With some time on hand due to slow sales it was time to do some listings, but first I took a look at my listings in relation to my competitors. When searching by best match I noticed a seller who consistently ranked high in best match. After spending over an hour with 2 CSRs it became clear that there was some unpublished secret algorithm used to determine best match which to many sellers is no surprise. All the aspects the CSR mentioned I exceeded the competitor. after going through all the possibilities the CSR finally had the answer- My competitor offered free returns before I did! At that point I gave up because upon checking my competitor did not even offer returns.
One step along the way was to get my TRS Plus badge to show on my listings. I had given up diving through that hoop when the reward was not worth the effort but was experimenting with it on a few items. It turns out that the Ebay Policies, Help Guides, and dashboard are not aligned. For example:
and this:
As one more
So three different Ebay pages with different qualification standards. Note on the first example it shows I had 5 items qualified but in fact at the time they were not as I was not offering free returns on those items. If I follow the "service metrics" link in the third example I get this:
So Ebay wants you rated "very high" on returns to be a TRS? So I am not rated very high but I am TRS. I can't even verify the data because my number of returns varies depending on where I go to look for that info.
So my final point is why would I want the 2018 $10 billion in revenue company who with its vast resources can't manage to get the above examples right anywhere near my payments system? I guess the answer is because I have to.
