eBay Announces Major Changes for Sellers in US/UK/DE

***These are the US changes only, I don't have UK/DE yet, but will circle back on those as I hear they are different in interesting ways and may point to other changes that could make their way to the US.  Also I'm typing really fast here so apologies on typos, will circle back on those as time allows.  Live blogging of Donahoe's keynote will be forthcoming.

Today at 9am ET, eBay announced changes  in three areas: fees, seller standards/incentives and feedback (well finding too, but they lump that in seller standards)

HEADLINES:

• Fees – insertion fees going down some (.05 at lowest, .60 at highest tranche), FVFs going up, take rate decreasing slightly – rebalancing the listing/FVF mix to be more back-end loaded vs. front-end.  GALLERY IS FREE!!! WOOO!!!
• PowerSeller program now really matters and you have to have 4.5 DSR (12-month) to get in.  If in, you can get some fees back if you have 4.6+/4.8+ DSRs (30-day rolling) and you are advantaged in…
• Finding – BestMatch rolls site-wide in the US in March – low DSRs have reduced exposure, high increased.
• Feedback – eBay is eliminating seller’s ability to leave a buyer a negative (doesn’t impact large sellers much as they don't have time to neg), in exchange eBay will eliminate negs on sellers for UPI's and suspensions.  Some other feedback changes such as moving the window from 90 to 60 and increasing blocked bidders to 5k.

Initial thoughts:

• Overall, a positive step in the right direction.  The new team is all ears seem to really value their sellers as partners/customers and not only listen to their feedback, but react to it as well.
• I think the messaging @earnings was that we'd see more change on the fees, but this could just be an 'easing' into it to cause less revenue/marketplace chaos.
• DSRs - Even before these announcements, sellers were worried about their 'stars', especially shipping+handling, it will be interesting to see if today's news causes sellers to worry more or roll up their sleeves and really try to improve them in a more material way.
• BestMatch - I'm not sure the old-school auction guys are going to like BestMatch and it will be hard to know/measure the impact until it rolls.  BestMatch will definitely change listing strategies very dramatically.  Lots of seller discussion on this already as we all knew it was coming and this will increase through March for sure.
• Some of the advantaging in the PS program will be interesting to do the math on.  Will 5/15% FVF credit move sellers to change their policies to yield higher DSRs?  Only time will tell on this one.

Details on all the announcements follow:

Fees:

• Decreasing insertion fees - .05 for < $24.99, $.20 for $.25-$49.99, etc.
• Gallery is free!  Yippee!
• FVF increases –

• < $25 goes to 8.75% from 5.25% (This translates to $2.19 on first $25 sold vs. $1.31 or a $.88 increase/item sold
• $25-$1k goes to 3.5% from 3.25%
• > $1k no change

• Store listing fees go from $.05 to $.03 and the FVF is increased some (details TBD)
• Reduced featured plus (yawn)
• eBay’s take rate reduced slightly

Reminder: DSRs – Detailed Seller Ratings (this is for all the readers that yell at me about my acronyms - TLAs).

Seller standards/incentives

• Bad sellers (based on DSRs) will suffer decreased listings exposure in search

• If you have > 5% unhappy buyers in last 30 days or you are in the lowest DSRs for S+H charges, you will get less exposure

• PowerSeller program getting a revamp

• Effective 7/08, must have a minimum of 4.5 on all DSRs over a 12-month rolling period to be in the program now.

• If you make the cut you get discounts!

• If your 30-day DSRs are at 4.6+, you get 5% FVF discount (based off of 30-day rolling DSRs)

• If your 30-day DSRs are at 4.8+, you get 15% FVF discount (based off of 30-day rolling DSRs)

• Also PowerSellers are getting more seller protection (via PayPal)

• Eliminating the confirmed address req for seller protection (yeah!)  Unlimited now (double yeah!) as well.  Also extending to all PayPal markets

• In BestMatch search (rolling site-wide in March), PowerSellers will  receive more exposure.

• To help with all of this eBay is rolling out a Seller Dashboard that will give seller’s transparency on DSRs, advantaging/disadvantaging and some other trust-and-safety areas (SNAD/INR, etc.)  This looks pretty cool.  They showed a mock-up and it seems to have all the information you would need to know about how you’re doing with the various TnS initiatives.

Feedback changes

• Sellers can only leave positives for buyers.  In other words, no more neg’ing buyers and no more retal feedback (big buyer concern and according to eBay has become a very big problem – increased 4x from 04-07 and really turns buyers off – I can see that point).
• To ease the pain of this change… (and valid reasons why you’d neg a buyer – usually to get mutual withdraw going for ‘good’ sellers IMO):

• eBay will remove negs from buyers that don’t enter UPI process (yippee)
• eBay will remove negs from suspended members (yeah!)
• eBay will prevent negs within 3 days of transactions – this will encourage more buyer/seller comm. (positive)
• Decreasing feedback window from 90 to 60 (good, nothing worse than a random 85-day old transaction getting side-swipped with a neg)
• Increasing the block bidder list to 5k from 1k (good)
• Credit for repeat buyers (outside of a 2-4 day window)
• Feedback %’s will now be based on most recent 12 months vs. life of the account

Well there you have it, that's a lot to digest and as the day goes on, I'll be gathering seller feedback and posting it as time allows.  eBay Strategies readers, what's your feedback?  Let me know and I'll get it right to the folks at eBay here in D.C. that are eager to hear your comments and ideas.

Comments

[Frank]

Why not require mediation before any one is allowed to leave a negative fb.. Any legitimate seller will always be willing to satisfy a customer that is reasonable, there should be a required nuetral third party to decide whether a neg.feedback is warranted before any one is allowed to leave a neg. fb.
This will avoid what I call feedback extortion which a growing percentage of ebayers are doing to make unreasonable demands on sellers by threatening neg fb. if demands are not met, no matter how unreasonable, and retaliation f.b as well. I don't know if it is logistically possible but it would definitely make ebay a much more profitable place for the honest only. With todays technology I hope someone can figure it out.

Frank

[jenniesjunque-n-it]

Is it my imagination, or did the negatives left for buyers start climbing after ebay implemented the anonymous buyer detailed seller ratings? Didn't DSRs start on 4/07? Is that why negatives starting climbing?

It seems the best answer would be to eliminate the ability to leave negatives for both buyers & sellers. After all, if you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all. Why not just leave the feedback static, and go with the DSRs?

What this means is that sellers will have to protect their reputations from damage. I predict there will now be a service, or database, that tracks buyers who leave negative feedback for sellers so they can protect themselves. There will also be services that go after buyers who leave frivolous negative feedbacks. There are already collection services for ebay buyers who don't pay.

The only negative I ever received on ebay came from a buyer who did not know they hadn't paid for an item. I didn't badger the buyer for payment, I didn't file a UPI. I let them off the hook, and got a negative because the buyer was just confused.

I have had my DSR rating dinged because a new ebay buyer didn't realize that paying by echeck through paypal delays shipping.

The only thing I know of that raises communication between buyers and sellers is the possibility of receiving a negative. I don't think buyers will even try to contact a seller before leaving them negative/neutral feedback when they find out the seller can't leave one. So, even if communication would have increased the buyers satisfaction, it probably won't happen once a seller has been given a negative. Why bother? The buyer has fented by leaving the seller a negative.

[Henrietta]

For my business the fee increase is negligible, less than 2% overall. Big WOO. I live with one way feedback at Amazon I can do it on eBay although maybe someone should point out to the walking calculators at eBay that Amazon collects payment for sellers and there are no chargeback risks over there. Neither are buyers allowed to influence the fees sellers get charged.

Couple of three things really bother me:
1. Three day window preventing negative feedback is simply not good enough. Unless your buyer lives next door there is no way anyone can get an item to a buyer in three days without expedited shipping. Newbies do not understand or care that seller is at the mercy of USPS, UPS & FedEx. Seven days would be better, 10 better yet. BEST Steer them to the dispute console first, make them start the dispute process before they can leave a negative. That also makes it official and allows eBay to see what sellers deal with on a daily basis.

2. DSR's

I have noted that buyers are never 5 star happy with shipping costs, not even when you goof and they pay less than it cost in postage never mind packing materials and other overhead.

I recently had a buyer who tanked my DSR's despite being offered a full refund including her shipping cost if she would return the item to me. She wanted me to give it to her! She even helpfully pointed out to me that if I enlarged my picture I could see the 'flaw' in the item. She didn't neg FB me, just gave me 1 star on all categories. This dropped my DSR to 4.5:4.7:4.8:4.5 thats a lot of power to give one buyer over a low volume seller.

3. ALL the candy goes to power sellers. What are the rest of us? Chopped liver? I would remind eBay that we are the bread and butter, powersellers come and go. Small sellers tend to stay, almost nine years, 2K+ feedback 100% positive in my case. How come I get no seller or UPI protection? I get to share in the 10% UPI equally!

[Alex]

Nevermind that last post, I just realized that eBay's wording on the new Fees page was confusing, that's all..

[Alex]

Scott,

You mentioned that insertion fees were decreased: "Decreasing insertion fees - .05 for < $24.99, $.20 for $.25-$49.99, etc."

However when I checked the eBay announcement boards, I found that this was not the case:

.01 - .99 = $0.15 fee (savings of 5 cents)
1.00 - 9.99 = $0.35 fee (savings of 5 cents)
10.00 - 24.99 = $0.55 fee (savings of 5 cents)
25.00 - 49.99 = $1.00 (savings of 20 cents), etc...

Am I missing something here? It seems like the FVF went up pretty significantly, but the insertion fees barely went down at all... If this is the case then at $1 per listing it is unfortunately it is still very risky for media-type sellers to sell in the + $25 range..

[TekGems]

Will DSRWatch.com provide life-time DSR average as well as 30 day DSR averages? How is a PowerSeller to know what discount tier they belong to?

[Nathan Huppatz]

Aarrgh!!!

What about eBay Australia??!

Lets hope these changes come soon, downunder.