Brutal for Sellers: Bad Buyer Experience ("BBE") policy
I need to vent this. 4/30 of my sales counted as BBE. I don't know which, but surely also #2 bellow:
2. Stock-Out Cancellation (“Stock-Outâ€) A seller canceled a transaction because you no longer had the item, or the item was never shipped, and the buyer’s money was returned;
Yes, i returned the money to zero feedback buyers, that didn't even had Latin letters address which is required by our post service. Besides they did not respond to my message.
Consequences are brutal:
(a) A limit reduction has been applied to on your account; and
(b) Your payouts have been placed on hold.
1/3 of my shop listings are ending automatically. Watchers that i found through paid promotion and listing enhancements all lost. This is direct financial damage plus damage to future sales. And that is penalty for what? Seriously, for what?
26 comments
kh_femi
·4 months agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
tarotfindsandmore
·1 year agoIgnore the nastiness, it's a part of posting on any board. There are a tiny number of unpleasant folks here who cannot help but post mean-spirited, ignorant comments simply because they have the option. Don't let them get you down, they can't help themselves.
Moving on, take the advice of lacemaker3 , adjust your ship to countries, start shipping to those zero feedback buyers, and do whatever you have to get your account back on track if you want to continue selling. You may have some additional headaches with zero feedback buyers, but the biggest problem with these guys is that they don't pay so you can just file a non-paying buyer case if the system doesn't automatically do it for you (it is now automatic after four days on the U.S. site).
You have a nice long, successful selling history, and you do have every right to be exasperated, so ignore the jerky comments, regroup and make the adjustments suggested by the knowledgable folks here and eBay's stupid bots/AI, and keep doing what you were doing otherwise.
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year agoThank you, this advice i will follow.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year agoI believe the OPs first post, he cancelled or refunded zero FB buyers.
I see nothing to be discussed. His intent is clear and he was punished appropriately.
evry1nositswindy
·1 year agoRefusing to ship to 0 feedback buyers is not allowed. I can't believe all of them had 'address problems'. I have shipped many items to 0 feedback buyers with no issues. We all started at 0.
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year agoI have canceled due address not in Latin letters. I cannot fulfill online shipping procedure. Now check this: 3 buyers out of 4 have sent me repaired address and re-buy the same item. So only 1 item was not sent. And my shop gets 1/3 destruction. This makes no sense. And pretty much all replies here saying i deserve it :).
I am not selling serial items with stock from mass producer. And my experience with zero buyers in 20 years of Ebay is terrible.
lacemaker3
·1 year ago@sienkiewicz.optikka
Thanks for sharing your Cross Border Trading (CBT) Selling Dashboard. One good thing is, you only have to worry about the BBE part at the moment, your INR performance is not an issue at this time. And, you are only restricted so far, you still have time to improve your performance and get out of this.
On your CBT dashboard, if you scroll down below the summary chart that you posted, there are graphs that show your performance month-by-month, broken down into the major selling regions (see the screenshot below). Take a look at those, they should give you an idea whether any of your problem transactions will age out of the evaluation window before your next evaluation, which should help.
BBE uses a 12-week evaluation window, which ends on the Saturday before the evaluation, which is on a Wednesday. (Your next evaluation date will be shown on your CBT dashboard).
"Yes, i returned the money to zero feedback buyers, that didn't even had Latin letters address which is required by our post service. Besides they did not respond to my message."
Having zero or low feedback is not a valid reason to cancel a transaction, and communication is not required either; it's nice but it's not mandatory. If you don't want to sell to some countries (which don't use the Latin alphabet) then you need to block sales to those countries. And, enable this buyer requirement:
https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf/excludeRegions
https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements
CBT dashboard, detailed graphs: https://export.dashboard.ebay.com/sellercenter/hipo/index
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year agoYou gotta admit the practice is bizarre. No one benefits. I understand Ebay trying to maximize profits but in this case there is just no good out of it. Trying to force a seller to send rare item, that he worked on for hours to buyer that has zero feedback, unusable address and with no response to message? Which seller is going to accept it? Makes no sense. So my honest work / shop being put down, Ebay makes no money, i do not make money, customers cannot buy stuff they like. No winner.
Sadly i see it as a signal to new times to come. If in previous century the dangers lied in cold bureaucracy, nowadays there is a coldness of AI statistics.
nobody*s_perfect
·1 year agoeBay says it's OK to cancel a transaction in which the address is unusable.
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year agoAs it seems, far from it.
luckythewinner
·1 year agoOh please.
eBay did not try to force you to send an item to an unusable address.
That is just you twisting the narrative to avoid admitting that you incorrectly chose "out of stock" and not "problem with buyer's address" as the reason for the cancellation.
That was not eBay's fault, it was not AI's fault, and it was not cold bureaucracy's fault. It was YOUR fault. You failed to choose the correct reason for the cancellation.
lacemaker3
·1 year ago@luckythewinner
I'm sorry, but that is not the case here.
The BBE does not distinguish between any reasons for cancelling a transactions. Sellers get an out-of-stock recorded for any transaction if "the item was never shipped, and the buyer's money was returned;"
https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/bber/
It appears that OP is not able to, or doesn't want to, ship to addresses that are not written in the Latin alphabet. Presumably, addresses in Cyrillic, Greek, or an ideogram alphabet. So OP should block sales to those countries to avoid issues like this.
nobody*s_perfect
·1 year agoThe penalty is for canceling as "Out of stock" instead of as "Problem with buyer's address," which does not carry a penalty for the seller. Here's a link to eBay's policy on seller performance evaluation; perhaps it can help to improve your future performance.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy?id=4347
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year agoAs told, i did not choose "out of stock", but most probably the address issue. It all counts into BBE as seen in above table.
nobody*s_perfect
·1 year agoThe image that you provided shows that all of your 13.3% is due to "Stock Out Cancellation," whether you remember choosing that or not. There are 4 possible reasons for canceling a transaction: Out of stock, Problem with address, Buyer Requested, and Buyer hasn't Paid. Only the first one counts as a defect point on your account, which is why you should have (and apparently didn't) choose Problem with address.
Caveat: all of this discussion is based on the rules for Sellers in the United States, because you have posted on eBay.com, which is the US site. The policies for your country might be different, but that's unlikely.
@nobody*s_perfect
The OP claims he didn't ship and refunded. So apparently there was no cancellation.
According to Service Standard policy eBay treats that action the same as out of stock.
nobody*s_perfect
·1 year agoBut then in a later post, he says, "i did not choose "out of stock", but most probably the address issue." Which implies that he did choose to cancel, but chose the wrong reason.
Either way, clearly he should have canceled based on the address reason.
lacemaker3
·1 year ago@nobody*s_perfect
OP said that the problem was the Bad Buyer Experience (BBE) policy, which applies for export sellers on eBay.com, where the OP lists and sells (and on the eBay sites in Europe). Export sellers are also held to a higher INR standard than local sellers.
https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/bber/
https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/shipping-performance-policy-item-not-received-rate/
So this is the only board available for him to post this and ask for help. And, as @ebooksdiva has posted, for the BBE it doesn't matter why the transactions were cancelled, they are all counted. Export sellers are not able to use the "problem with the buyer's address" to avoid being dinged for BBE.
The BBE policy has been in place for about 2 years now. As mentioned, it applies for export sellers: those who are located in a different country/region than where they are selling.
nobody*s_perfect
·1 year agoThank you for the clarification.
@sienkiewicz.optikka
You refunded the buyer eBay didn't see a shipping label purchased nor a reason for cancelling so they determined out of stock. Please read what is underlined for Out of stock below..
So you cancelled for out of stock on orders from zero feedback buyers because their address wasn't right? Why didn't you cancel for problem with buyers address? If you used that option you wouldn't be in the mess you're in now.
Communication between buyer and is not required.
You are being penalized for cancelling orders as out of stock which is harmful to your selling career on eBay.
Sorry you're going through this, but eBay is very strict with their policies.
sienkiewicz.optikka
OP1 year ago...or the item was never shipped. I did not choose "out of stock".
Never shipping is the same as cancelling for out of stock.
You might want to read Service Standard Policy (BBE)
logicfarmers
·1 year agoIt doesn't really matter; eBay should at least notify the seller of the consequences when selecting this reason on the page. They have enough space to provide some explanation.
maxseatrade
·4 months agoHello. I don't understand one thing. You had a very high BBE percentage. How is it that your seller account is working again? I only have 3%+/70. And I'm not sure my seller account will ever work. Has your BBE been cancelled?
@maxseatrade where do you see logicfarmers BBE percentage? The only BBE shown in this thread was posted by the original poster of this thread. Logicfarmers is not the original poster.