And the fact that you linked to the PESA letter, but published the “elizabeth” letter in full…and as the comment above proves, her numbers are hogwash…Wow, should I trust anything at all about ebay?

Our previous Ebay bills until the month before last were between £1300 and £1400, right now my Ebay bill is sitting at £1600 and im only 3/4 the way through the month.

Our buyers let us know in no uncertain terms that we should give them everything and more, knowing FROM THE HUGE POPUP that sellers can no longer leave negative feedback (NOT EVEN NEUTRAL, NOT EVEN LEAVE A NEGATIVE COMMENT) for them. We are in the corner, our business is on edge at all time, not only do we have to be perfect, but if the buyer decides they dont want to go ahead or if they dont like the tone of our voice then we lose £99 and get negative feedback, no questions asked and nothing we can do in return.

Although our Ebay account manager has been very good with us, and Ebay has been good on a whole, we are truly suffering with the weapon of one way feedback and EBay fees.

We are a member of PESA, the Federation of Ebay sellers, an Ebay Education Specialist, Ebay trading assistant and full member of the chartered institute of Journalists (So think i am qualified to comment on this issue).

Fixed rate shipping has made shipping costs higher than my actual costs on media items.

Fixed price listings have slowed sales almost to a hault with little or no attention to listings.

My sales have fallen below Bronze Seller–I was Silver about a year ago. Sales have been declining for about 3 years and have now plunged to the point that I’m trying to wind down business without going bankrupt. They have slaughtered the Golden Goose. By running smaller sellers out of business, they will eventually feel the impact as their own revenues drop.

I have paid very high Ebay fees for years, but at least use to have sales to warrant the high cost. Now I just have high fees. I’m moving everything to inventory as the longer fixed sales have no more impact on sales then store inventory. Ebay has only made a bad economy worse by their recent changes.

We’ve heard from some of our sellers � especially lower-volume sellers – that this bar was set too high, and we agree. Now, sellers with DSRs of 4.7 or more will only need 3 DSRs left in the past 30 days to have their listings promoted”
I have been going back and forth about this with Ebay customer support for weeks now. I finally got my DSR standing back to raised, but this is just one more “glitch” Ebay has not taken care of. All the correspondence from CS keeps telling me 10 FB until I send them a link to the announcement. To which they have no response. Richard, maybe you can get an official response…is it 10 or is it 3?
Thanks (and congrats on the new baby!)

William Fagan – most of us feel as you do. I was a small seller on Ebay – 10 years, never a negative, over 3,000 total feedbacks and DSR’s of 5.0. So, when my standing in Best Match went from raised to standard I questioned Ebay about it. Well, what they told me was that I only had 2 feedbacks within 30 days (never mind the other 300 I got this year) so they lowered my standing to standard. According to them you now need 10 feedbacks for 30 days. What about the guy who sells an expensive item for a couple of thousand dollars? Does he also get penalized because he doesn’t have 10 feedbacks for the 30 days? Maybe he can sell some 99 cent items and get a whole bunch of feedbacks and that will make ebay feel so much better about him ;-)

Susan,

After our long discussion about the new search on Ebay I went online to see what my fellow sellers are saying about “best match” if anything. I wanted to give the whole concept a second thought and consider the possibility, however far fetched, that our precipitous drop in business that exactly correlates with this “best match” implementation wasn’t a direct result of the new “best match” thing. What I found was astounding. Many, many sellers are being decimated by this “best match” thing. There are forums all over the net. I can’t come to any conclusion except that the “best match” is responsible for killing our sales. How could all of these people saying the same thing be just wrong? The evidence is there.
Have you seen this thread-

“thread pointed to this blog- ebay inc”

While I realize that you are required to give your sellers the “Ebay line” as we spoke on Tuesday and to contend that the “best match” is not the cause, I can only be sure that you are receiving calls daily from other sellers basically giving you the same information that I have- you didn’t say that. I am disgusted honestly with the way we are being treated by Ebay. We have worked for years and seen Ebay as a partner- together building business. Look at my account, you can see how hard we have worked to be an excellent company within the Ebay system. The way Ebay has treated sellers this year is reprehensible. Now Ebay is effecting my business so severely that there may be layoffs or even more serious repercussions- what a shame.

That is my heartfelt reaction to what Ebay has done this year starting with the feedback/dsr thing, continuing through the new no checks policy and culminating in this “best match” search thing. After years of experience I realize that this type of seller complaint always falls on deaf ears at Ebay and I assume it will this time too. However, I would appreciate you passing my thoughts on to those who are making these decisions.

Regards,

Bill

William Fagan
Fuji Arts Inc.

Thanks for watching the video (http://tinyurl.com/4buyrg) and the encouraging comments of agreement. I always tell people that even my own MOM does not agree with everything I say and do and she loves me, LOL.

The deal is that we all have different needs wants and desires. What made/makes eBay great is that it was 1) Trusted and 2) Neutral enough to allow many different sellers and seller models work. Now it has begun to try and funnel all experiences into A, B, or C and NOTHING else.

That is where eBay needs to begin to step back and find the magic of their old saying…”The Power of Us All” and not any longer just the “power of the powersellers”

Some folk that are great on eBay are not trying to be a powerseller, they just like to sell and are ALSO worthy of some recognition and reward!

Power to the “Power of US All” once again

YEAH BABY!!!!
John (ColderICE)

I know I am making a big savings on my ebay fees every month- definitely yes a big plus

My sales have declined yes, but I am hoping that ebay will bring more traffic soon.

What I do love about this change is that I save 45 minutes every single day not having to list anymore. Do you realize that is 273 hours of my time per year that I now have back in my life?

OMG, if ebay could just work out the few kinks here and there like remove all dsrs and just have 1 which asks the buyer if they would do business with you again. That is key- if the buyer would give you repeat business or not. Period.

They could enhance their customer service

Do more ad words/advertising/google etc..

And there you have it- a perfect ebay (imo)

however i feel ebay is going away from their auction items, still charging original fees rather than the reduced fees. i feel a bit disgruntled that i’m paying £49.99 to get cheaper fees but these fees are not included. the last lot of items i put on auction only about 3 of 10 sold, this is very unusual for my items, normaly they would all sell even if just at starting price, i could always guarantee selling an item at the end of 10 days when put on auction.
i notice in the new search that with the ‘best match’ that a lot of ebay buyers who do not realise they can change it to the normal ‘ending soonest’ or even realise it is different, will end up missing the auction items. i saw an item with less than a minute left half way down the page with items with 22 days etc above it. how would anyone find it to bid on it unless they put in ‘ending soonest’? the item seemed to have no reason to appear below the others in the search results.

my own items have appeared beneath others. you are only supposed to get lower placement in listings with less than a certain % feedback and under a certain dsr score. neather of mine are below the requirements. then they talk about getting placed higher up if you sell lots of the same item, considering some sellers (like myself) sell mainly second hand antique/collectable items that are all different why am i penalised for this? i do not have 50 of the same item to put me higher up the list.
as far as i can see the ‘best match’ is so random nobody knows what to do. i had some fisher price items on, i typed in ‘fisher price christmas’, my 3 seperate listings with the same time left on each were randomly down the first page beneath someone with 80+ days left! this person had put in the word ‘xmas’ and their item was not actually a christmas item, mine were actual christmas toys. there seemed no reason why they and others came ahead of mine, my category was ‘fisher price’ as was theirs.

then their is the talk of postage prices and buy it now prices affecting where your item is. so if i had a heavy fisher price toy and had to put on £10 p&p someone with those same keywords as mine but who was selling 1 figure with £2 p&p would be above mine. that has nothing to do with fair p&p charges and is ridiculous for them to use it. the same with buy it now price, so what if my item is £50 and someone elses is £5, if i am selling something different and more valuable that should not mean it comes further down the page. a record i was selling i typed in the artist name and ‘record’ mine was on the second page with only 2 days left, on the first page was someone who wasn’t even selling that artist (they had keyword spammed it into title), they had a higher price and higher p&p than me. when i phoned ebay to ask about this the person could not give me a satisfactory answer to this. what i want to know is how you would ever be able to move yours to the first page if no one can tell you why yours is behind others, i don’t want to know ‘there are lots of factors affecting placement’ i want to know what they are so i can change my listings to appear nearer the top.

the other scam ebay has is the p&p charges, i read in their ‘advise’ on good dsr’s that you should give free p&p when you can to keep buyers happy! so ebay gets more money because sellers swap the price of p&p over to combine with buy it now price meaning ebay get a bigger final value fee %. also insisting that the only method of payment for some items is paypal is really unfair. i prefer my buyers to send postal order or cheque in the uk as i don’t pay ridiculous fees on it. why should ebay choose because of some bad ebayers conning people that i can’t choose this method. even if you only had this option after selling for a certain length of time so that you could prove you are honest, this would be better than nothing.
i feel that soon everything will have to be paid for by paypal and i will not be allowed to give other options. also with paypal being completely on the buyers side then this is even worse, i can’t afford to get all my items signed for, if i up the postage to cover it i will lose sales. therefore i have to risk getting charge-backs or fake ‘item not received’ disputes opened.

the negative and neutral feedback being removed from sellers is ridiculous. when i went on holiday i emailed all my buyers from the last 2 months to tell them i would be away and would deal with any problems on return. i went away for 1 week and had 2 negatives saying i didn’t bother answering their emails when i returned. they both sent 1 email. they didn’t need to be patient as they may have before because they knew i couldn’t return the feedback. currently i am expecting negative feedback from 2 other people. 1 person bought on 2nd september and asked to pay on the 22nd. i agreed, then they said it would be 3rd october, i was not happy. they said they couldn’t afford it but had paid other people who they had bought from after me. they promised they would pay me next. next email told me i would get paid by the 29th oct! again they had paid more people ahead of me who they had bought from just a few days ago. i have had to give them unpaid item strike but i expect they will get it removed, even though it’s been over a month already. they can still leave me negative feedback if they want and i don’t think i could get it removed. ebay suggested at one point they would set up a member system where you could appeal your negative feedback and a jury of members would decide. however that’s not happening in uk ebay now.
the other person i expect a negative from is someone who bought a few items and said they had posted payment yesterday. they said they were sending cash, i advised against but said if they were going to they should get it signed for. it is impossible in uk for them to have sent me money in the post yesterday as the post offices are shut on sundays over the whole country, no exceptions. therefore i knew he was lying. when asking fro tracking number we went round in circles where first his girlfriend posted it, then he split up with her (the same day), he had his mums funeral the next day, he lost his phone (phone number was a fake), asked for a different number as he said his girlfriend had just called, but said that was at work and was on the train. then told me the girlfriend had sent the money in a post box so had no tracking number and i would get my money. as soon as they can leave negative feedback i will be getting 5 saying the usual that i have stolen thier money etc. if i do manage to get the comments removed due to false contact details it will not be straight away so i will have the negatives sitting their. i can’t leave feedback warning sellers away from him so he has won and messed up my listings!
ebay say they will be stricter on people who do not pay but i have recently given 3 unpaid item strikes that have all been reversed, the buyers each time have messed me around, i am too scared because of feedback to be firm so give people time to pay and they still never do. with one email they get it removed. i have my settings to block people with a certain number of unpaid item strikes as i can no longer read bad comments that say they don’t pay. if they can get it removed so easily then they will not be blocked and i won’t know they have done this to lots of people before me. maybe ebay should let sellers leave negative feedback specificaly for buyers who don’t pay as this is the main reason for a seller to need to give a negative feedback.

all in all i am fed up with ebays rules etc, favouring buyers in most respects and coming down hard on the sellers who actually give ebay their money. buyers are only paying ebay through us sellers, how about helping us out a bit more.
i am however at the moment pleased with my ebay sales, especialy with the credit crunch still selling is definately good. i expect this will be the reason for any fall in profits this year more than the change in fees. i guess as far as the new search features i think they are likely to help in some areas and not in others so hopefully it will be balanced out.

thanks