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Lynda Talgo of eBay’s Trust and Safety team clarified the criteria used in evaluating Seller Non-Performance, or SNP last week. She specified that no user would be subject to SNP restrictions due to a single negative of neutral feedback and emphasized yet againd that while detailed seller is not currently a factor in SNP evaluation, it will be in the future.
Further, SNP penalties are divided into two categories:
Low-volume sellers: Low-volume sellers are those with no more than 2 negative feedback, no neutral feedback, and less than $3000 sales volume over a 90-day period, would typically receive a 14-day full selling restriction. After the 14-day period has passed, selling privileges will be automatically reinstated. (As with all selling restrictions, the seller can continue to bid and communicate.)
Higher-volume sellers: For sellers who are not low-volume sellers, and who have a buyer dissatisfaction rate of greater than 5% (but less than 10%), the restriction is a reduction in sales volume. Sellers will be able to continue selling and listing items, up to 75% of their historical weekly volume based on their rolling 90 day history of completed sales. (This is based on dollar sales volume, not on number of items sold.) We manually review restricted accounts after 30 days to determine if there has been improvement in their satisfaction rates. If a seller’s buyer dissatisfaction rate is brought down to less than 5%, the restriction will be lifted. If the buyer dissatisfaction rate remains greater than 5%, the sales volume will continue to be reduced. Additionally, sellers whose performance substantially worsens during this restriction period may be subject to more significant consequences.
Volume restrictions are defined as “average completed weekly sales volume over a rolling 90 day period.” SNP evaluations occur during a 90-day rolling window. If you have over a 5% buyer dissatisfaction rate during the past three-months, you will incur SNP restrictions and penalties. If your dissatisfaction rate increases to 10%, you become subject to the harsher penalties listed above.
Interestingly, negative feedbacks left by non-paying bidders will still count against a seller’s buyer dissatisfaction score:
It may seem that any negative feedback from a non-paying bidder is undeserved, but this is not always the case. For example, buyers may decide not complete payment because the seller has attempted to change the terms of the transaction after the conclusion of the listing. Clearly, this is an area that is not black and white. We’re continuing to evaluate whether all types of negative feedback should be included in evaluating seller non-performance.
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14 Responses to “eBay Seller Non-Performance Policy Clarified”
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Ebay’s Seller Non-Performance policy is a bunch of crap. It makes a punching bag out of sellers. Go to AuctionBytes.com. They blog all of Ebay’s dirty laundry.
As if ebay policies weren’t stupid enough already. Seriously why don’t they just suspend every seller whos feedback is under 99.9% and stars are under 5 then they can sit back and watch their money flow slow to a nearly non existant drizzle /end sarcasm. They have the gaul to rate sellers on their performance when their own performance is nothing short of pathetic. Days to answer emails and even then the chimps that work there can only manage to cut and paste the same old BS that’s used to reply to just about every question. These idiots are in self-destruct mode introducing all these ridiculous policies, I’m going to be there with Christmas lights on when they go out of business. Bunch of morons……
if you are holding stock in ebay, i would sell fast.
ebay has held sellers hostage where the amount of money they spend on listings no longer determines the amount of search visibility you recieve.
this business model is flawed in so many ways and sellers who spend serious money on ebay will rather spend their money elsewhere then to be held hostage by a seller satisfaction rating.
i spend over 15k a month on ebay and they termed my account because my feedback fell to 95%.
absolutely ridiculous. this is not an isoltated incident. ebay forgets that they generate revenue from SELLERS not BUYERS..
this company will be tanking fast, this is just the beginning. spread the word.
Why don’t we post up about another auction site, spread the word.
there must be another one that doesn’t punish sellers?
I am a new seller on Ebay (since around a month ago). I have been selling lots of items and keep getting restrictions placed on my account (evern though I have a feedback of 69 and no negative or neutral feedbacks). Repeated email requests have garnered the following information:
1. My account has been restricted
2. They cannot clarify why it has been restricted
3. They are unable to let me know when these restrictions will be lifted
4. They are unable to quantify what these restrictions limits are
I have a total hit and miss run on when I can and can’t relist products. Ebay was meant to be another sales channel to supplement sale son our own online shops - but they are making life so hard for us that I think we will just give up.
I find it astounding that they have managed to become as big as they are. Total muppets
THE RIDDLE OF THE “NON-PERFORMING” EBAY GOLD POWER SELLER!
“There are lies, damn lies, and then there are [eBay] statistics”.
On the night of July 17, 2008, without prior notice, eBay removed from their site all of my company’s 380 listings and sent me an email stating the reason for this action was: “seller non-performance”; this after more than nine years and tens of thousands of perfect selling (and buying) transactions on eBay!
On Friday morning July 18, 2008, after discovering that my listings had all disappeared, I immediately called my personal eBay “Gold Power Seller” representative’s phone number (only available to sellers with sales totaling more than $10,000.00 per month), and asked him how could this be? He said “this looks like a mistake” and said he would call me right back, and within ten minutes he did. He said: “I checked with the trust and safety people here and in the last “rolling” 30-day sample period it appears you had one “negative” and one “neutral” comment in “feedback”, and you dipped too low in one or more of the four categories of your DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings), so that places you in the bottom 1% of all eBay sellers for customer satisfaction, and they have restricted you from listing on the site because of seller non-performance”.
WHAT!!!! eBay made the decision to shutter my business of nine years based on their automated analysis of data from their voluntary buyer satisfaction survey, that they collected over a single 30-day sampling period, and included a total of only 42 of my transactions all of which were completed successfully. How could this be?
Addendum
After eBay’s “trust and safety” department reviewed the letter (printed below) on August 6th, I received two eBay “form” emails the early morning of August 7th: one reinstating my “selling privileges” , the other warning me I would be removed again from the site if my current 95% “customer satisfaction” rating (determined from eBay’s statistics!) deteriorated in any way in the next thirty days. The odds do not look good!
Note: if the following story seems unbelievable, be assured eBay’s trust and safety department reviewed and confirmed that all details relating to the eBay site are correct, and all of my statements can be corroborated.
First a history of who I am, and what I have accomplished using eBay as my business partner:
My name is David Riddle, I have been self employed for thirty six years as an inventor / designer / manufacturer and marketer of technical products in the fields of electronics, optics and mechanical devices, and have been successfully satisfying hundreds of thousands of customers long before eBay existed.
I decided to become a selling “member” of the eBay “community” in December of 1998 under the user name: DAVIDRIDDLE, and have since sold millions of dollars of re-manufactured and fully guaranteed products and services that I call “tools of creativity and productivity” to many thousands of very satisfied individuals and corporations around the world.
With long hours of work from myself and my staff in the past nine years, we have achieved a total eBay “feedback rating” of more than 10,800 customer comments with 99.5% positive responses.
This success is even more astounding when one considers that unlike the majority of eBay sellers that offer their used items for sale “as-is” without any guarantee of any kind, all of our eBay listings and sales are comprised of fully-guaranteed and calibrated specialized high technology equipment supplied to very critical and demanding professional customers.
We not only provide a money back guarantee on every one of our products, but also, more significantly we guarantee “suitability of application”; when our customer receives our products we guarantee the items will function exactly as we described, and will accomplish the task as the customer requires.
Every one of these complex technical products that we offer and deliver in perfect operating condition, requires hours of total hands-on analysis, repair, calibration and testing prior to being expertly packaged for safe shipment through what I call the shipping companies “trail of torture”!
We achieve these results through a commitment to customer support / assistance and guaranteed satisfaction before and after each sale, by providing a toll-free telephone number in multiple places in every eBay listing, in every email and document. This toll-free line is answered by my staff and me personally, nine hours a day, five days a week, from the U.S. and Canada.
This toll-free number is very rarely offered by other eBay sellers and is a direct communication link between potential customers, customers involved in purchases and inquiries of any kind; we vigorously promote “free, expert, customer service”– a rare commodity in today’s society.
Over the last nine plus years on eBay, our phone records indicate that I have personally spoken to and advised more than 45,000 customers, potential customers, and other eBay sellers from whom I have purchased. These “one-on-one” conversations provide invaluable insight into what are my customer’s needs and how they are thinking and feeling about my business practices. In addition, these all important conversations form the basis of my business decisions as to what products and services to provide and to whom I should sell them.
After all of our hard work, unrivaled commitment to our customers and demonstrated responsibility in business dealings, one can only imagine how I might feel being deemed by eBay to be a “non-performing” seller. I can tell you how I feel: disbelief, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. Sound familiar?
These are the emotions of loss and death: the death of my business and the loss of my passion which is happily advising and encouraging my eBay customers to turn their intangible ideas into tangible products and services by providing them with these tools of creativity and productivity while enthusiastically offering free expert engineering solutions and advice, whether they purchased something from me or not.
In addition to ending my business partnership, eBay’s decision has also stopped, something very dear to my heart, my altruistic program of offering a free school for primary and secondary “at risk” students (as I was in school) where I along with other volunteers will demonstrate and guide these students through the real-world process of “Invention and Entrepreneurship”.
The basis of this program depended on using eBay as a pivotal component in test-marketing student’s product ideas at low cost all over the world, then manufacturing only their successful creations and using the EBay site to sell these products, allowing these young entrepreneurs to personally profit from their ideas.
The facility plans included a fully outfitted “model shop” for prototype product fabrication, graphic arts / photo studio, video and audio production studio and computer business center all housed in a 2500 square foot portion of my building.
The students were to have used this facility at no charge, and, with the direction of myself and other volunteer mentors, were to experience the hands-on work of: “conception to execution to marketing to sale”– the process that I and every successful inventor and entrepreneur uses. Now this dream may never be realized.
Now, a description of how eBay uses statistics to determine “buyer satisfaction”
eBay’s original method since 1995 for keeping track of satisfactory transactions on the site is called “feedback” where both the buyer and seller could voluntarily assign a “feedback rating” to each other for every individual “ended” auction listing or “buy-it-now” listing on the site; this feedback is normally non-revocable and accumulates for each buyer and seller from their first transaction to date. The available options are as follow: “Positive” (add one point to feedback score), “Neutral” (no score change), or “Negative” (subtract one point from feedback score)
In 2007, eBay added an additional component to the buyers voluntary feedback reporting; called the “Detailed seller Rating”or DSR. eBay promoted DSR as a way to provide sellers with a more detailed report of their buyers satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in four categories, each with a 0 to 5 “star” rating selection as shown below in the exact wording the buyer sees if they bother filling out the DSR ratings (remember, there is no requirement or reciprocal benefit for the buyer to fill out this section, as there is for regular feedback):
“Click on the stars to rate more details of the transaction. These ratings will not be seen by the seller.
How accurate was the item description?
* Very inaccurate, ** Inaccurate, *** Neither inaccurate nor accurate, **** Accurate, ***** Very accurate
How satisfied were you with the seller’s communication?
* Very unsatisfied, ** Unsatisfied, *** Neither unsatisfied nor satisfied, **** Satisfied, ***** Very satisfied
How quickly did the seller ship the item?
* Very slowly, ** Slowly, *** neither slowly or Quickly, **** Quickly, ***** Very Quickly
How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?
* Very unreasonable, ** Unreasonable, *** neither unreasonable nor reasonable, **** reasonable,
***** Very reasonable
Remember – these detailed seller ratings are anonymous, so please feel free to leave honest ratings about your buying experience.”
I suggest you should carefully note what phrases and words eBay has chosen to use in the DSR survey shown above: “These ratings will not be seen by the seller”, (and again): “Remember - these detailed ratings are anonymous”, (and the five stars rating choice): “Very accurate”, “Very satisfied”, “Very quickly” (and) “Very reasonable”: I will comment on this in the following text.
My DSR ratings slowly began accumulating, and we were always showing “4+ stars” in all four categories along with our regular feedback running at its usual 99.5%. I naively didn’t pay much attention to this new rating system; I saw this as yet another one of eBay management’s many demonstrations of: “Look were doing our job by improving the eBay experience”– an exercise I’ve seen many times in the past nine years. Why would I care, knowing that our entire focus is on customer satisfaction and the feedback we receive every day is directly from the “customer’s mouth” in those one-on-one conversations through our toll-free help line? In addition, I personally called almost every customer that left a negative feedback to find out why they did?
Then, in May of 2008, eBay announced that they were changing the feedback system in the following ways: sellers and buyers feedback rating (positives divided by total feedback = %) would now be calculated with the data from only the past “rolling” year to date, eBay threw out more than 8-1/2 years of my satisfied customers!
More significantly, now only buyers could leave negative or neutral feedback for sellers, meaning sellers no longer had any means to note unsatisfactory buyers’ actions on the site; the reciprocal component of the original feedback system was lost (eBay claimed this change was to prevent sellers from threatening buyers with “retaliatory feedback” if the buyer decided to give the seller a negative feedback comment). Personally I have never given “non-performing” buyers negative feedback, I just simply called them and asked; what’s wrong?
If none of this seems to make any sense, then eBay’s other change to the feedback system will astound you. eBay decided that the “neutral” choice buyers and sellers typically had used in the past to denote an “average” transaction, not worthy of a positive, but not so bad as to give the seller a negative (and not counted in the feedback score in any way), would now be counted as a “negative”, subtracted from the sellers overall positive score, and without informing the person leaving the neutral it was actually a negative!
My personal feedback score went from 99.5% to 98.6% because of the truncated data points and the “neutrals as negatives”change. Apparently eBay received so much uproar from sellers about all of these changes, and especially this last one, they elected to rescind only the “neutral as negative”component and promised to make any negatives that sellers had received in this manner be removed retroactively “sometime in August”.
I am busy seven days a week meeting my customers needs; I don’t have time to spend perusing the voluminous eBay site for changes and announcements. Because my eBay power seller representative didn’t tell me, I missed the fact that to be a power seller, I would now be required to maintain a minimum DSR rating of 4.5 stars (90%) in all four stated categories. And most importantly; I would be barred from selling on the eBay site if my combined feedback and DSR scores dipped below eBay’s arbitrary threshold now determined from a single rolling 30-day sample period (not the newly announced 12-month period I assumed).
The following is where eBay’s statistics and the vagaries of the human condition (what I call “the ultimate variable”) collide:
Does eBay truly believe that their volunteer feedback and DSR survey can provide a highly accurate assessment of seller performance?
Are they confident enough to terminate long term power sellers using this feedback and DSR data based on so incredibly few samples?
Does eBay not understand that the repeated statements: “….will not be seen by the seller”, and ….”these detailed seller ratings are anonymous” will encourage more severe negative ratings?
Do they believe that people will voluntarily give sellers an all ”A” (5-stars) every time?
Do the buyers know an all “B” (4-stars) score in every category gives the power seller a failing grade?
Will most buyers who were clearly told there would be a two-week delivery time on a custom-made product order remember and give the seller 5-stars (“Very quickly”) on “shipping time”?
How can any eBay buyer possibly have any knowledge of what it costs in materials and labor to properly prepare and package products for safe shipment, or keep track of the always increasing actual freight and fuel surcharges and then expect them to select “Very reasonable” for “Shipping and handling charges”?
Did you get all A’s in school? Have you ever filled out a business satisfaction survey, or any survey for that matter, and given all top scores? How many warrantee card surveys did you not fill out when all you wanted to do was use and enjoy the product?
Are you human? Aren’t you more likely to fill out a survey if you are upset and then want to make sure “they” know just how upset you are by filling it out in the most negative way possible?
It’s very hard to imagine that eBay’s management could be so ignorant of basic statistical methods and the guaranteed inaccuracies of voluntary surveys conducted in the manner eBay is doing (for proof, Google “survey accuracy”). eBay’s methodology completely ignores the human condition, assuming that all buyers will behave like a computer, applying a fixed metric to each question. Are they expecting people to always be rational in a society where many of our citizens function mainly on an emotional basis!
Could eBay management possibly be this ignorant of reality and at the same time have such incredible hubris? Or, could this be eBay’s agenda to rid the site of all of the unique individual sellers who have been supporting them all these years, allowing eBay to profit by using its brand-name recognition to help push electronic shopping carts filled with new consumer products supplied by large corporations around the internet?
When I first discovered eBay, I immediately recognized this gathering of individual sellers and buyers as an historic shift for marketing and commerce; “cottage industry can now be global”. I jumped in with both feet, and as my success grew, I became a huge eBay booster, encouraging and helping hundreds of other business people I met to “get on eBay and take advantage of this huge opportunity to expand their market reach”. Many of those people I encouraged are now successful eBay Power Sellers using the site as their sole means of marketing and sales. What do I tell these people now? Many have called to offer support but also to voice their anger about the injustice and absurdity of what eBay has done to me, my employees and my business…
They also voice their fear that it will happen to them, as I am not alone in this: there are thousands of eBay sellers who have recently suffered from eBay’s current managements’ travesty of un-tested “improvement ideas” that produced only misjudgement and unjust actions; further damaging our beloved eBay community.
Is this anyway to treat your business partner? I certainly don’t think so, do you?
Call me toll-free @ 800-544-3746, 9AM-6PM, M-F, PST. Tell me what you think, David Riddle
Hello, I have been manhandled the same way and feel very frustrated. I have spent a lot of money to make this work. I am now banned from selling with a 98% rating. I am stuck with a lot of inventory and no place to sell it. Good luck and God Bless
Danny Wyatt SATMAN1954
Surely a class action lawsuit should be brought against them.
I also have fell foul to disgruntled buyers who feel they should receive their item on day of purchase (you muppets).
eBays customer service should also have a feedback rating, and trust me it wouldnt last an hour before receiving a non performance email preventing it from the right to comment on other peoples sales.
I cant wait for the worst company in the world to fall from its own grace, and there is a way to help them fall.
If your buying account is still active, leave other sellers anegative for all sales and 1 star on the DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings), cant see them staying in business for long if everyone did this.
My account has been restricted as well for having 98.8% posative feedback, I have been on ebay for two years and sold over 1000 items but due to 2 newbies that cant use a phone i got restricted. this is very unfair and their pathetic so called special help line for power sellers cannot do anything. The trust and safety team do not reply to e-mails and are in itself very untrustworthy and unsafe
**** Ebay.
They removed all my listing for non performance despite me having a 98.9% feedback rating, and being a power seller. What kind of BS is that. God I hate ebay and their bs policies. enough is enough am pulling the plug. FU Ebay
Wow, its good to see so many Saisfied Ebay sellers, Keep up the good work Ebay. You @$$holes! You are shooting yourselves in your own foot! That’s exactly what you want to do in an ecomonic slow down…restrict and limit selling! Congrats!
Guys get this..
I’ve been selling on ebay since 2002! I’m a powerseller and have over 900 feedback.
Thats real f*&king smart block people from making money in a recession.
(above doesn’t make sense, the site edited what I wrote) Heres my problem ebay has restricted me from selling for having a 4.0 out of 5.0 on shipping time. As a seller whos been selling since 2002. Ebay is my main income I need to be able to sell. 4.1 or higher is a little ridiculous on standards. The restriction should be 2.5/3.0 or lower. Blocking my account from selling for 30 days to 12 months is unacceptable for me. Especially since I pay over $100-200 a month in selling fees and a monthly store rate. It’s not like I have poor feedback or a 2.0 on shipping time. Also I’m just a single person not a huge warehouse. Your new standards work for big companies but not for small sellers. People demand 2-3 day shipping times because they are used to companies liek amazon, newegg ect. I remember the old days on ebay.. these changes are bad for the company. People like myself are looking into other places to sell craigslist, google checkout stores ect. The money I spent for fees will go right into advertising my own website. Ebay made life easy for me but now thats its a headache I’m considering other options.
I found out last night as I was trying to post three items for auction that Ebay had taken away my seller privileges for 30 days because one or more of my DSR (detailed seller ratings)had slipped below 4.1 ratings! They were kind enough to let me know that I still had buyer privileges…as if!!! They also told me that if I raised my DSR’s I would get my seller privileges back…hmm, how does one accomplish that without the ability to sell which is how the DSR’s are tallied?? It is a mystery to me! My feedback is a 98.4% positive with one neutral and one negative in the past six months. Those figures speak more clearly of my abilities as a seller than the damn DSR’s! DSR’s are only a way for buyers to abuse the rating system. These ratings are posted anonymously with no way for sellers to refute false negative ratings from buyers AND Ebay encourages buyers to go ahead and leave “honest” ratings because of the anonymity…what a load of hogwash!!! I had a buyer from the same state as myself (Idaho)who asked for a reduced shipping rate even though my auctions clearly stated that I chraged a flat fee to anyone anywhere regardless of location (except international); I went ahead and gave her a discount on shipping and when she didn’t receive her package as fast as she thought she should,(again my policy was clearly stated in the auction; a 10 business day shipping policy, not including weekends or holidays), she filed a paypal dispute against me; I won. Of course this person left false negative DSR’s for me, Ebay hasn’t given her any incentive to be fair or honest. Of four recent Paypal disputes filed against me for not receiving items on time, I won all four, but this information is not posted on Ebay where others can see it, it is private correspondence on Paypal only. Buyers like this woman and Ebay as a company should be ashamed of their treatment of sellers!!! Sellers are what fills Ebay’s coffers not the buyers. It is the sellers that pay listing fees, relisting fees, template fees, picture posting fees, storefront fees, and final value fees…without sellers there are no buyers! And let’s not forget the Paypal fees (Paypal is a subsidiary of Ebay) No one is perfect in this world, most of all not Ebay as evinced by this shameful treatment of it’s lifeblood, sellers!
Ps-I am not going to participate as a buyer on Ebay and be a sponsor and co-conspirator of this hypocrisy.