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Take a look here http://www.tamebay.com/2009/03/dsr-dashboard-la... and see what I said from 17 onwards (by all means read it all of course lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBX4vRjPHXM
eBay continues to take the position that the overwhelming majority of customers leave 5's, so it's not the 4's that hurt us, it's the 1's and 2's. That's just foolish and inaccurate. But they have themselves firmly dug in on this, and it's not going to change.
Sales last year 34,
GSV $160K+
ASP $5K
Range $19K to $1K
High end jewelry
All gems are GIA certified, shipped free of charge express with insurance and there is a 100% satisfaction or refund guarantee. Buy it take it to a gemologist if you don't like it, return it with certification tag intact for full refund plus cost of return postage express & insured. Return it without certification tags you pay for it to be re-certified about $50 I believe and this is all stated in the listing.
Last August they were restricted from listing for 30 days. They made one sale in July, buyer "thought the stone would be bigger", and gave them a 3 in the item as described category. The stone was described by measurement and carat weight in the listing. Total time elapsed from payment to refund was 7 days.
Well, obviously that falls under the category of not fair!, though I'm also left wondering if there isn't a little bit more to the story.
I see this further down the Seller Performance Policy page on the .com site:
This average is based on ratings from the past 30 days unless a seller has less than 10 DSRs for that period. In this case, eBay will evaluate DSRs over the past 12 months instead.
This indicates to me that there was more than this single instance which cost the seller in this example the suspension. His performance obviously falls into the latter category of judgment, and so he's evaluated over the past year.
Something had to have gone wrong in a few of those other 33 transactions as well, didn't it?
Look, I may be totally wrong, and I'm willing to admit it if I am, but please point to the page which will make clear to me that any single transaction can get someone tossed off eBay.
I'd always though a good and simple way for eBay to both keep the system fair and keep the dolphins out of the net, would be for them to just drop the top and bottom 10% of the ratings before calculating.
Thanks,Cliff
P.S. Awesome post, as always
john
Thanks,Cliff
Ebay is not going under the assumption that everyone receives a 5 if they are satisfied. In fact, it is a long-standing tradition that a 4 out of 5 is very good and a 3 out of 5 is good. Think in terms of a movie critic that works on the 5-star system. Most people would assume a 3 star review is a pretty good movie and a 4 star review is very good. It is how people think and how most of the buyers are treating the DSR.
I have just been banned (I am assuming for 12 months) because I have a 100% rating (88) but my DSR (only 16 people have given me) has fallen below in the 4.3 in 2 categories. One buyer gave me the rating and wanted to take it back as I was a little late with my shipping but included an extra $100 piece of software... they were very greatful for the extra touch, but could not remove the rating as EBAY would not allow them.
While I can survive without EBAY... I'll just sell on Craigslist and Amazon (EBAY will be losing fees from around $11K in sales), I have read many horror stories about how the DSR has ruined some smaller sellers, people who in a tough economy had come to rely on some smaller EBAY sales to get them through... these are not isolated incidents and I hope EBAY pays dearly for harming so many people.
First off, let me say I'm sorry they've given you the boot. In response, all I can offer is that your experience is not my experience.
As I've posted this and listened to the stories coming from it what I have definitely noticed is those who seem to fall into eBay's net on this policy appear to be mostly lower volume sellers of higher priced goods--exactly the type of seller that I am not, and so possibly why my opinion typically skews the other way on this.
If it is in fact this certain type of seller getting hammered by the policy over and over again I think it would be in eBay's best interest to tinker with the numbers based on volume. I also think they'd be smart to set different standards across different categories as well.
That sounds like a royal pain, but the fact that they are now micro-managing different fees and policies across categories suggests they could do the same with DSR's.
If they want to.
Thanks, Cliff
Ebay arbitrarily decides each month how many 5%, 15%, and 20% discounts they want to hand out. Ebay then fudges each seller’s DSRs to go with the number of discounts handed out.
So Ebay adjusts an actual 4.8 to a 4.7. Whatever Ebay needs to ensure only so many sellers get a discount that month.