If they want to be so much like Amazon why don’t they grow up and take a hard look at Amazon. Amazon allows a seller a time frame in which to get an item to the buyer. The buyer cannot even give feedback until that time frame has been reached. Ebay doesn’t play fair with sellers – they just play with them period…like cat and mouse games. Its all very immature and very unbecoming! As so many are saying these days “this is not rocket science”! I really have to ask where is their common sense!

I would like to draw attention to Ina Steiner’s 06 July ’08 blog post about a possible new buyer interface for DSR ratings.

http://tinyurl.com/nostars

It looks as though eBay may choose hiding the stars as their band-aid. But, no wording is being changed on the ratings, and therein lays the crux of the matter. Why is eBay completely ignoring the fact that the phraseology of these DSR questions and answer choices is the real problem?

Nevermind that the wording of shipping time rating is judging us NOT on how fast we ship and item, but on how fast a buyer receives it. Nevermind that USPS had a rate increase right around the time that the shipping cost DSR began directly affecting our search placement.

Let’s take one of the simpler stars. . . Description

What is the difference between “very accurate” and “accurate”? How can a description be “neither inaccurate nor accurate”? A description is either accurate or inaccurate, period. Two choices. Logical, simple. Absolutely need something in-between? How about partially accurate? There, that’s three choices.

Let’s try another one. . . Seller Communication

Did the seller communicate with you after the sale? YES NO
Simple and to the point, no judgement calls on the buyer’s part. Want to be more specific? Change the wording to “throughout the transaction”. The response is still yes or no. “Neither unsatisfied nor satisfied” means what, numb? (Incidentally, the word is dissatisfied, not unsatisfied. Who wrote those phrases?)

The last two ratings should simply state:

Did the seller ship the item within the stated timeframe? YES NO
This will draw attention to the seller’s terms, which a buyer rarely reads. Next time, the buyer will read a listing more thoroughly to see if the seller only ships on Saturdays. Wow, here the buyer has actually learned something!

Were the shipping costs as stated in the listing? YES NO
Since eBay will soon require a stated shipping cost in every listing, there are only two possible answers to this question. If a buyer has read the complete listing, and agreed to the terms of purchase, there can be no complaint about the shipping cost to which he’s agreed. Any judgement call on the buyer’s part is appropriately eliminated.

eBay simply totals the positives and negatives on each question for a star rating, then uses the average of those stars as the DSR rating.

All those business and finance degrees, and there’s not an ounce of common sense among them.

Out of curiosity I looked the word neutral up in a dictionary. It means:
1 – Impartial – belonging to an impartial state or group, unbiased.
2 – Having no strongly marked characteristics.
3 – Neither acid nor alkaline
4 – Electrically neither positive or negative.
While I can understand the reasoning that it is not a positive, it is never going to be a negative either. Surely they should be valued at less than a negative, no more than a half and possibly a third. But then that still leaves 2 ways to criticise and only 1 to give credit. So perhaps it would be better if neutrals were scapped altogether.

At least I didn’t miss the announcement of the retrospective nature of the change! The lack of information on that subject certainly needs some explaining.

I think many new sellers who want to set up a business will be put off by the constantly changing goalposts. The hobby seller can take a more laid back approach in that, if it doesn’t work out they haven’t lost the major part of their income. Where are the powersellers of the future going to come from?

eBay back in January announced the feedback changes for 2008. In those announcements eBay indicated going forward that neutral feedback would be counted as a negative in a sellers profile.

We have not seen any announcement indicating this change would become retroactive and that these accumulated neutrals would one day all be converted to red negatives in sellers feedback profiles.

There are indications from the U.K. and Australia that this back dating and conversion from a grey neutral in the profiles to a red negative has already taken place.

I am asking eBay in my most recent article on the Trading Assistant Journal http://snurl.com/294zr why this would happen with no notification of the change. This back dating of neutrals to negatives can cause significant damage to both reputation and PowerSeller status of many sellers.

Why do you think eBay is doing this? Will Neutral feedback simply be converted and the neutral option removed from the feedback system?

The only notification I have received relating to neutrals being counted for feeback percentages stated they would count as .6 of a negative. Apart from defying logic, which has been pointed out by many others, it appears to have been a gross underestimate of the impact of a neutral. Why was the change in policy not announced? The equation used to calculate the new percentages is total positives divided by positives + neutrals + negatives which means there is no difference between a neutral and a negative as far as I can see. I would be grateful if somebody could check this or tell me if this has already been discussed elsewhere? It would also help to know what time period the calculations were done for. The figures in some cases vary from those given for the last twelve months on My Ebay especially the positives being lower, which again gives greater impact to the neutrals. Regardless if anyone would actually be suspended on neutrals only, the impact on the percentages alone could be enough to deter buyers from using small volume or new sellers.

First of all, I’m very sorry for your loss. I wish you peace during this difficult time.

There have been a lot of posts over the past few days, both on this thread, and on the small seller thread. I realize you don’t have the answers to the specific questions that have been asked. Would you be willing to post your opinions regarding the concerns that have been raised? People have put forth considerable time and effort to express their reactions to and feelings about the subjects in the two headlines. Even though you have no first hand knowledge of the issues, I’m sure you must have some thoughts about all that has been said. I, for one, would love to hear what an “outsider” (someone who is neither an eBay seller, nor an eBay employee who is bent on spewing the company line) thinks about the points that have been written about.

Both lots of feedback mentioned have now been recalibrated to 100% today.

Kevin