Like a lot of sellers, I believe eBay did a questionable job in creating the Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) system. The Shipping Time score is open to a lot of buyer interpretation. Are they supposed to rate us on how quickly we get the package to the carrier after receiving payment, did we ship on-time based on our promises in the listing, or are they supposed to rate us purely on how quickly the package arrives?That said, I take minor exception to so many sellers saying they have absolutely no control over how fast a package is delivered by the carrier.
I firmly believe there are things sellers can do to influence transit time. Here are two lists of packaging traits, guess which group’s packages will arrive faster?
Group A Packaging Traits:
- Handwritten addresses
- Addresses using improper abbreviations
- Addresses poorly formatted
- Non-validated addresses
- Frankenstein school of box building (i.e. irregularly shaped parcels, 2 or more pieces taped together, frequently created from re-used boxes, many with other labeling on them)
- No indication of carrier service class
- Packaged in other carrier’s free supplies
- Poorly sealed
- Fluid stains or excessive rattling
- Wrong class of postage used (i.e. Media Mail rate for non-qualified items)
- For International, wrong Customs Forms or improper information on forms
Group B Packaging Traits:
- Computer printed shipping labels
- Fully validated and properly formatted addresses
- Clean, new boxes in standard shapes
- Labels on multiple sides of the package indicating class of service (if appropriate)
- Concatenated Delivery Confirmation Barcode (USPS trick, adds the destination ZIP Code to the barcode information)
- Well sealed with appropriately sturdy tape
- Proper void fill and cushioning
- For International, appropriate Customs Forms accurately filled out
I agree that once we hand off the package it is an act of faith. But if you give the carriers good raw materials, they have a better chance of delivering great service.
Yes I have had my share of wacky delivery delays. Fortunately those are the rare exception because of how I package and label my shipments.
Submitted by Chris of sun-bits
February 28th, 2008
Back when Pierre first conceived the eBay idea, he decided that the community should police itself. He did not have time to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers, so he instituted “feedback.” The concept was that buyers and sellers would leave each other honest feedback, which would weed out the bad community members.
New ebayers could easily see the feedback of a seller and decide whether or not to buy from this seller. The theory was if the seller had a lot of negative feedback, the buyers would go elsewhere to bid. In other words, Pierre made the assumption that humans are able to look out for themselves.
It is my opinion this theory has been proven wrong over and over again. One only has to have seen the feedback for the now infamous seller “Bargainland” to know that people cannot look out for themselves. With feedback at 90% and many times lower, they continued to sell 100’s of items a day. Burned buyers would post to the eBay boards regularly whining that they got “taken” by Bargainland. Seasoned eBayers would ask these buyers why they didn’t heed the feedback? It’s right there, pasted in the auction, why didn’t you heed it?
Maybe for the same reason the government had to make it a law that motorists wear seatbelts, or that manufacturers of hair dryers put a warning on the cord not to use it in the bathtub. What appears to be common sense, is not always so.
Because the Feedback theory has been busted, eBay is now taking matters into their own hands, well, sorta. Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback for buyers, even if the buyer threatens and harasses the seller, or files chargebacks, or doesn’t pay for the item. eBay is also stating they will “disadvantage” sellers with poor DSR’s in search. DSR’s are not even a year old, yet they are being given more importance than a sellers feedback, which in many cases has been built over many years of selling on eBay. That feedback you worked so hard to build will now basically get you nowhere, except kicked out of the Powerseller program if it falls below 98%.
So the Feedback myth is busted, and DSR’s are now the wave of the future. Since they are anonymous eBay feels they are more relevant. However, with only a 10% difference between sellers with the highest DSR’s and those with the lowest, how relevant are they?
That’s my opinion, what’s yours?
Cyn
February 17th, 2008
written by Steve Grossberg, IMA President
Back in September 2007 I posted to this blog, a piece titled “Looking at eBay’s DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings), Click Here to Read Part 1.
Yesterday I did a podcast interview with Ina Steiner from AuctionBytes, Click Here to Listen To Interview Some of the points and more I am going to be talking about below are covered in the interview. I encourage everyone to listen to the interview.
Okay for starters ebay says 15% of sellers currently qualify for the 4.8 DSR bonus. My question is what percent of the ebay listings or GMV does that represent. This has yet to be answered by my best guess is somewhere less then 2%. Of the top 100 seller date as referenced in post 1, there is only 1 of the top 100 USA based sellers according to the Nortica 500 that has a 4.8 DSR is shipping and handling. There was another 19 who had 4.6 or better. Ebay stated over and over how 66% of sellers have a 4.6 or better but again what percent of listings and GMV is this? Certainly it is not 66%, so always do you own due diligence. As the old saying goes trust but confirm.
A few days back I posted my own personal math on reviewing the situation now confronting sellers, and if it made sense to go after the 4.8 DSR.
I caution everyone to look at your own economics. Remember if you obtain the 4.8 DSR on all 4 you get back 15% of your FVF. Look at me for example.
Items listed 40,000
Items Sold = 8,000
ASP = $14
So $14 x 1.23 FVF x 8000 items = $9800 FVF paid
$9800 FVF paid x 15% discount = $1470
$1470 savings divided by 8000 items = 19 cents per item
So in essence I have to say to myself will a 19 cent reduction in my shipping and handling move my DSR from 4.4 to 4.8? The answer is heck no it will not. Even if it did the ebay discount is not guaranteed as it is a 30 day rolling average and some months I may get it and some not.
However I could simply raise my shipping and handling by 19 cents and guarantee my bonus that is equal to eBay’s bonus offered for obtaining all 4.8’s. I am not suggesting sellers raise shipping and handling fees and I am not indicating I am raising my own because I am not. However I am point out that ebay is not providing enough incentives to sellers here and putting the entire burden of fixing the problem on sellers. So in summary I would think most sellers would be best doing the math as I showed above for their own sales and evaluating whether it makes sense to lower your shipping and handling to strive for a 4.8.
I do not think anyone knows what the affect these changes will have including ebay themselves. My inclination here is to say run your business the way you always did and let the DSR’s fall where they may. We as sellers have very little control over DSR’s but we do have control over others aspects of our business such as
Describing items accurately
Providing good communications
Shipping items out timely
And charging what we as sellers feel is a fair shipping and handling
Remember ebay talked about other sites on the internet offering free shipping and handling etc. However they failed to talk about the ebay buyer mentality and the fact merchants here must offer their products much cheaper then anywhere else on the internet as buyers expect bargains on ebay. They also mentioned how buyers complain about shipping and handling after the fact. But are they complaining about total cost? I doubt it very much. I know when I sell a pokemon diamond nintendo DS game for $24.99 on ebay that I paid $28.50 for wholesale nobody is complaining about product price or even total cost. So the ebay buyer wants items at or below wholesale cost and want to be charged exact postage. Amazon offers prime members free shipping and handling and sells this same game for $35.00. My price on ebay with shipping and handling is $33.00. I cannot sell it lower and now ebay took another 83 cents of profit away from me leaving me with a whopping 2 cent profit per game if I had 100% sell through.
Ebay also made it clear if a seller is accurate in the description and sets clear expectations of what is being offered, then that is what is expected. So if your shipping and handling is clearly stated who cares what buyers think after the fact? I did all I could do and clearly stated what is being offered and for how much. I did not click the mouse on the other end and place their bid or hit the buy it now.
Now let’s talk about non paying bidders here for a minute. Ebay spokesperson Usher Lieberman has confirmed to the associated press recently some date I provided and that is 6% of ebay listings end up with NPB. Several times during the recent ebay e-eomm forum ebay folks stated 7 million items were listed to the site daily. So let’s do some math here.
7 million listings daily x 6% NPB = 420,000 NPB daily.
420,000 x average list price 70 cents (my guess here) = 294,000 dollars made DAILY on NPB. Multiply this out for a year and ebay brings in over 100 MILLION DOLLARS IN REVENUE FROM NON PAYING BIDDERS. That equates to nearly 2.5% of the total ebay company profits .
Forget about the re-listing credit ebay offers on NPB re-lists, as it means nothing unless you have a 100 %sell through rate (would that be nice, even a 30% would be nice)
So where is there an incentive on eBay’s part to stop these non paying bidders? How much does amazon or wlamart.com make on NPB? What is extremely disturbing here is that ebay also allows these same NPB leave us negative feedback and give us all 1’s on DSR. But wait, ebay says if a buyer does not respond to UPI or is suspended feedback will be removed. So then I ask does ebay back retroactively and re-calculate our DSRs from a time in history to see if we would have qualified for the bonus discount based on DSR rating after removals, and then provide us the discount?
What I mean here is let’s say in June you have a 4.5 shipping and handling DSR. In August, say you get 30 feedbacks removed because of suspended buyers. The feedbacks that were removed were left in June. So once the feedbacks are removed if ebay went back in time and looked again at the DSR for that June 30 day period your DSR would have been 4.6 on shipping and handling, does ebay now pay you the would have been June discount? I sincerely doubt it. So I see this as more spin. In essence the feedback removals will never help your current 30 day roiling DSR period so what good is it?
Now let’s look at eBay’s broken dispute console. Ebay says they will remove feedback if buyer does not respond. Okay almost everyone responds though. Quite often they select a standard response ebay offers via a check mark which reads “buyer indicates they will pay for item”
Well the buyer indicated that 15 days ago when they won the auction. Fool me once shame on you, but fool me twice shame on you. I immediately close these disputes and get my FVF back (not listing fees). Guess what no feedback removal because buyer responded.
Here is yet another issue, at least for media and some other sellers who list via catalogue. Lets frame this part by saying during the e-comm as the finding 2.0 break out sessions ebay folks hammered home the fact if cataloged listing (UPC) is available it is essential we use it.
So a few days ago I received a neutral feedback on item number 140201873682. God only knows what DSR I got because they are invisible to us. The feedback left reads as follows, “product is new, but only 1 person can play. It said 2 can play, huh” Well in the media category you list items for items specifics using UPC code. Ebay then has a data provider called Muze who provides detailed information about the item.
Additional Information about Fishermans Bass Club; Portions of this page Copyright 2001 – 2008 Muze Inc. All rights reserved. Players: 1-2 Players
Now even though this content is totally controlled by eBay and Muze, they cleverly attach a sellers user name to the bottom as follows: The seller, 1busyman, assumes full responsibility for the content of this listing and the item offered.
Also there is no way to even know the data ebay is providing via Muze is flawed as sellers cannot possibly go verify all eBay’s data. Additionally the only way to report bad data is in the SYI form and who uses the SYI form? I have not for 10 years now. So once again ebay is placing all the burden of fixing their issues onto the sellers.
Yet another issue in International shipping. Yesterday my ebay sales were analyzed and 30% of my items ship were to International destinations and it represented over 15 different countries. With 15 different countries customs and duties policies buyers have to deal with how can I control shipping time? Also if shipping time is long rest assured buyer will ding you on shipping and handling fees because any item taking a long time to receive will surely not be worth the price paid to ship in buyers minds.
In summary while eBay’s intentions appear be good with the recent changes announced, it will never work in my opinion. The only way to get sellers to lower shipping and handling fees would be for ebay to drastically lower the cost structure for sellers to sell on the site and bring back the buyers from yester-year. The fee changes only offered fee relief to about half the sellers at best. Fee relief would be needed to nearly 100% of the sellers and meaningful fee relief like a 20-30% reduction.
The next step would be for ebay to collect payments on behalf of sellers. But wait if ebay did this they would lose the 100 million in NPB revenue.
February 3rd, 2008
One day my curiousity got the better of my common sense. I decided to find out if running only Ebay auctions with low shipping would put me higher in the ebay search, and increase my sales. So I started a brand new Ebay selling account, and tweaked some things.
The new account has core auction listings only. I lowered my shipping from $4.00 to $2.75, and offered free shipping with the purchase of two items. I ship items the day after they are paid for instead of my normal two days a week. Otherwise, the level of communication is the same, and the auction format is the same. In other words, I made sure I was doing everything in the recommended Ebay 5 star way of thinking.
I found out that my placement in search is not better. My Detailed Sellers Ratings (DSRs) are lower on the new selling ID even though I am offering better service and lower shipping. And Ebay needs to work on the tools available to new sellers.
Why isn’t selling manager free! The only way a new seller can send a free automated shipping notification through Ebay is if postage is purchased through Ebay???? It seems pretty clear that selling tools should be free especially if DSRs, and buyer happiness are important. Why not make every selling tool free to new sellers, so they can increase buyer ecstasy?
And what is with the DSR ratings????? They can’t have any validity if the incredible service I am giving combined with super cheap shipping gets 4’s more often than 5’s. What gives?? I have to laugh when significantly lower shipping charges result in a lower DSR rating for shipping and handling charges.
The sell through rate is about 35-40% which is the exact same sell through rate for vintage jewelry on my old selling ID. I have had my new selling ID for a little over a month, and it is very obvious to me that I need to find a new product line that I can sell on Amazon. The new ID keeps the numbers right in my face. I calculated my costs, and found that I am making a whopping $2.50 per hour selling vintage jewelry on my new selling ID. So, unless the profit increases with my feedback, Amazon here I come!
I have to admit though that I got a thrill when I received my first star, and I felt a tingle up my spine when I got the e-mail from Ebay congratulating me for passing 25 feedback rating. So the magic in selling on Ebay for the first time is still there. I estimate that I will be getting a coveted “Meg Whitman” signed bronze powerseller certificate in the next month or so. I think I will have this one framed since it is sure to become a collectible.
Overall, I found this experience to be liberating. I have found out that tweaking the small things like shipping charges, and shipping time make no difference to buyers. And it makes no difference to placement in search. It does however create repeat buyers which has become the key to core auction success on Ebay in my opinion.
Jennie
December 6th, 2007
written by Steve Grossberg, IMA President
I was looking at eBays DSR’s this morning. I pulled up the top 100 active ebay sellers in the USA and compiled a list of their respective DSR’s
Here are my findings
Item as described – average score 4.79
Communication – average score 4.66
Shipping Time- average score 4.58
Shipping Fee- average score 4.41
Below is percentage of top 100 scoring 4.5 or better in the respective category
Item as described – 99% scoring 4.5 or better
Communication – 93% scoring 4.5 or better
Shipping Time- 81% scoring 4.5 or better
Shipping Fee- 44% scoring 4.5 or better
What is really disturbing here is looking at the shipping and handling. When eBay announced the DSR strategy, sellers were voicing concern that eBay was going to use shipping and handling as a rating category.
This is totally unfair of eBay to do since it is human nature when something to do with prices consumers pay, the ratings would always be lower than what is probably realistic or true. Consumers always want a better deal when it comes to pricing.
Also it is disturbing that of the 4 DSR categories, shipping and handling is the only category that buyers know 100% for sure upfront in advance what they are getting before they purchase or receive service or item from a merchant. The other 3 DSR categories the buyer will never know before the transaction is completed and item received the service they will get. Shipping and handling fees are known and it is totally unfair for a buyer to rate someone on something known in advance with 100% certainty. It is fair on the other 3 DSR where the buyer would never know in advance.
Not only that but I cannot find any other venue or seller rating system on the internet where buyers rate sellers on shipping and handling fees charged.
Whoever thought of putting down shipping and handling as a DSR category should be fired, in my opinion. This was an idiotic move on eBay’s part and something that will hurt sellers and hurt eBay. What was this person smoking who came up with this?
I encourage everyone to look at their own DSR and I would be willing to bet 90% plus have the lowest DSR rating on shipping and handling regardless if you are actually losing money on your shipping and handling fees charged.
As we all know eBay is the highest cost place of doing business on the internet.
Looking at my personal numbers, in the month of May 2007 my combined ebay/PayPal fees were $26,052.00 and sold 4800 items only that month on ebay, but 400 were never paid for, leaving 4400 paid item. My average ASP was $15.54, so simple math taking $26,052 and dividing by 4400 items sold gives me $5.92 paid to ebay/PayPal per item sold. Average ASP again was $15.54 so divide $5.92 into $15.54 – 38% ebay take rate.
And eBay has the audacity to allow buyers to rate sellers on shipping and handling? I would gladly lose money on my shipping and handling if eBay was to lower their fees or take rate. As we all know eBay fees are a function of buyer demand or sell through. The higher the buyer demand or conversions, the less per item we pay in eBay fees or lower take rate per item.
I think we all need to take a strong stance against eBay having shipping and handling as a DSR category as it will ultimately hurt most sellers and eventually hurt eBay. It is a DSR that is destined to backfire and consistently be the lowest scored DSR.
I would rather see ebay replace this DSR with Would you buy from this seller again?
What eBay is doing here by adding shipping and handling as a DSR category is encouraging sellers to lower the shipping and handling, regardless if they are actually losing money on the shipping and handling fees charged vs. paid. I am willing to bet the vast majority of sellers will still be rated lower on the shipping and handling DSR then any other.
If eBay does not change their ways I think it would be great for all sellers to show their eBay fees paid in every listing. In other words, in my listings I could add to the template:
“In May 2007 $5.92 of the total purchase price of this item went to eBay for eBay/PayPal fees.”
This would be no different from what eBay is doing to sellers by having a DSR rating, than it would be for sellers clearly alerting eBay buyers of the factual information regarding the fees they the buyer pay eBay. Because ultimately it is the buyer paying those fees to eBay since sellers who are not recouping their eBay fees, will obviously not be selling on eBay.
Now honestly I do not think the best way of handling things is doing what I described above as I would be disparaging my business partner eBay. But obviously eBay has no problem in disparaging their business partners, us the sellers by having shipping and handling as a DSR category.
My eBay’s fees are my biggest expense next to cost of goods. Looking at my expenses of running budget video games, in eBay is 33% of my total expenses paid. Ebay is by far the biggest expense and eBay gets a lot more then I pay out in payroll even. How can our highest paid employee stab us in the back like this? Do they not know where their bread is buttered? Ebay, wake up and smell the coffee, stop disparaging and working against your sellers (customers) and start working with us. Our pain is ultimately your pain, what don’t you understand about this?
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
Click Here To Read Part 2
September 17th, 2007