We used to sell at least $10k/month in $10 items…now we’re lucky to sell $2k/month, and it’s been in steady decline for the last two years. Best Match was where things got really bad, it ruined our business…and what’s more, the listings are STILL littered with duplicates…most of which are some of the worst sellers we’ve seen…poor products, high prices, con-jobs and generally bad businesses…it’s like eBay is promoting the bottom of the barrel.

[Sentence edited: see Comment Policy]

I know that catching and stopping blatant fraud is necessary…but eBay has so many restrictions on selling, and feedback, and ratings, and what you’re allowed to have for breakfast before you login to the Seller side of the site (you can eat whatever you want if you’re logging in as a Buyer)…it’s gotten absolutely ludicrous…it’s almost an exact replica of America and the way the country has been run the last decade. It’s a miserable failure due to TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT and OVERSPENDING on needless items.

eBay is now like a Rube-Goldberg machine that’s been built so complicated, it’s broken at every step. The best solution is (always) minimalism…start from scratch, keep it simple, and buyer beware.

Come to think of it, I’m gonna start selling for FREE in the newspaper classifieds again.
Funny how those classifieds seem to work so well, and with very little oversight.

Sorry for the rant, but c’mon guys…you can’t crawl out of a grave if you keep digging!!
When traffic is down, you don’t start restricting sellers from selling…it’s NOT OUR FAULT!!!!!!

Try advertising.

Richard, here’s an idea, and I’m perfectly serious about this. Sell ten items a month yourself (without anyone’s help) for the next three months; split the items between auctions and fixed price; ship internationally; pay the fees; deal with the buyers. Then give us your honest opinion about your eBay experience.

Get down in the trenches, without the added perk of Powerseller status (à la Griff), unless you earn it. Until you actually do this, your understanding of the impact of eBay’s policies is limited to the in-house conjecture you’re hearing.

Currently, any seller with at least 3 DSRs in a 30 day period are eligible for raised search status based on their DSRs, policy compliance, and rate of neutral or negative feedback–essentially, a measure of customer satisfaction.

With the new program, all of the high performing sellers who would otherwise MEET the CS requirements regarding low % of 1s and 2s but do NOT meet the volume requirements WILL BE LOSING THEIR RAISED SEARCH STATUS.

Essentially, eBay is now tying raised search exposure to volume–something they haven’t done before. Something I vehemently disagree with.

You cannot claim you are surfacing the BEST sellers when you are excluding terrific sellers based solely on their sales volume.

This isn’t about discounts. It’s not about powerseller status. It’s about stripping high quality sellers of their raised search status because they don’t sell enough on the site.

In the future, a buyer who leaves a low DSR will impact a seller’s placement for 3 months (if they are a high volume seller) or will impact a seller’s placement for 12 months if they are not a high volume seller.

My opinions:

1. I think eBay is measuring the wrong things with their DSRs.

2. I think that eBay allowing DSRs to be left anonymously actually makes buyers leave lower DSRs than they would otherwise (which is what eBay wants) but, in doing so, actually makes a buyer perceive greater dissatisfaction after the fact than actually exists. So, eBay’s “system” is creating buyer dissatisfaction.

3. Despite that, using the DSRs as tools of punishment for sellers does not help sellers “improve” their customer service. Instead, it creates frustrated sellers who feel they have no choice but to put negative wording in their listings which now eBay is going to disallow (not that I think any seller should be including negativity in their listings).

4. There are so many of eBay’s “new” ideas that are simply bad copies of what Amazon has done and is doing correctly.

5. The “good” aspects of the recent announcement (of which there are many) are overshadowed by the poorly thought out ones which will end up harming some very good eBay sellers.

If ebay wants to fix itself, it needs to get rid of playing favoritism game. Get rid of seller ratings, and lower the fees. I wish that one day ebay will have a competition and then it will know what to do right away.

Can you clarify something for me? I know that the DSR requirements will use domestic only (still not a great thing for those of us who actually do well internationlly). Will the sales requirements ($3000/year and 100 items) also only use domestic sales or will that be total items sold regardless of buyer?