@orangehound wrote:@zamo-zuan
You are writing a couple of things in this post that I was wondering if you could expand upon.
@zamo-zuan wrote:
Why do you think they can "no longer punish visibility" of sellers with the 5% FVF penalty because they "need sales in order to bring their metrics up"?
Did a blue say this? I haven't seen anything specifically that would indicate that visibility was punished simply because one is now penalized with the extra 5% FVF. However, the eBay User Agreement says that visibility can be impacted by "seller's history, including listing practices, Detailed Seller Ratings, eBay policy compliance, Feedback, and defect rate". This list is mostly about customer service stuff, as are seller metrics. So, I assume that poor seller metrics could impact one's visibility just like all the other customer service measures ... I haven't seen any evidence one way or the other, and I haven't seen an eBay employee suggest something either way.
Dropping out of Top Rated used to be a nail in a coffin. Now they're guiding traffic specifically to some sellers that can't keep Top Rated (in addition to giving them special treatment).
Ummm ... what? I'm not sure what you are trying to say with this statement. These days, TRS is just a package of mostly token benefits (although in October it could get much better if those seller protections are real). I don't think eBay is using TRS to give more visibility, and they certainly are not using TRS to punish sellers.
For the first question, it was a response awhile back, possibly last year around when they started the FVF penalties? I don't recall if it was on the forum or in one of the chats, but basically it was stated that they can't punish poor return metrics because doing so would make it so they would never be able to have a chance to remove a penalty. They need to be able to get sales in order to bring the metrics up.
Now the thing is, they USED to punish visibility for poor metrics. Or alternatively, you might want to word it as "reward sellers for positive metrics". As of the 5% FVF penalty, they no longer do it, and you can see it in search. Some of the manufacturers we're partnered with have the 5% penalty and showed there was no change in traffic after they had to bring their prices up, and in some cases had increased traffic after bringing their prices 5% HIGHER.
Regarding TRS, they USED to have a very big penalty once you dropped out of TRS. We had it happen on an alternate store a few years back that exclusively sold Drones, and as soon as you drop status, your listings go from page 1 to page 3. EBay still said the item was Sales Rank #1, yet it did not appear on the first 2 pages.
You're able to see which sellers have top rated or not, and we can just do a search now to see that many items that show up high on search ARE NOT top rated sellers. It's something you can verify yourself without having to network with any other stores to see their results, we can see it with a quick search.
It's a lack of quality control. If we assess why, it seems to be that the common denominator that the places quality control are lacking, happen to be places that eBay gets more profit from.
Another thing I should mention, when I made a large post when first becoming active on the forums here last year, around that time I was told by a supervisor of the Utah CSR office that there's a "risk level" associated with sellers accounts. That includes reasons NOT in the eBay User Agreement. People in the topic asked for blues to comment, as it seems shady that they're punishing people for things not stated in the agreement. They said they would look in to it. But then the mod looking in to it went on vacation, and handed it off to other blues. Which ended up saying that we were "now being treated fairly" (which was nice that we could have some confirmation on eBay's side that what I was saying was the truth), but at the same time, they didn't give a clear answer to the question. Basically saying something along the lines of "We take many things in to consideration" but avoiding giving any actual answer. And we never got a clear answer as to what the supposed "violations" the supervisor claimed we had counting against us, as he never sent any violations or dates to us (and days earlier we were told there were NONE).
In regards to your final question, what I'm saying is they get higher fees sending people to listings that don't have top rated discounts. As mentioned, losing TRS used to be a substantial penalty. This is no longer the case, and search guides people to those TRS listings, even though they are most certainly not the best options for a buyer to purchase.
TRS was *always* traditionally used alongside sales history for keeping quality control strong for buyers, and boosting sellers in search as a reward for good metrics. Nowadays it's not the case. It's most certainly NOT better for eBay customers, and not better for the strength of the eBay market. The only place we can see this being an advantage at all, is for eBay's profits.
