eBay

highlido · ‎06-28-2018

So I just got an email from ebay telling me that if I dont act now I am going to be hit with an additional 4% final value fees on ALL my sales because I have high "item not as described" returns.

But this is on the heals of them dropping my 20% discount down to 10% and taking that away if I dont offer free returns.

Most of these returns are because the buyer does not want to pay the return shipping but I get more returns if I offer free returns.

The rest of my returns are "not as described" because they were sold AS IS and the only way a buyer can return an item (that they did not read) that was sold AS IS is to open a "item not as described" return.

Earlier this year ebay took away the ability to despute a buyers reason for return, because "they had to many desputes"... Duh!

So what am I to do now? My sales have been steadly dropping they started implementing all this in Feb and now they want to charge me more for less?

It seams that ebay just wants to get rid of all the small business that have made up the backbone of their bussiness for years

orangehound · ‎06-28-2018

@highlido wrote:

It seams that ebay just wants to get rid of all the small business that have made up the backbone of their bussiness for years

They are not trying to get rid of small sellers ... they are trying to get rid of sellers that give (in their opinion and by their measure) bad buyer experiences. They want small sellers to operate like large sellers. Most of the eBay policies are now geared toward selling new items, and so selling used items can get us into more hot water.

@highlido wrote:
The rest of my returns are "not as described" because they were sold AS IS and the only way a buyer can return an item (that they did not read) that was sold AS IS is to open a "item not as described" return.

When a buyer wants to return an item that is "as is", eBay simply gives them a limited number of return reasons, all of which will trigger a SNAD. In today's eBay environment, there is absolutely no reason to list an item with no returns ... I wouldn't be surprised if eBay eliminates that option in 2019.

@highlido wrote:
So what am I to do now? My sales have been steadly dropping they started implementing all this in Feb and now they want to charge me more for less?

I would guess that eBay will do more than just penalize you with an additional 4% ... I would imagine that they will also drop you down in search, significantly. I didn't see where you shared the content of your message from eBay, but I would imagine that the SNAD percentage is based on overall sales. As such, you can correct the SNAD rate by selling lots and lots of stuff - buy a few cases of something new and cheap and in high demand (sometimes selling at a loss), in order to get your stats back into a healthy zone.

dtexley3 · ‎06-28-2018

@buyselljack2016 wrote:
@highlido

"Unresolved by seller" returns is one of the biggest factors in falling below standard resulting in 4% increased FVF, followed by suspension.

Did you have "unresolved by seller" (eBay had to step in) cases.

This has nothing to do with unresolved by seller. This coming Oct, sellers will be penalized 4% if their RETURN RATE (not unresolved returns) is above what eBay has calculated as the "average" return rate for "similar" items. I received the same email. I'm at 1.27%, but I sell fragile porcelain items and no matter how well you pack them, occasionally an item gets broken. In collectibles I'm being compared to people shipping all manner of non-breakables, they are NOT similar in the least. The average return rate eBay "calculated" for collectibles is 0.17%. Yea right. These "averages" are likely heavily weighted to bring them as low as possible. It's all about the benjamins.

Member of the Grumpy Old Man crew

ted_200 · ‎06-28-2018

Still hard to believe with all the stupid policy and broken functionality from eBay, sellers continue to blame other sellers for everything that goes wrong around here.

The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.

njrtsr · ‎06-28-2018

For those who got the email, I'm curious how many strikes you have on your dashboard and how many of those were "unresolved". Also what percentage of transactions that amounts to. All that should be on your dashboard.

fern*wood · ‎06-28-2018

@dtexley3 wrote:

This has nothing to do with unresolved by seller. This coming Oct, sellers will be penalized 4% if their RETURN RATE (not unresolved returns) is above what eBay has calculated as the "average" return rate for "similar" items. I received the same email. I'm at 1.27%, but I sell fragile porcelain items and no matter how well you pack them, occasionally an item gets broken. In collectibles I'm being compared to people shipping all manner of non-breakables, they are NOT similar in the least. The average return rate eBay "calculated" for collectibles is 0.17%. Yea right. These "averages" are likely heavily weighted to bring them as low as possible. It's all about the benjamins.

I'm curious as to how this will work. I sell in a lot of categories. I might only sell 2 things in a particular category and if I get one return, then of course, I'm already at 50%. How do they compare sellers? This seems like an easy way to raise fees on lots of folks.

rockmafia5 · ‎06-28-2018

I got the email. My dashboard is perfect. All 100.00% and 0.00%

They claim that all of ebay motors the SNAD return rate 1.42% is which is **bleep**. My "high" return rate is 2.47%.

This is nothing but a money grab to take another 4-5% from many sellers.

njrtsr · ‎06-28-2018

This has nothing to do with unresolved by seller. This coming Oct, sellers will be penalized 4% if their RETURN RATE (not unresolved returns) is above what eBay has calculated as the "average" return rate for "similar" items. I received the same email. I'm at 1.27%, but I sell fragile porcelain items and no matter how well you pack them, occasionally an item gets broken. In collectibles I'm being compared to people shipping all manner of non-breakables, they are NOT similar in the least. The average return rate eBay "calculated" for collectibles is 0.17%. Yea right. These "averages" are likely heavily weighted to bring them as low as possible. It's all about the benjamins.

So they're lumping all Collectibles sellers together?! That's good for me because my field has an extremely low rate of returns. But that's really bad for sellers of breakable, fragile collectibles and collectibles with high return rates! I'm not in a position to complain, but if I were in your spot....

njrtsr · ‎06-28-2018

In that case I wonder what percentile you have to be in to get whacked with the extra FVF? Hopefully you don't have to be one tick worse than the average!

threshold.sales.group · ‎06-28-2018

The worst part is that since the penalty is based on an average, there will always be decent % of sellers getting hit with the higher rate - no matter what. Also, the %'s are often meaningless is real life. Is there a significant difference in quality between a seller with a return rate of 1.67% and another in the same category with a 1.87%? That could easily be just one or two returns within an evaluation period. That's crazy.

d.clawed · ‎06-28-2018

There are some interesting posts on the eBay Facebook page. Check this out....

So, eBay, what exactly is the “peer average” for clothing, shoes, & accessories...is it .87% or 1.05%?

How on earth can we defend ourselves against seemingly arbitrary, concealed numbers?

dtexley3 · ‎06-28-2018

@fern*wood wrote:
@dtexley3 wrote:

This has nothing to do with unresolved by seller. This coming Oct, sellers will be penalized 4% if their RETURN RATE (not unresolved returns) is above what eBay has calculated as the "average" return rate for "similar" items. I received the same email. I'm at 1.27%, but I sell fragile porcelain items and no matter how well you pack them, occasionally an item gets broken. In collectibles I'm being compared to people shipping all manner of non-breakables, they are NOT similar in the least. The average return rate eBay "calculated" for collectibles is 0.17%. Yea right. These "averages" are likely heavily weighted to bring them as low as possible. It's all about the benjamins.

I'm curious as to how this will work. I sell in a lot of categories. I might only sell 2 things in a particular category and if I get one return, then of course, I'm already at 50%. How do they compare sellers? This seems like an easy way to raise fees on lots of folks.

Per the Blues it's by category and you have to sell 20+ items in the category before it's counted. So I sell primarily in Collectibles but also in Dolls and Bears. In D&B I have a return rate of 8% because of 1 return out of 13 sales. I won't get hit with 4% FVF increase on any dolls sold until i've sold 20 in the previous 12 months. However in collectibles I'm WELL over the 20 items sold and my return rate is above the (ridiculous) 0.17% "average". So come Oct, along with half the collectible sellers on eBay, I'll get hit with a fee increase. It's not fair, but I either pay it or move on.

Member of the Grumpy Old Man crew

gilllake2014 · ‎06-28-2018

I think we need to wait and see what eBay provide with regards to more information. Their breif email states they "may" impose a 4% FVF increase in certain categories. "May" being the operative word.

I'm currently running a return rate for "item not as described"at around 3% which eBay consider "very high". 1. I'm selling used items. 2. Clothing companies such as ASOS average between 20-40% returns on new items. 3% is impossibly good for clothing.

The main issue I have with the entire idea, is that eBay are taking subjective information from buyers, and using that as objective data to charge sellers an additional 4%. Buyers who use this platform, especially for clothing, know full well if they open a return request because an item doesn't fit, if they said the item wasn't as described, they force me to buy a postage label for £3. Also, if you want to find an issue with an item, you can. I could find a fault with 99% of new items. People buy 2 items, and send 1 back, for the sake of it. It doesn't make me a bad seller. If I was a bad seller, deserving of a fee increase, as If I were below standard, I wouldn't have 99.9% positive feedback with 4.8/5 for "item as described".

I've got nearly 5,000 feedback, I'm top rated, my defect rate is 0. My account is just about as perfect as it gets, and this 4% increase would hit me, in the same way it'd hit an account below standard, simply based on the "reason" for returns, of less than 3%. This cannot happen, especially not for used items. Anyone with half a brain knows the likelihood of returns increase with used items. The likelihood of returns in clothing is higher than with most other categories. This feels like eBay doing everything they can to raise fees low key, but I'll maintain my faith in them until we have more info. Worrying though.

dtexley3 · ‎06-28-2018

@d.clawed wrote:
There are some interesting posts on the eBay Facebook page. Check this out....

So, eBay, what exactly is the “peer average” for clothing, shoes, & accessories...is it .87% or 1.05%?

How on earth can we defend ourselves against seemingly arbitrary, concealed numbers?

tyler@ebay So yes, Tyler, which is it? Two sellers, same generalized category, different AVERAGES? Smells like someone is cooking the data.

Member of the Grumpy Old Man crew

fern*wood · ‎06-28-2018

@dtexley3 wrote:
Per the Blues it's by category and you have to sell 20+ items in the category before it's counted. So I sell primarily in Collectibles but also in Dolls and Bears. In D&B I have a return rate of 8% because of 1 return out of 13 sales. I won't get hit with 4% FVF increase on any dolls sold until i've sold 20 in the previous 12 months. However in collectibles I'm WELL over the 20 items sold and my return rate is above the (ridiculous) 0.17% "average". So come Oct, along with half the collectible sellers on eBay, I'll get hit with a fee increase. It's not fair, but I either pay it or move on.

Thanks, that's good to know about my 50% category, but 20 items doesn't help the math too much either. Am I misunderstanding this? I will be compared to a seller of clothing that may have 2000 sold when I only have 20? The percentage in this situation is brutal if you do the math on a couple returns or even one.