Thursday, April 24th, 2008

eCommerce Summit Q&A: Part 1

As promised, I will be posting Q&A sessions on Ink in multiple parts to make sure I cover all questions posed both here on the blog already, and at the eCommerce Summit. The following questions were asked immediately following Lorrie’s keynote yesterday.

Q. Based on a group study this morning, 2 out of 5 of the current PowerSellers with the best store listings on eBay Pulse will not qualify for PowerSeller status based on DSR ratings, when that goes into effect. How are you going to address this issue?

Lorrie Norrington, President of Marketplace Operations: It’s true that some sellers won’t make the grade with DSRs. When we put out the DSR requirements, we said you would need to have a 4.5 or above to qualify for PowerSeller status. We also gave sellers until July 1 to bring up their DSRs. Based on what we presented earlier, it’s obvious that a high percentage of PowerSellers are not only making the grade with DSRs but they’re qualifying for discounts. Sellers need to reach out to us and their TSAMs because clearly there are some best practices out there to ensure folks get the highest DSR possible; whether it’s over communicating or immediate feedback, for example.

Todd Lutwak, Sr. Director of Seller Development and Programs: The sellers have done an excellent job raising their DSRs. I think that sample that you took locally is definitely different from the metrics we’re seeing. Over 80% of PowerSellers have 4.5 DSR or above. We’re continuing to monitor as we progress to that July date.

Lorrie: I’d like to add that we really appreciate the work that PeSA is doing here. The educational work is going to be really important for sellers that want to get their high DSRs. To Todd’s point, 80% are doing it now and we want to have more.

Q. You said that there were some retaliatory remarks that prompted the change to Feedback? Can you elaborate on that?

Lorrie: I was referring to the fact that sellers were 8 times more likely to leave a retaliatory negative remark and that is why we changed the Feedback system.

Q. What was happening there? Can you talk more about this?

Matt Halprin, VP of Trust and Safety: The Feedback system was set up to make sure that both parties were accountable to each other. What has happened over time is that sellers have increasingly held off on leaving feedback until the buyer leaves feedback to make sure they don’t get a negative rating without being able to counter that. Sellers used to do this twice as much as buyers; now it is eight times as much. So basically buyers were no longer willing to hold sellers accountable for their performance; which is why 90% of sellers have positive feedback scores of 99% and above. As a result, buyers don’t trust the feedback system because they can’t discriminate between great sellers, average sellers or poor sellers. We needed to fix that because eBay is based on trust. If buyers don’t have trust they won’t send money or bid as much on an item (we’ve all talked about the notion of ASPs not being quite as high as they used to be). It is up to us to help your economics by making sure that buyers are more confident when they bid. Which is why we changed the system and with this more honest of a system we’ll be able to do things like elevate items in search and reward sellers for top performance with bigger discounts. All of which will create more of a race to the top than we’ve had before.

Lorrie: We announced this change back in January and it goes into effect in May. My advice is as soon as your buyers pay you, give them positive feedback.

Q. I was at the Catalyst Conference and I’m really excited to hear about some of things you’re introducing and to see you guys out here in force. You said it today, and it came up back at the Catalyst Conference about the .02 points discrepancy for non-domestic DSRs. There are some areas of this world that just don’t have the same postal service as we do here in the US. There is a distinct drag in Italy for example, really slow. Another is Slovakia. I shouldn’t have to tell the Canadian customer that his mail system is stinky – he already knows it – but it won’t stop him from dinging me on shipping. I know you look at it from the 50,000 foot level but it would be great if you could address it more granularly so maybe I could qualify for the 15% discount next time. [Applause]

Matt: Although this is the first time I’ve heard about Slovakia, it’s not the first time I’ve heard about Italy or Canada. We’re aware of it and there are a variety of ways we’re looking at addressing it. I don’t think right now that we have a tool that allows you to lock out a country like Italy for example (if you simply choose not to ship there) but that is one end of the spectrum. Just to share one bit of information, and I admit it is 50,000 foot information, but it is very telling for us. We thought that all Cross Border Trade DSRs were going to be a little bit lower than domestic DSRs because of shipping. Actually, around 50% of sellers have cross border trade DSRs that are equal to or higher than their domestic ones. So obviously there are some best practices in place that are helping address that possible situation. Now, I want to make sure I affirm what you said – we are looking directly at Italy and Canada to address that specific issue.

Q. Talking about shipping. Shipping & Handling cost seems to be the lowest DSR for most eBay sellers, I think we can all agree there. Shoppers love free-shipping. Can you talk about how eBay looks at free-shipping relative to DSR scores as well as free-shipping economic models that work for sellers in the eBay landscape?

Matt: Shipping and handling is the lowest DSR of the four but I do want to point out that 72% of all DSRs left for S&H are 5s. Frankly, I think that means the DSRs are working because we all know that S&H charges on eBay are higher than the Internet on the whole. So we have an online shopping environment that has set buyer expectations and we all need to find ways to address that together.

Dinesh Lathi, VP of Seller Experience: The fact of the matter is that free shipping is the standard for eCommerce now. Sellers who want to meet buyer expectations need to aspire to that. It is our job, the people here on stage, to help you do that. So, there are definite things in the works at eBay that will help you accomplish that. Look for that soon.

Lorrie: And, in the end, I think it’s pretty straightforward that you need to be very specific when you identify shipping costs and set that expectation and again, to Matt’s point, there are a lot of people out there getting 5s for S&H.

Q. I understand the retaliatory feedback concept. I don’t agree with it but I understand it. What I don’t understand is why DSRs are anonymous. If we have customers leaving valid DSRs we want to know who they are so we can make things right. If we can’t do anything to counter their feedback, we should be able to see what they’re leaving us. [Applause]

Matt: This is a tough issue and it’s one that we haven’t settled on inside eBay yet. I’ll explain why they are the way they are now but also talk about the fact that they may be changing. First of all, why wouldn’t we make it completely transparent? The answer is that we have seen sellers who send emails after receiving a negative, (for example, they have received a 3 or 4 from a buyer) and the seller begins to harass the buyer. I get examples of this sent to me from buyers all the time. The harassment is what we’re really trying to get away from. eBay really is the only place where a merchant can kick the buyer on their way out the door. This is the reason why we might keep it anonymous. The argument for making it completely transparent is very obvious. It will help sellers learn about what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. So what I think you’ll see at a minimum is us moving to a place where we provide the information in different ways – whether it’s by geography or by category – or go all the way and provide complete transparency. We’re not sure yet, we want to monitor how the new feedback system works before making our final decision.

Lorrie: It is an important point though. I think it’s obvious that our intent is to put more trust back into the system. We think this new Feedback system does that. Like Matt said, we haven’t even rolled it out yet so we’re just going to have to see how it goes. I think it’s a great point of learning for us. I think this is a good time to emphasize what we’re trying to get across to sellers. First of all, we want an incredibly open dialogue with you and to listen to you and there will be places where we continue to roll out new initiatives or experiments that we’ll want your input on. There will also be places where we won’t change because we think it’s best for the marketplace. But the open and honest dialogue with each other can only help. So, in the case of the new feedback system, we haven’t rolled it out yet, and as we do roll it out we’ll learn from it.

Q. We have a shipping calculator on our system so that anyone that comes and makes a bid can calculate the shipping cost before they make a decision to buy and yet we still only have a 4.6 for shipping. We would like to be able to respond to them to find out why they’re not leaving a 5 even though they knew the cost was coming.

Matt: With the new system I think everyone in this room will get more specific information on a transaction that has not gone perfectly well. Buyers will now have 80 characters to provide feedback and detail all without the fear of a negative retaliatory feedback.

Lorrie: And I think this is exactly the kind of input we’re hoping to get here. Our intent is to make your experience better so it’s this kind of feedback that helps get us there.

At this point, the keynote Q&A was ended to allow for the first sessions to commence. Immediately following this initial Q&A session, all eBay representatives moved into the panel room for an hour of further questions and discussion. That one is coming next time.

Cheers,
RBH

Tagged: competitive, cross border trade, dinesh+lathi, dsr, ecommerce, ecommerce summit, feedback, lorrie+norrington, Marketplace, matt+halprin, online trade, pricing

StumbleUpon

80 Responses on this post. Click to add yours.

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 »

CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.25.2008 at 2:48 pm Said:

“The sellers have done an excellent job raising their DSRs. I think that sample that you took locally is definitely different from the metrics we’re seeing.”

Seems to strengthen the argument that the data eBay chooses to recognize is subjective to suit their purposes, so therefore unreliable. The sellers on eBay Pulse represent the ones offering items which bring in the most traffic and attention to the site. what happens to eBay’s traffic and site attention when those sellers decide to take their items elsewhere?

“Lorrie: I was referring to the fact that sellers were 8 times more likely to leave a retaliatory negative remark and that is why we changed the Feedback system.”

eBay definition of “retaliatory” is incorrect. It assumes that just because the feedback was left last must mean that its sole purpose was retaliation, rather than waiting to leave accurate feedback on the entire transaction upon its conclusion.

“What has happened over time is that sellers have increasingly held off on leaving feedback until the buyer leaves feedback to make sure they don’t get a negative rating without being able to counter that.”

Wrong. Sellers were waiting so they could leave an accurate feedback which consisted of the entire transaction. Should a buyer not receive a neg if they perform a charge back, after receiving the item and not sending it back? Should a buyer like that have a 100% positive rating, simply because they initially paid, but ultimately reneged on the payment? Should a buyer not receive a neg if they receive a new item, use it, and then try to return it for a full refund? Basically, seller’s used negs to keep the marketplace informed about such scamming buyers that eBay allowed into the site. If eBay actively booted such buyers, then sellers wouldn’t have need to keep the community informed on such situations. If eBay reacted quickly when such reports were made by sellers, instead of ignoring or waiting for a “pattern”, sellers wouldn’t need to leave negs, because the buyer would be NARU.

Ebay created this atmosphere, and the need for sellers to leave negs, because eBay failed to make the enviroment safe for sellers. Ebay needs to fix their end of the problem, before taking away a seller’s only protection and voice in the transaction.

“Sellers used to do this twice as much as buyers; now it is eight times as much.”

That is most likely because eBay is attracting scamming buyers at least eight times more than they once were. How does the higher rate of so called “retaliatory feedback” compare to the increase in buyer traffic? If the traffic has increased, and thereby the percentage of scamming buyers have increased, then it stands to reason that the use of neg feedback against these scamming buyers would have increased as well.

It is ridiculous to think that sellers just started leaving negs against good buyers. They were leaving it against buyers would abused or tried to circumvent the system.

“So basically buyers were no longer willing to hold sellers accountable for their performance; which is why 90% of sellers have positive feedback scores of 99% and above.”

Buyers can create a new id on a whim, and eBay prevents a seller from automatically blocking a 0 feedback bidder, so such a scenario is ridiculous. On the flip side, I once had a non-paying bidder, who did respond to the UPID, but did not pay. I would have loved to leave that buyer a neg, as a warning to other sellers, but I didn’t. Why? Because I was afraid that this non-paying bidder would leave a retaliatory neg for me. I was not going to allow my selling reputation to be damaged by a non-paying bidder, which eBay allowed to continue using the site. It is much harder to establish a new selling id, that buyers will trust, than it is for a buyer to establish a new buying id.

<i”It is up to us to help your economics by making sure that buyers are more confident when they bid.”

How about helping the seller’s economics by providing a safer enviroment to sell in, by getting rid of these scamming buyers quickly and not allowing them to create new ids on the site?

“Which is why we changed the system and with this more honest of a system we’ll be able to do things like elevate items in search and reward sellers for top performance with bigger discounts.”

It is not an “honest system” when only one party can leave accurate feedback. It is not an “honest system” when all buyers will have inflated 100% scores. It is not an “honest system” when scamming buyers can target smaller sellers, more now than ever before, because they know that smaller sellers do not have the volume to absorb a negative compared to a higher volume seller.

“All of which will create more of a race to the top than we’ve had before.”

All they did is make things harder for sellers, and rolled out an even bigger and brighter red carpet for scamming buyers.

“Frankly, I think that means the DSRs are working because we all know that S&H charges on eBay are higher than the Internet on the whole. ”

Really. I’d love to know where. I charge more for shipping on my other site, than eBay sellers do. When I buy online for big retailers I pay more for shipping (that eBay) and usually have to wait a week or more for the item to be shipped out.

“The fact of the matter is that free shipping is the standard for eCommerce now. Sellers who want to meet buyer expectations need to aspire to that.”

Wrong, and even more important, it is an impractical expectation for the type of seller eBay was created for. Unless, of course, they want to get rid of the casual sellers all together, and have only professional sellers who may be able to accomplish this. Either way, it won’t attract this professional seller, as I know I can charge for shipping and still sell my items for higher elsewhere. Losing money on shipping is not an incentive for any seller to participate in such a venue.

“to Matt’s point, there are a lot of people out there getting 5s for S&H.”

Yet, even more that are not? Since when did a few represent and overwhelming pattern that these sellers are doing what others are not? More of eBay’s fuzzy data.

“The answer is that we have seen sellers who send emails after receiving a negative, (for example, they have received a 3 or 4 from a buyer) and the seller begins to harass the buyer.”

First, was it simply an inquiry to find out what was wrong (what I’ve read mostly) or true harassment? Second, was the buyer’s rating fair, based on the auctions representation, or was it unfair? If it is unfair (mostly what I’ve read), why is eBay allowing buyers to ruin seller standings based on these unfair and unrealistic expectations? Third, if eBay had accurately informed buyers of the true effects the 3 or 4 ratings had (not good), would the buyer have still left such a low rating? These are the questions that eBay needs to ask, in order to determine the validity of the buyer’s claim.

“new initiatives or experiments that we’ll want your input on.”

Experiments? With my business and livelihood? I think not! Sorry, but that has got to be one of the worst things I have ever read from an eBay representative.

“With the new system I think everyone in this room will get more specific information on a transaction that has not gone perfectly well. Buyers will now have 80 characters to provide feedback and detail all without the fear of a negative retaliatory feedback.”

If eBay wants the information for their purposes, fine. Have the buyer’s feedback response show up only to eBay. Why does eBay need possibly inaccurate, unverified, unable to be contested, buyer feedback publicly displayed, which will only hurt and ultimately ruin a seller’s business.

Where is the buyer’s accountability in all of this?

MistyOn 04.25.2008 at 2:56 pm Said:

I use exact shipping in all my listings and have never had a problem with shipping or retaliatory feedback in my over 10 years with eBay. There is no such thing as free shipping no matter how you want to spin it.

Sellers are buyers also and some are even our best buyers, they are here every day.

I have had 2 NPS and 1 NPB in all my years I guess I am fortunate but yet I still wear those negatives because of the loopholes in the system… It did not stop me from trusting other sellers or buyers however I feel and strongly believe that NPS and NPB have no right to leave any kind of feedback due to their failure in the transactions.

I think eBay could have better resolved this issue by taking a more of a hands on in disputes by creating a panel of our peers to oversee these disputes rather than automating them as they have done.

I totally agree with what everyone else here is saying and no kind of candy coating will make me feel any differently.

CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.25.2008 at 3:04 pm Said:

@ Misty

From what I read on the eBay forums, eBay was either in the process of or at least considering creating a court of sorts, which would look into these types of disputes. However, for some reason, eBay decided to scrap the idea.

I, for one, thought such a court was an excellent idea. Perhaps Richard can find out why eBay decided to abandon it?

Although, if eBay is looking to be more of a “retail” experience, rather than a community, then such a court would probably drive away the type of buyers they are looking to attract.

MistyOn 04.25.2008 at 3:42 pm Said:

@Crunchy
I was not aware of that thank you, I have been inactive for about a year due to deaths in my family and such so to come back to all of this was overwhelming to me.

If eBay would just remove the bad buyers and sellers like they originally promised to do years ago we would not be having these problems now, eBay could have just as easily educated buyers and told them this was their policy and ENFORCE it buyers would have understood and agreed that it was not to insult them but to protect the community from fraud and scams and in the long run protecting and making it a better place for everyone but nooooo eBay thought it made more sense to make it easier for these frauds and scams and verbally insult and accuse sellers making buyers feel we are all thief’s and allow them to run buckshot at will over all of us it just so amazes me their lack of reasoning and common sense. When Richard first posted this I just sat and stared at it reading it over and over not even knowing where to begin.

I do hope Richard finds that answer for us because I feel it would make much more sense to do that and make it a revolving panel so it is not the same say 6 people overseeing these disputes.

implogOn 04.25.2008 at 3:52 pm Said:

@ Crunchy

I enjoyed your thoughtful and reasoned post. It made me take another look at the Q&A answers .

“Matt: Shipping and handling is the lowest DSR of the four but I do want to point out that 72% of all DSRs left for S&H are 5s. Frankly, I think that means the DSRs are working because we all know that S&H charges on eBay are higher than the Internet on the whole.”

Parse this sentence.

Is he saying that “72% of all DSRs left for shipping and handling are 5s” in spite of or because “we all know that S&H charges on eBay are higher than the Internet as a whole.”?

Is he saying buyers gave 5s to sellers with the highest S&H charges on the Internet?

Frankly, I think he might be talking about the S&H charges at the eBay Store ; )

implogOn 04.25.2008 at 4:16 pm Said:

Our blog pal Usher Lieberman was in the news.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/25/ebay.boycott

“For its part, eBay is holding firm on the changes. Its (eBay’s) spokesperson, Usher Lieberman, told guardian.co.uk there is no place on eBay for sellers who do not give buyers exceptional customer service and the “vocal minority’ who are unhappy “will be routed off” the site. “We have set the bar high,” he admitted.”

According to Mr. Lieberman, soon not only a low DSR/feedback rating will get someone removed from the site. He says the “vocal minority” will be “routed off” too.

CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 04.25.2008 at 4:25 pm Said:

@ Implog

I think he means “in spite of”. However, the 72% of all DSRs left for S&H are 5s makes no sense. If that was the case, then the majority of sellers would have 4.6 and above.

How can the majority to stars left for S&H be 5s, yet the S&H is the rating the majority of sellers are lowest on?

Not to mention, according to eBay’s own evaluation chart, they are making low stars against S&H count less than the other categories, because they thought buyers would rate that too harshly.

Something doesn’t make sense here. Either it is their numbers, their application of the numbers, or their logic.

How can S&H be the lowest star rating, in spite of 72% of those ratings being 5s, and the fact that eBay affords less weight to that category when determining Top 10%, 50%, etc.?

As to my long post above, I truly hope that someone from eBay will take the time to address the questions and points I made in it. If not, perhaps Richard can find out the answers and let us know.

MistyOn 04.25.2008 at 4:35 pm Said:

Interesting IMPLOG Thank you.

As I stated above I have been inactive for a year so at this point I have no DSR rating what so ever, where does this leave me? Is eBay going to boot me out before even finding out what rating I could have?

Vocal Minority??? I think they will be greatly surprised that the minority is in fact the majority.

implogOn 04.25.2008 at 4:37 pm Said:

I envision Richard eating crab at a Lake Pontchartrain restaurant this evening, frantically searching monster.com

TheBrewsNewsOn 04.25.2008 at 4:44 pm Said:

Perhaps, what he means (when he says that “72% of all DSRs left for shipping and handling are 5s) is:

Out of 100 DSRs left, 72 are 5s and the remaining 28 are some number less than 5.

So, for example, if the remaining 28 (out of the 100) are all DSRs of 1, then the average DSR rating would be 3.9 calculated as ((72 x 5) + (28 x 1))/100

What I take that to mean then is that buyers typically leave a 5 for Shipping Cost (probably if they happy with the overall way the transaction went) or they leave a VERY low rating, which is probably why eBay started asking buyers to provide an explanation as to why they were giving a “1″ or a “2″.

SandiOn 04.25.2008 at 6:04 pm Said:

ebay, as usual is a little late:

Ecommerce Study: Free Shipping Is Out, Social Networking Is In
April 09, 2008

Shop.org’s annual study of online retailing conducted by Forrester Research for 125 retailers predicts that online retail will rise 17 percent this year to $204 billion. The State of Retailing Online 2008 study forecasts apparel ($26.6 billion), computers ($23.9 billion), and autos ($19.3 billion) to be the largest three sales categories.

The report states that while free shipping offers have been effective in the past, retailers are less interested in promoting free shipping options this year. Instead, retailers are eager to experiment with “social computing” initiatives to attract customers: 65 percent and 55 percent of retailers, respectively, said that social network advertisements and widgets would be categories of increased focus this year.

TheBrewsNewsOn 04.25.2008 at 8:51 pm Said:

I continue to be so very impressed by the ideas, questions, comments, and information being posted on this blog by eBay sellers and buyers.

I only wish more eBay employees, like Colin, would take the time to respond. Sellers may not agree with everything that Colin has said but at least I get the feeling that he is listening and giving consideration to what is being said. Kudos.

implogOn 04.26.2008 at 4:25 am Said:

In an earlier post above, I copied a quote from eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman from a Guardian U.K. article titld “Auction Site eBay Defies Boycott Threats.” in which he said:

Lieberman’s quote seems to directly contradict the quote from John Donahoe in his eBayINK blog interview. It seems Mr. Donahoe is encouraging the “vocal minority” to speak out and says eBay will “embrace” what people have to say “constructive criticism or praise”.

Richard - Can you explain this contradiction between the CEO’s message and what the company spokesperson said? Is there an internal disconnect in the organization’s goals?

See Donahoe’s quote copied below.

“Listen and have passion. Our goal is not to be a finely tuned, smooth, perfect machine. The minute our community stops talking is the minute I worry. Because their opinions, constructive criticism or praise, stem from passion. People are basically good – that is our belief. And we will not shut our ears to what people have to say – we will embrace it.”

Patricia 1On 04.26.2008 at 10:05 am Said:

I’m afraid those speaking out are in the minority in “noise” only - watch the quiet ones who silently pack up and leave when they have better options and when they’ve had enough. Obviously, ebay is not considering this yet any seller you ask tells you they have that breaking point….and many tell you they’ve just about had enough of ebay superiority complex. Right now, they can’t even keep their listings up without some reduced fee gimmick.

Patricia 1On 04.26.2008 at 10:08 am Said:

Sadly, they prove over and over that this is simply “ebay-speak” for the media and nothing more. What troubles me so much is that they expect people to believe it. To me that shows a lack of grasp of the problem and a callousness towards their customers as well.