eBay

banknotes_nikolatesla · ‎11-28-2023

Dear eBay seller,

Starting from December 11, 2023, eBay will launch a new service standard policy i.e., Bad Buyer Experience (“BBE”) Rate. We request you to please visit the policy page for the detailed information.

The sellers whose BBE rate is much higher than the peer market average may be subject to a range of actions including, but not limited to, administratively ending or removing listings, adjusting selling limits, holding the payment, enforcing buying or selling restrictions, or suspending the relevant accounts.

Your account will be evaluated each Wednesday. Once the policy is launched, the sellers are requested to refer their Seller Dashboard to check the performance of their respective sellers account.

Thanks,

eBay

What is point of this new policies? If seller have more than 99% positive feedback why all this? If buyer love seller why some metric needed to decide for selling limits or restrictions.

By the way I am 10 years here, have last 3 months restriction because INR rate on USA and Canada because post was late in post strike last year. Even should be protected by policy in this cases ebay teammates in 90% dont even know to look tracking, I need to appeal 2-3 times and to explain where to click, they dont know their own policies, so why all this?

carlmarxx · ‎11-29-2023

Well ebay's knew motor's guarantee fit policy never made since there are high number of buyers that don't read the descriptions or check their car parts number's for replacement and don't take into account the parts book maybe off from time to time.

gamersbaystore · ‎11-29-2023

You're deflecting. This has nothing to do with dropshipping, and everything to do with ebay policies that punish sellers for things they have no control of to begin with; such as a buyer's opinion.

A buyers opinion is not a matter of fact. Yet, the policies are designed to punish you for someone elses personal opinion, whether its honest or not.

A buyer leaving negative feedback or a low DSR would then result in punishments for the seller, with no way to defend themselves.

Likewise, ebay gives sellers no control over estimated delivery dates, it makes no sense to punish people for things that are clearly outside of their control.

These policies are sickening.

robbie31415 · ‎11-29-2023

Will this increase weeding out bad sellers? Yes.

Will this hurt honest sellers from bad buyers ? Yes.

Will this hurt honest sellers from things that are out of their control? Yes.

In a perfect world I'm all for this. But it's not a perfect world.

carlmarxx · ‎11-29-2023

The New Policy maybe too little to late and is another one size fits all problem fixer . Earlier today I was on the phone with a U.S. eBay Csr Manager that told me eBay has now made it harder for a seller to get a None positive feedback removed and that the seller will have too work harder to get removal of the none positive . I can see eBay down the line fixing the BBE as needed .

ezstocklocker · ‎11-30-2023

So there is a caviat to this as well as performance metrics. The way they calculate your standing is by using any cases that get opened, even if the buyer creates a case and then closes it then it still counts. Also if you have a buyer that creates and item not received case but then receives the item it still counts. I personally have two of these that were created as a result of the USPS shipping delay and the buyer eventually got the item, even left 5 star positive feedback but it still counts against me. I personally have an issue with this when it results in additional fees being added.

valueaddedresource · ‎11-30-2023

@blacktopautoparts wrote:
@valueaddedresource I appreciate you looking into this for us. Trust me, I know what you mean about eBay CS being wrong many times in the past. I deal with them multiple times a day on a daily basis and sometimes you get a good rep and other times you get ones that need more training on their own policies.

I do hope that this is not an issue here in the US. As you know, many of these "beta" program/policies do eventually make it here and this one seems like something that they would want to implement across the board if it helps clean up some of the garbage sellers on the platform. The issue that I have with this is that even if this doesn't affect us right now, it will at some point and this "All or Nothing" approach doesn't work and it never has on the platform with anything they have released.

They can't even get the service metrics correct and I've had conversations with higher up product managers on this, does anyone think something complicated as this BBE will not add multiple layers of problems in the back end? I have a bridge here in Illinois that I can sell you.

@blacktopautoparts in addition to the fact this is only posted (so far) on the Exports page, another indicator that might lend some credence to the idea it won't impact US sellers domestically is in the FAQ on that page that directs sellers where to check their BBE status.

The link they provide leads to the export.eBay.com Cross Border Trade (CBT) performance dashboard, which would reflect international seller performance.

How can I check my performance?
You can visit your Seller Dashboard to check your account performance which will be refreshed every Wednesday.

It's certainly no substitute for an official statement from eBay, but hopefully that might help allay some concerns.

ed8108 · ‎11-30-2023

@buyselljack2016 wrote:
@comicscauldron wrote:
Instead of taking responsability and fix all their mistakes the prefer to keep creating anti seller policies.
Buyers are the foundation of eBay's existence. As they leave, the platform crumbles.

If buyers are the foundation, instead of focusing on sellers

Create a unhappy with ebay policy, rules & practices , that would certainly be more effective if ebay really wished to address platform crumbling

blacktopautoparts · ‎11-30-2023

We get all kinds of crazy returns for the wildest reasons. I will not deny that some are our fault as we are human and mistakes are made, but the ones that are done by customers are nuts. We offer free returns and free shipping, there is no reason to make up fake false return reasons, but they still do. The best is we will get someone mark the item as "WRONG ITEM SENT", then they will go on in the return description mention how they purchased the wrong item for their car or they thought the color of their interior was X while our color is Z. The best of the best is, say we are selling a "2013-2018 Nissan Altima Driver Side View Power Door Mirror" and sometimes I'll get someone that buys it and in the return says their vehicle is a 2020 and they thought it would fit. If you look at any of our listings, all of our item specifics are filled out, the eBay compatibility charts are filled out, and even our descriptions are. The problem is and eBay knows this, but they want to continue to punish us sellers, is that Buyers just do not read or even look at the pictures. I can have a listing for a Black colored sunvisor, it says Black in the title, item specifics, and then the kicker.....the pictures, but we will get a return that their sunvisor was say Brown or Gray. How do you mixup Black with Brown or Gray......then select a reason on top of it that is the Sellers fault.

Just like the eBay Fitment Guarantee, in theory it is great. We have been a MyFitment customer well before eBay acquired them. The way that eBay setup the eBay Fitment Guarantee is nonsense and I've spoke to many of the managers on this, but they just do not listen. They used it at first as a dangling carrot to us sellers to get signed up that they would provide customers a free return shipping label if they used the fitment tool to send the item back. For the amount of returns that we do get, you guys can only imagine on one hand how many people use the Fitment tool and even select the DOESNT FIT MY VEHICLE return reason. If you can't get customers to use your fitment chart when purchasing an item, how in the world are they going to select the correct reason on a return.

Like I said in my posts earlier, it is fine if they want to release this BBE program, but lets be a bit more realistic. The customer service reps I speak to, know of the issues we all face as sellers on a daily basis as they hear it day in day out. If the reps are sending our complaints up to management, why is management not rectifying these issues instead of creating yet another layer of broken metrics now known as the BBE?

Even if this is not for the US sellers as @valueaddedresource is suspecting, because I have also gone to that same new landing page you have referenced, who says that this will not make its way here to the US at some point?

Do not get me wrong, there are a crap ton of bad sellers out there and I see it all the time when I am even looking in our own category of eBay Motors. Sure, something needs to be done to clean up some of the mess, but it needs to be done logically and not a one size fits all approach. As I mentioned earlier, you know how long it took me to get eBay to fix the issue with the Service Metrics where they were not removing FALSE SNAD's from it, so it was placing us in the HIGH category last year regardless of how many people I was reporting with pictures and a narrative. They finally fixed that if you guys keep an eye on your service metrics with the percentages against your peers throughout the week as it goes up and down based on which ones you report after a refund is initiated.

Again, do we have to jump through all of these hoops as sellers that do everything to service our customers? Sorry for the long rant, but it is stuff like this that hurts this platform.

blacktopautoparts · ‎11-30-2023

@valueaddedresource it does sound like this is for the International sellers like you mentioned. It is disappointing at the end of the day that the eBay customer service reps should be more knowledgeable when we call and they gave many of us false information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CsBJk71qdM

I apologize for my ranting and raving in earlier posts, but a lot of what I said still does hold true that there are systems and policies that need to be fixed.

Eventually this BBE will be unveiled here in the US, there is no way that they do not. Hoping they can take feedback to make sure its done right.

valueaddedresource · ‎11-30-2023

@blacktopautoparts wrote:
@valueaddedresource it does sound like this is for the International sellers like you mentioned. It is disappointing at the end of the day that the eBay customer service reps should be more knowledgeable when we call and they gave many of us false information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CsBJk71qdM

I apologize for my ranting and raving in earlier posts, but a lot of what I said still does hold true that there are systems and policies that need to be fixed.

Eventually this BBE will be unveiled here in the US, there is no way that they do not. Hoping they can take feedback to make sure its done right.

No worries @blacktopautoparts , I totally understand the concern and frustration.

I've said for many years that eBay could solve a lot of problems (and save themselves a lot of customer service headaches) by simply proactively communicating with sellers and this is just another example.

Personally I don't think it's an inevitability it will come to the US as well. There are many examples of policies or features/functionality that apply to some markets/subsets of buyers or sellers but not others and I suspect these policies are being implemented specifically to target areas where eBay may see the majority of negative buyer experiences happening.

As with most things, we'll just have to wait and see and I don't recommend spending a lot of time stressing about things until/unless that time comes.

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-30-2023

99.95% of sellers are completely daft to whats happened economically across the globe and here since the prior administration, covid and how its changed the world/economies along w/ bad actor activities. "Sherlocks" can guess all they like and bid into conspiracies all they like scratching at non-existent reasoning because they don't take the time to actually learn. Third party commerce online has to change, there is no going back, there are no simple solutions to extremely complex problems. Governments, mainstream retail, manufacturers, distributors, authorities are going to force change. Thats the deal. No conspiracies, no he said/she said, no eBay "Hates" its sellers, no eBay is just money grabbing, no eBay is throttling, none of it.

eBay implements policies to protect consumers from bad sellers and don't say "Well there aren't that many, there are." Those polices bad buyers use to scam good sellers. Both result in levels of formal complaint, that is towards authorities. In the USA, FTC, FBI, USPS, UPS, FedEx, Authorities and across the Internet "in total" not only eCommerce the numbers are staggering and escalating in significant fashion. But its not simply how much consumers of sellers are scammed, its also the monetary and resources said entities above and not just here but globally expend attempting to deal with eCommerce scams.

As sellers not alone in buyer scams, its estimated eCommerce fraud against the entire swath (retailers as well) is near 50 BILLION dollars in 2023. Any idea how much money that is? Towards consumers, 2022 in the USA alone had been reported as high as 10 Billion and with that, there are estimates that its actually up to 300% higher as only what is reported can be tracked and that number is ONLY the USA.

That said, governments weight third party sellers at the bottom of the list. You get scammed by a buyer, report it to the USPS Postal Inspector or FedEx, whatever you're causing an expenditure of resources. They care most about consumers getting scammed be that online scams, eCommerce on and on via Internet.

There are legislators around the world who if they could would chop the head off all third party eCommerce with a swipe of a pen right now. That mindset is "Cut off the head" and eCommerce hard goods fraud be that on consumer or seller side stops. Counterfeit production and sales take a huge wallop on and on and on.

Folks keep bashing away at eBay yet eBay is literally the protector of you're ability to sell and basically has been for 20 years at the head of the line as both target and defender. So whilst folks care rattle their saber mouths about how "unfair" THEIR CHOICES are to them if they care sell online and I do mean anyplace from here to Craigslist. Sellers ought be thanking you're stars that eBay is attempting do all they can not to just save third party eCommerce, the company, protect consumers and sellers but your very rights.

Instead of living inside your sellers bubble best take a look around and lend your support to what "This leader" is attempting to accomplish because if they fail, you're out of business. No, you're not going to go Etsy, or Mercari nor here nor there, the ability for you to make you're own way ends. That's whats at stake.

devon@ebay · ‎11-30-2023

@valueaddedresource wrote:

@lacemaker3 wrote:

@ckimodog

There was a "new" item not received policy was implemented for Southeast Asian sellers in July, yes. It may be more accurate to say it applies for sellers selling to the USA/Europe from other regions, since it is on export.ebay.com. It went into effect July 24, 2023, but it also seemed to be retroactive for the previous 45 days before the evaluations, which are every 2nd Monday in this case.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/shipping-performance-policy-item-not-received-r...

Since that time, some sellers were also being contacted with eBay messages mentioning bad buyer experience. That may have been done as a warning for sellers who were likely to be affected by the upcoming policy.

It looks as though this bad buyer experience policy has only just been formalized and published, on export.ebay.com like the earlier policy. The policy page does say that it is going into effect Dec 11, 2023, but it is retroactive for 3 months before the first evaluation date. That will be Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, so it covers transactions back to Sept. 10, 2023, as I quoted earlier. Evaluations are to be every Wednesday.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/bber/

@lacemaker3 I think you're exactly right about who this applies to and more importantly who it doesn't apply to.

devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay can you please confirm that this does not apply to US sellers on the .com site selling to US buyers? Can you provide a list of countries this would apply to?

I'm seeing this get picked up across YouTube and social media missing that very important caveat of who exactly this applies to, so it might be a good idea to clarify before panic sets in.

Hey @valueaddedresource! We reached out to our Seller Protections team and they confirmed that this policy is for Southeast Asia Sellers only.

Devon,

valueaddedresource · ‎11-30-2023

devon@ebay wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@lacemaker3 wrote:
@ckimodog

There was a "new" item not received policy was implemented for Southeast Asian sellers in July, yes. It may be more accurate to say it applies for sellers selling to the USA/Europe from other regions, since it is on export.ebay.com. It went into effect July 24, 2023, but it also seemed to be retroactive for the previous 45 days before the evaluations, which are every 2nd Monday in this case.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/shipping-performance-policy-item-not-received-r...

Since that time, some sellers were also being contacted with eBay messages mentioning bad buyer experience. That may have been done as a warning for sellers who were likely to be affected by the upcoming policy.

It looks as though this bad buyer experience policy has only just been formalized and published, on export.ebay.com like the earlier policy. The policy page does say that it is going into effect Dec 11, 2023, but it is retroactive for 3 months before the first evaluation date. That will be Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, so it covers transactions back to Sept. 10, 2023, as I quoted earlier. Evaluations are to be every Wednesday.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/bber/

@lacemaker3 I think you're exactly right about who this applies to and more importantly who it doesn't apply to.

devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay can you please confirm that this does not apply to US sellers on the .com site selling to US buyers? Can you provide a list of countries this would apply to?

I'm seeing this get picked up across YouTube and social media missing that very important caveat of who exactly this applies to, so it might be a good idea to clarify before panic sets in.
Hey @valueaddedresource! We reached out to our Seller Protections team and they confirmed that this policy is for Southeast Asia Sellers only.

Awesome devon@ebay - thank you so much for getting that cleared up!

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-30-2023

devon@ebay wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@lacemaker3 wrote:
@ckimodog

There was a "new" item not received policy was implemented for Southeast Asian sellers in July, yes. It may be more accurate to say it applies for sellers selling to the USA/Europe from other regions, since it is on export.ebay.com. It went into effect July 24, 2023, but it also seemed to be retroactive for the previous 45 days before the evaluations, which are every 2nd Monday in this case.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/shipping-performance-policy-item-not-received-r...

Since that time, some sellers were also being contacted with eBay messages mentioning bad buyer experience. That may have been done as a warning for sellers who were likely to be affected by the upcoming policy.

It looks as though this bad buyer experience policy has only just been formalized and published, on export.ebay.com like the earlier policy. The policy page does say that it is going into effect Dec 11, 2023, but it is retroactive for 3 months before the first evaluation date. That will be Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, so it covers transactions back to Sept. 10, 2023, as I quoted earlier. Evaluations are to be every Wednesday.

https://export.ebay.com/en/regulations/ebay-policies/bber/

@lacemaker3 I think you're exactly right about who this applies to and more importantly who it doesn't apply to.

devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay can you please confirm that this does not apply to US sellers on the .com site selling to US buyers? Can you provide a list of countries this would apply to?

I'm seeing this get picked up across YouTube and social media missing that very important caveat of who exactly this applies to, so it might be a good idea to clarify before panic sets in.
Hey @valueaddedresource! We reached out to our Seller Protections team and they confirmed that this policy is for Southeast Asia Sellers only.

Thanks for the clarification Devon. Question, understand if you don't have the data. Does Southeast Asia include India and China? Southeast Asia is usually defined as the Philippines general region. If this is towards India and China its an absolutely BRILLIANT move towards hard goods eCommerce matters revolving around those particular two nations albeit the former more than latter. India is far more known for the eCommerce investment etc scams.

If you've never looked, on youTube there are hackers who target those "Soft goods" scammers basically stealing back what was stolen. Its frightfully scary but pretty intense to watch. I looked at one the other day where a Hacker boosted over $500,000 in Bitcoin from a scammer in India all whilst talking to the scammer on the phone whilst the scammer literally watched the hacker do it.

toomuchstuffagain35 · ‎11-30-2023

It seems like they are trying to weed out the offshore sellers who have no inventory and think 'dropshipping' from retail stores in the USA is a good easy way to make money.

"If a product doesn't sell, raise the price" - Reese Palley
"If it sold FAST, it was priced too low" - also Reese Palley