytes blog recently demonstrated how a seller can find a simpler way to make more money on eBay despite giving up the best available DSR-based discount, based on her chat with Steve Grossberg of the non-profit trade group, Internet Merchants Association:

If you are a PowerSeller and all four of your detailed seller ratings (DSRs) for the past 30 day period are 4.6 or higher, you qualify for a 5% discount on Final Value Fees

If you are a PowerSeller and all four of your detailed seller ratings (DSRs) for the past 30 day period are 4.8 or higher, you qualify for a 15% discount on Final Value Fees

Steve used an example of a seller who might push to get 4.8 DSRs and save $200/month with the new discount. He said that seller might instead raise his shipping and handling fee by 50 cents - forgoing the 4.8 rating (which is hard to attain anyway in the S&H DSR), and make an extra $1,200.

Work harder and make less? That doesn't make much sense in any context. It looks like eBay may be tweaking these concepts again in the future.