Question about what "Shipping & Handling Charges" Star ratings mean

[christygee]

I just received enough feedback on my seller ID to receive the star rating. 
I have 12 feedback . . . 11 as the seller. I have never charged shipping or handling fees on any of my listings. Never. Yet, I have a 4.6 rating out of 5 on the stars.

The same thing for the Shipping Time . . 4.6 out of 5. I ship within 24 hours.  Yes, I get them scanned at the post office before leaving.  

I did call ebay. I can understand the Shipping Time stars better than the Shipping charges stars.  How can you get freer than free?

What am I missing here? The ebay rep said perhaps the buyer didn't like the way it was packed. Huh??

[southern*sweet*tea]

hmmm, offering free shipping is supposed to be an automatic 5 for the shipping and handling star. I wonder, did this change when the feedback form changed?

As to shipping time, there are some buyers who expect next day delivery and will never be satisfied no matter how fast they get their package.

[christygee]

Offering free shipping is supposed to be an automatic 5 for the shipping and handling star. 

Bingo. When I've purchased items on my buyer's ID and the seller offered free shipping, that star option was blanked out and a little blurb to the side said something to the effect of "Why can't I rate this". 

That's why I'm so floored as to how I can get dinged seeing that I've never charged shipping/handling.

[nawlinsron2]

...and then there are those who don't believe in perfection.
They'll rate something 9/10 or 4/5 just...because.

[femmefan1946]

At one time Feedback was counted towards a SellerAccount's trustworthiness by eBay.

Although, even 20 years ago, no more than 40% of transactions got any feedback.

Fairly recently, eBay stopped using Feedback as a seller metric.

It is still used by some members to guage whether they will get a decent experience with a seller. Or if a buyer is difficult to deal with.

After eBay realized that Feedback was flawed, they introduced Detailed Seller Ratings.

Any DSR lower than 5 was punished.

Buyers were told that a DSR of 4 was normal.

Sellers were slightly annoyed. AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS.

Eventually DSRs were dropped as part of the Seller metric.

So basically, DSRs and feedback are meaningless in terms of your selling account.

And most buyers have no idea what DSRs mean anyway.

Many buyers do use FB to decide whether you are worth buying from, so watch that carefully.

While some (usually large) sellers may have hundreds of negative feedbacks and still are selling merrily, there are two factors to keep in mind.

• Ratios. A seller with one neg and 20 feedback is not a good seller. A seller with 100 negs and 100,000 FB is a good seller.
• A seller with a 95% FB rating probably also has a lot of Defects too as well as lost Disputes and Claims. He is likely to be tossed off the site for those metrics, but not the FB.

[christygee]

 Thank ya'll very much for taking the time to respond. 

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@nawlinsron2 wrote:
...and then there are those who don't believe in perfection.
They'll rate something 9/10 or 4/5 just...because.

---

My fourth grade teacher was that way.  If you made a 100 she gave you a 95 because "nobody's perfect".

[duchess-at-speakeasy]

Your buyers should not have been able to rate the shipping charges. That's an eBay glitch and you should contest it. Is it possible that eBay blanked the "as described" DSR instead of the "shipping charges" DSR?

As for shipping time, the buyer should consider only your handling time, but most do not understand and continue to base an opinion on the in-transit time. However, it appears that all but one of your buyers commented on fast shipping.

~~C~~

[7606dennis]

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@nawlinsron2 wrote:
...and then there are those who don't believe in perfection.
They'll rate something 9/10 or 4/5 just...because.

---

Actually, I'm pretty much of that school of thought myself, except for places like eBay.  When given a scale of 1 to 5, I would consider 1 = Poor, 2 = Below Average, 3 = Average, 4 = Above Average and 5 = Excellent.  However, eBay seems to work on a 5 = Okay and 1 thru 4 = Poor type of system.  Alas!  The logic used by eBay doesn't always  usually follow what a reasonable person considers normal.  I believe that Mr Spock would have found eBay's reason most illogical.

[chrysylys]

I fully disagree with any rating being automatic.  If the member doesn't select a rating, it should not be included in calculations.

I'm another who rarely (if ever) rates 10s of 'highly satsified' or whatever the high (or low) option in on customer satisfaction surveys.  I'll almost always select one or two points below the high. 

I generally do 5s here when appropriate, but don't like to feel  bound to do so.

[mudshark61369]

@christygee,

"I have never charged shipping or handling fees on any of my listings. Never. Yet, I have a 4.6 rating out of 5 on the stars.

The same thing for the Shipping Time . . 4.6 out of 5. I ship within 24 hours.  Yes, I get them scanned at the post office before leaving".  

You should be able to get the DSRs up to 5.  If all of your items were sold with Free Shipping, and they all shipped withi you handling time and arrived on time and tracking proves that. It would appear that one buyer dinged your stars, you can go to your seller dashboard to find out who did that and you can block them.

https://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/detailed-seller-ratings.html

As for shipping charges getting dinged, that must have been a glitch that allowed a free shipping item to be rated.  However, if you are taking items to the P.O. the shipping cost is posted on the shipping label. You should be printing your own labels through PayPal, stampsdotcom, or other postal sites. Doing that gives you a discount that partially offsets the fees ebay & PayPal takes from the whole payment including the shiping cost.  You can print the labels on plain paper and don't need to buy or use USPS labels. Printing through ebay paypal automatically uploads tracking to your listings, and proves acceptance and delivery times to the buyer and ebay. 

To save on other overhead, (time and gas spent going to the P.O., if you have a secure place on your property, you can schedule pick up.  If you have a regular postal carrier, you can talk to them and arrange a signal, and a place where you put packages, so they will pick your items up without having to schedule pick up.

Google ebay's customer service number to speak to a rep about the DSR ratings.

[scstool]

I did not think we were still allowed to see who dinged out DSR's. If you know of a way please post it.

[*madison]

Often I have been able to rate the shipping costs when shipping was free, it must be an on -off type of glitch.

You should contact ebay and see if they can fix your DSR's for shipping costs, your stars are getting hammered..

[jason_incognito]

ebay cared about these things up until big time sellers came in and ran 90% positives, racked up negatives and got killed for stars. 

Suddenly all those things no longer matter.

[christygee]

Already tried talking w/ ebay, Madison. The rep said it's a buyer's decision as to what he rates me and although I only offer free shipping, buyer must not have liked the way it was packaged. Thanks for your reply.