eBay upset a lot of its sellers over the last year and a half or so with various announcements and policy changes. Evidence of this is all over the web on message boards, blog comments, and social networks.
Last week, eBay announced its latest round of changes, and while not everyone is 100% happy with them (that's got to be impossible anyway), they seem to be going over relatively well compared to previous announcements. How are they going over with you? Tell us.
AuctionBytes conducted a poll on the changes to find out which ones people thought were good, and which ones they thought were bad. Following are some results they got for individual changes. These are the ones that got the most negative responses:
Starting in April, there will be a new structure for PowerSeller Final Value Fee discounts. The Final Value Fee discounts will change to 20% for eBay Top Top-rated sellers and 5% for all other PowerSellers.
Good: 21.7%
Neutral: 28.7%
Bad: 49.6%
The current PowerSeller icon will no longer be displayed on buyer buyer-facing pages including item pages.
Good: 12.8%
Neutral: 42.5%
Bad: 44.8%
Starting in October, a new eBay Top Top-rated seller status will be added to the PowerSeller program to based on the new way to look at DSRs (very few 1s and 2s). eBay Top Top-rated sellers will receive the highest PowerSeller Final Value Fee discounts (20%), increased visibility in search results for Fixed Price listings, exclusive access to purchase Featured First and a prominent Top Top-rated seller badge on item pages:
Good: 31.0%
Neutral: 27.5%
Bad: 41.5%
Even these are getting fair amounts of "good" votes, so clearly not everyone is displeased. There are a lot more positive votes on other changes, which you can check out at AuctionBytes' blog here.
On the other hand, you can see how a lot of users really feel by perusing the comments in our own coverage of eBay's latest announcement here also. It's not all glowing, believe me.
eBay announced this week that they were starting to test the new top-seller badges.
"Over the next few weeks you may see a new seller badge appearing on some item pages and in search results," the company said in a statement. "This badge is part of the new eBay Top-rated seller status announced last week and launching in October. Starting this week and over the next few weeks, we'll be testing the badge in search results and item pages for a small percentage of eBay traffic."
Are you in the majority that feel eBay's latest changes are a step in the right direction? Which changes do you like? Dislike? We want to hear from WebProNews readers.
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The eBay Changes
Overall, I think the eBay changes were OK. But there are two "stinkers" hidden in there, and these two bad apples spoil the whole barrel, in my opinion.
First, eBay will now automatically send payment reminders to buyers at 48 and 96 hour intervals. While this will be a positive for many sellers, it is also a negative for many sellers. And eBay is not permitting sellers to opt out of these reminders, or set the timeframe for when these reminders should be sent. I make a lot of multi-item sales, and am fine with a customer waiting as long as 7 days while they complete their purchases. receiving a payment reminder from eBay will upset and frustrate these buyers. It will potentially reduce the size of their orders, and may also cost me additional Paypal expense due to additional transaction fees. They should offer an opt out. Thus far, they have stated no opt out, because "site-wide consistency is important in setting community expectations." That translates to the Project Manager screwed up, but we're not going to admit it, and make those who want an opt-out suffer with this change. In the discussion forums I visit, at least 90% agree that an opt-out should be available. I've sent emails to several eBay managers, but thus far have not received a response.
Second, multiple low DSR scores from the same buyer will count against you. this means one person can knock you out of Top Seller status, reducing your final value fee discount from 20% to 5%. eBay has stated that they will increase their review of these situations, but I'm not convinced that's enough, and because they do not allow sellers to know who left the low DSRs, it will be impossible to track. There are several ideas being floated among the users to reduce the possibility of sabotage, including blocking buyers who leave a low DSR score, eliminating DSR anonymity, and others. I hope eBay decides to implement a solution to resolve this before it costs sellers a lot of money, and becomes a fee increase in disguise.
As you can see, these two changes can spoil the whole tone of what otherwise can be viewed as a set of positive changes.