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View Full Version : Ebay's new 5 star system?


Andy27UK
18th December 2009, 10:45
Item As Described and Communication, yes i agree this is a good effort to improve the trading experience on ebay.

Postage Cost - How many buyers think that the cost of postage should be a jiffy bag and a 1st class stamp? Buyers rarely consider the cost of RECORDED delivery, franking machine and Royal Mail collections and other directly or indirectly associated over heads business sellers have to cover.
Some of the parts we sell are small enough to send in an envelope with a stamp. Horrfied are some customers by the fact that we charge over £1.00 postage. There's 1 star rating for postage straight away...

Dispatch Time - In my experience buyers will rate you 1 to 5 stars depending on when the item was RECEIVED, not when the item was SENT. Despite sending packages the same day as payment received for 3 months solidly, we still received 1 or 2 star ratings because Royal Mail took up to 3 weeks in some cases to deliver.
In most cases detailed above, regardless of how much a seller goes out of their way to sort these issues, an insensed customer will still leave 1 star ratings out of sheer spite.

Ultimately you end up with 1 angry customer who is arguably less likey to buy off ebay again, 1 angry seller because their seller discounts they've worked hard for are now revoked. Ebay's pockets are now lined a little more and appearantly it's repuatation as a good place to trade is better for it....

How about for starters, letting the seller provide a tracking number to dispute low ratings for dispatch time?

I can see the positives with the system, but i don't think it's fair. It needs more work.

Printing Hull
18th December 2009, 11:22
Somehow...somehow, despite the fact every item I've ever sold comes with free postage somebody once gave me 3 starts for postage and packaging charges :|

ebay is going against everything it originally set out to do. It's trying to compete with play.com and amazon.com when they aren't the same sort of business. Plus they've the buy.com start selling millions of products which is just catastrophic for small businesses because buy.com literally have over a million items listed at one time.

Andy27UK
18th December 2009, 11:48
Somehow...somehow, despite the fact every item I've ever sold comes with free postage somebody once gave me 3 stars for postage and packaging charges...

Yea, i'd dispute that if it's significant enough to lower your seller discounts. Correct me if im wrong but i'm fairly sure Ebay remove this rating option if you give FREE P&P in your listing?

Conveniently, ebay only charge % of commission from the total sale price of goods sold, not postage charges. They encourage sellers to up the sale price and lower postage charges by removing the possibility of low ratings in that feedback category... clever and greedy in my opinion. How does this improve the 'ebay experience' they so often preach?

dingbat
18th December 2009, 13:49
The problem with it is many customers think unless you've actually come round with Bruce Forsythe and tapped danced in their lounge upon delivery, they'll give you 3 stars.

It should be a 3 point system such as Good, Could be Improved and Poor.

Andy27UK
18th December 2009, 14:07
It should be a 3 point system such as Good, Could be Improved and Poor.

Like positive, neutral or negative you mean? :)

paretowasright
18th December 2009, 14:23
The problem with it is many customers think unless you've actually come round with Bruce Forsythe and tapped danced in their lounge upon delivery, they'll give you 3 stars.

It should be a 3 point system such as Good, Could be Improved and Poor.

That made me laugh which is a major achievement today.
Free Brucie dancing with every delivery ;)

johndon68
18th December 2009, 14:28
Correct me if im wrong but i'm fairly sure Ebay remove this rating option if you give FREE P&P in your listing?

The rating is there even with free P&P...

John

Andy27UK
18th December 2009, 14:40
The rating is there even with free P&P...

John

Right you are John. Ebay states:

If you provide free postage, buyers will see a note when they are rating your P&P charges that a 5-star rating is appropriate.

So basically if you provide free P&P you can STILL get your seller discounts taken away if an angry customer decides to tick the 1 star boxes top to bottom. I think it's changed recently, but this also relfected upon your listings page ranking to start off with.

Bottom line is, if Brucey isn't free to come dancing, your screwed :rolleyes: