New! Automatic 5-star DSR for Free Shipping #ebaynews

10 Permanent link to New! Automatic 5-star DSR for Free Shipping #ebaynews New! Automatic 5-star DSR for Free Shipping #ebaynews

FEATURED POSTAndrew Chase / Thursday, August 26th, 2010

New! Automatic 5-star DSR for Free Shipping #ebaynews
I’ve received some questions about whether sellers will now receive automatic, 5-star DSR’s for free shipping.

I’m pleased to tell you the answer is yes! And, this isn’t a test – effective Aug. 24, we began defaulting the shipping cost DSR to 5 stars when eBay can verify a buyer did not pay for shipping.

Sellers have been asking for this, and we are excited to bring it to them before the holiday season. Free shipping attracts buyers, and this important new protection for sellers will ensure that DSR scores for shipping cost will not receive a score of less than 5 if buyers choose free shipping.

Here’s all it takes:
1. The item must offer a free shipping option.
2. In order to get the automatic 5-star rating, the buyer must choose the free shipping option during payment.
3. Sellers should be sure to offer verifiable payment methods (i.e. PayPal, MoneyBookers, PayMate, ProPay) and use eBay checkout. Third-party checkouts will work, as long as they provide the full post back information to eBay, so that we can verify the buyer didn’t pay for shipping.
We’d be happy to answer your questions. Feel free to leave comments here on the Ink blog or via Twitter at @ebayinkblog and @ebay_andy.

Cheers!
Andy
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Kat Simpson / August 26th, 2010 at 3:09 pm

LOVE this and love that it got implemented RIGHT AWAY with no waiting.
thanks, Griff :) And all

Whirly / August 27th, 2010 at 2:24 am

I don’t welcome it, sellers are already jumping through a massive amount of hoops in a desperate attempt to gain TRS etc this will force the desperate ones to move to a free p&p model / paypal only, it only serves to increase eBay’s revenue and highlight just what a load of nonsense DSR’s have become.

What happened to all the arguments from eBay about shipping being more than just charging a fair price? packaging etc it will just mean if a buyer is not happy but is forced to give 5 stars they will just leave you lower on the others.

Still, on the plus side as this total undermines the system by forcing 5 stars it might finally mean the end to the whole sorry mess is finally coming.

Gary Overton / August 27th, 2010 at 1:23 pm

Could this be a desperate attempt by eBay to get buyers to offer FREE shipping? I tried free shipping and it did NOT work for me. I am in the process of changing everything back over to a shipping charge. By not offering free shipping I can sell my items for less. The buyer gets a good deal. I sell more stuff. The only winner with Free Shipping is eBay. When I posted about this on Facebook everyone that responded said they were NOT offering free shipping.
BTW, I am not a hobby seller. I have over 19,000 items for sale, with over 26,000 feedback. I have qualified for TRS almost every month since the beginning.
TRS is a total failure. My sales have actually increased the months I lost TRS status. Also, if you check, a small percentage of buyers even bother to leave DDSR’s. It would be interesting to see the number of buyers percentage wise that leave DSR’s. eBay should scrap the entire mess and restore feedback to where it was. eBay said buyers were leaving because of feedback. If that was the case, why are they leaving now? The number of buyers have dropped dramatically since the feedback system was changed.

flknr99 / August 28th, 2010 at 6:33 am

Does Free Shipping have to be a choice or can it be the only choice?????? Ann

C Quo / September 1st, 2010 at 7:46 am

This is WONDERFUL! (And about time!)
I have been offering free shipping for years, and it’s really annoying when someone gives you a low rating – or even a 3 or 4 – on shipping costs. If it’s free, it really has to be 5-star, I mean, short of paying the customer for the privilege of shipping the item….
If a customer is unhappy with other parts of their purchase, they still have 3 other ratings to express that with, as well as the positive/negative rating and the commentary.

Bo / September 3rd, 2010 at 10:10 am

This is a no-brainer. If shipping is free, then shipping cost should be 5 bucks. It’s about time ebay.

Furthermore, the DSR system is a crap shoot at best. Ebay should use the feedback system for what it was intended to be used for, to weed out sellers that need to be weeded out.

Ebay needs to do away with “feeback” for the buyers first of all. A compulsory positive is hardly a “feedback”. You see other sites offering buyer feedback? No, you don’t. “hey sellers, this buyer’s good, he paid for his item!”. That’s completely ridiculous. If you’re not selling, then you don’t need to be rated (especially when you have no choice as to HOW to rate).

Ebay needs to also do away with the feedback system currently in place. Buyers don’t need to know that the seller has done 42,353 satisfied transactions on ebay. They just need to know that the seller is legit and shipping what he says he’s shipping. When they make their purchase, they rate the seller with either a positive (item arrived, as stated, within appropriate timeframe), or a negative (item arrived NOT as stated, or late). If a sellers positive to negative ratio gets too high (too high, as in, this guy is obviously stealing or cheating people) then he gets the boot from ebay and has to prove his worth if he wants to sell again.

eBay “believes that people are mostly good”. That’s true! But ebay needs to also consider that some people are not. And it’s not just the sellers side that has bad apples. Some buyers just think that because they are spending money, they have the right to do whatever they please. Well guess what, on ebay, the customer is NOT always right. I’ve begun to fight back.

I charge a premium for my items on ebay, because I’m the only place on the planet where my items can be bought. I occasionally have customers writing to me offering to buy my items for HALF what I have them listed for (because that’s what similar, yet cheesy chinese items go for on ebay). I write back to them and tell them “no thank you”. Some will bid anyway. Almost without fail, if someone asks me for a big discount and I refuse, and they buy anyway, they leave me a low DSR rating. They’ll typically email saying that it’s not worth what they paid. I send them the usual “send it back and I’ll refund your money”, but they NEVER want to send the item back, because they like it too much! Now, when I receive inquiries regarding ridiculous discounts, I simply add that buyer to my blocked bidder list so he CAN’T buy from me and leave me a low DSR. I’ll even go so far as to remove the item so I’m not currently offering it for sale! (this way the buyer won’t buy with another ID and leave me a low DSR because I put him on my blocked bidder list)…..

Severus / September 4th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

I really do not understand this situation.

Since DSRs appears, thousands of users have been claiming to eBay for such a solution.

Today the news appears here, instead the AB Post: the official channel of communication between eBay as a company and its users.

Why? Is it a secret? Does eBay want the users to know or not?

Such a news should be published in all the sites through the ABPost, commented in all the communities. Let users know.

Bill / September 23rd, 2010 at 8:19 am

I stopped jumping through hoops for ebay in hopes of getting high DSRs a long time ago.

This automatic 5 star policy for “free shipping” is just a continuance of the on going scam run by ebay to charge higher final value fees.

Kim / September 23rd, 2010 at 12:11 pm

I live in France and sell on Ebay UK, most of Ebays policies don’t take into consideration international buyers. How can I offer free shipping? How can anyone come to that. Sellers have to add the cost of the shipping onto the price of the item and Ebay make more fees.

When Ebay introduced the Top Seller system I was excluded because I was in France!! By the time they sorted the mess out my sales had dropped so low that I didn’t qualify. Ebay statement “believes that people are mostly good” that should be re-written as the majority of the time they believe that buyers are mostly good and sellers are not!! It is about time the balance was evened out.

Richard / September 26th, 2010 at 6:04 am

I think that all Dsr Ratings should be abolished as a lot of buyers just dont understand how to use them properly. I sell items worlwide and On multy purchases I only charge shipping for the first item and then free shipping on additional items.Sometimes I pay more than the buyer has actually paid. Luckily it usually balances out. I dont charge more shipping than it costs me. The buyer does not take into consideration the cost of the pakaging or the time it takes to pakage these items so when they compare the actual shipping on the envelope to how much shipping they were charged they then think that they paid too much. My items are so cheap I can not do free shipping unless I increased the price of the item and that would make the item to dear to buy. I hope I am making sense.