"Your seller performance status is at risk in the global program." How stupid!

[tiramisu41]

So I happened to look at my Seller Dashboard today, and there was a little red "1" next to the notifications field.  I click on it and it says:  "Your seller performance status is at risk in the global program."

Huh?   I look at all the metrics under "Region: Global" and I am at 100% on all of them.   However, I only have had 98 international sales in the last year, and that apparently is what is triggering this "warning"

 as to have TRS status you must have at least 100 sales in the past 12 months.   

I do get some international sales here and there tho much less than I used to which has declined as international shipping rates have gone up.  I offer to ship internationally and use GSP, though I will ship direct to a buyer at his/her request if they are in a DELCON country and I can track the shipment door-to-door.  Have had no complaints or issues with any of my international buyers, but they are a very small percentage of my sales and most likely always will be given the kinds of things I sell which primarily appeal/are of interest to US buyers.

Far more of my "foreign" sales go through a freight forwarder than through GSP or direct. When a buyer uses a freight forwarder, are those sales counted as "global" even though they are sent to a US address?   I wonder.

I guess my point/question is that I fail to see what it is eBay thinks I'm supposed to do to "correct" this problem?  Go out and beat up non-USA buyers and make them buy my stuff?  

Secondly, why is there a quantity requirement (100 per year) on each "sub-set" of eBay buyers in order to maintain Top Rated Seller status?  (Region: USA, Region: USA, Region Ireland and UK, etc)?  So that eBay can make more money off sellers because if they're like me, they may not meet "minimum standards" for a particular regional buyer sub-set, thus won't be entitled to any discounts when doing business with buyers from that region even though they exceed minimum standards for other regions  e.g. "Region: USA"?

Or, was this "notification" I received just the eBay "glitch du jour?" 

[pjcdn2005]

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@tiramisu41wrote:

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@pjcdn2005wrote:

I think that it is based on the country the buyer is registered in so even if you ship to a forwarder in the US, if the buyer is registered in one of the global regions, they would count as a global buyer. Right now you have a TRS banner on your listings on .ca so I imagine that ebay is letting you know that could be gone. That probably doesn't matter to you but it may matter to someone else so it isn't a bad thing that they let you know.

Correct @pjcdn2005.  The warning refers to "If we evaluated you on April 20, 2018 (next rating period) you would fall below minimum TRS standards in terms of having 100 sales or more in this region.   And while I agree that's  nice to know, what exactly does eBay think a seller can do about it when the kind of items you sell don't have "global appeal"?   Furthermore, I far exceed the 100 sale/yr minimum on my account in the aggregate, so what difference should it make what regions these sales come from -- and then require you to meet these standards in each regional sub-set?  Just doesn't make any sense to me.

"Secondly, why is there a quantity requirement (100 per year) on each "sub-set" of eBay buyers in order to maintain Top Rated Seller status?  (Region: USA, Region: USA, Region Ireland and UK, etc)?  So that eBay can make more money off sellers because if they're like me, they may not meet "minimum standards" for a particular regional buyer sub-set, thus won't be entitled to any discounts when doing business with buyers from that region even though they exceed minimum standards for other regions  e.g. "Region: USA"?"

 If you meet the TRS standards in your own region you get the discount regardless of where the buyer is located so losing global TRS shouldn't affect how much money ebay is paying out. 

Is that true?  I couldn't find anything anywhere that affirmed this is the case.   If it is true, then why send a "notification" telling you your  "Region: Global" sub-set is in danger of losing TRS status when according to what you write, it won't matter anyway?

As I said, it might matter to some people and there are probably some ways that a person could get more global sales. I'm in Canada so when I do my listings they are very much aimed at getting US sales whereas US residents tend to focus their listings on domestic sales and that makes sense to me. 

You are putting way to much emphasis on the notice about global trs.  It doesn't look like you qualify for a discount on .com right now anyway but if you did have trsplus status on your listings, you would get the discount regardless of who purchased the item.  US trs status and trsplus discount have absolutely nothing to do with where a buyer is located.  I am in Canada and I do have global TRS but don't qualify for the US trsplus designation. But because I am a TRS on .ca, my home site, I do get the discount on items sold to US buyers or any other buyers. 

I don't think that any of us know how much trs status means when it comes to listing placement...I suspect very little...but if it does mean anything, it's possible that your listings on .ca might suffer a bit in placement if you lose global trs.  The only time I can think offhand when trs might really matter to a seller is if they actually list their items on that site. For example, if I listed directly on the UK site and met all the trs requirements, I should be able to qualify for the trs discounts for my listings on that site.    Basically, when it comes to trs discounts, status in other countries shouldn't matter unless you specifically list on that site.  

As to why ebay notifies you if it doesn't matter...like I said, some sellers may want to target global countries such as Canada or Australia so they might want to adjust something to attract more sales there...for example they could list on the Au site or decrease their shipping cost to there.   I'm not specifically referring to you, just as using that as an example.

[pjcdn2005]

Pretty sure you can't be a top rated seller and get the top rated discounts for outside of US regional sales anyways.

That's incorrect. The only thing that is a factor is if you qualify for a discount on your listing site. If you have trs plus on your listing you will receive a discount no matter where the buyer is.

[pjcdn2005]

Exactly. They changed it sometime last year. Up until then all sales counted as a sale in the global region.  The change really shouldn't affect US sellers but it did affect many Canadian sellers. The US has a population 10 times larger than Canada so for many Canadians, the majority of their sales are to the US.  So if a smaller seller sells 125 items a year and 75 of them are to the US...they don't qualify for trs status in the global region or in the US. 

[ted_200]

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@tiramisu41wrote:

So I happened to look at my Seller Dashboard today, and there was a little red "1" next to the notifications field.  I click on it and it says:  "Your seller performance status is at risk in the global program."

Huh?   I look at all the metrics under "Region: Global" and I am at 100% on all of them.   However, I only have had 98 international sales in the last year, and that apparently is what is triggering this "warning"

 as to have TRS status you must have at least 100 sales in the past 12 months.   

I do get some international sales here and there tho much less than I used to which has declined as international shipping rates have gone up.  I offer to ship internationally and use GSP, though I will ship direct to a buyer at his/her request if they are in a DELCON country and I can track the shipment door-to-door.  Have had no complaints or issues with any of my international buyers, but they are a very small percentage of my sales and most likely always will be given the kinds of things I sell which primarily appeal/are of interest to US buyers.

Far more of my "foreign" sales go through a freight forwarder than through GSP or direct. When a buyer uses a freight forwarder, are those sales counted as "global" even though they are sent to a US address?   I wonder.

I guess my point/question is that I fail to see what it is eBay thinks I'm supposed to do to "correct" this problem?  Go out and beat up non-USA buyers and make them buy my stuff?  

Secondly, why is there a quantity requirement (100 per year) on each "sub-set" of eBay buyers in order to maintain Top Rated Seller status?  (Region: USA, Region: USA, Region Ireland and UK, etc)?  So that eBay can make more money off sellers because if they're like me, they may not meet "minimum standards" for a particular regional buyer sub-set, thus won't be entitled to any discounts when doing business with buyers from that region even though they exceed minimum standards for other regions  e.g. "Region: USA"?

Or, was this "notification" I received just the eBay "glitch du jour?" 

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No, no glitch, it's just more of eBay's stupid arbitrary rules/policies that make little or no sense. 

I'm still trying to figure out why I'm a Top Rated Seller in Canada and elsewhere, but not in the U.S.   I guess eBay figured it out though, now they're going to make me a not Top Rated Seller Globally too!  So that's pretty cool, eh?  I fail to meet the U.S. requirement for one reason, and will now fail to meet the Global requirement for an entirely different reason. 

[pjcdn2005]

The rules for trs status are not the same in each country which is why you can be trs in one country and not another.

[shoesomgshoes]

I received the same notice regarding my international sales. It said there was time left to improve before the next selling cycle was over. I have approx 10 international sales a year!!! How am I to improve my international selling status if I dont have any international sales in the next 30 or 60 days?? Its silly.

[ted_200]

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@pjcdn2005wrote:

The rules for trs status are not the same in each country which is why you can be trs in one country and not another.

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I didn't realize the "rules" that differentiate a top seller from an average one suddenly change just because one crosses an international border... 

[ted_200]

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@shoesomgshoeswrote:
I received the same notice regarding my international sales. It said there was time left to improve before the next selling cycle was over. I have approx 10 international sales a year!!! How am I to improve my international selling status if I dont have any international sales in the next 30 or 60 days?? Its silly.

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The rule change is they stopped counting U.S. transactions toward your "Global", starting in Feb.  So our U.S. transactions are dropping off, leaving only the non-U.S. transactions to count toward "Global", and without 100, we will no longer qualify.  I guess eBay decided the U.S. was on another planet or something...

[pjcdn2005]

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@ted_200wrote:

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@shoesomgshoeswrote:
I received the same notice regarding my international sales. It said there was time left to improve before the next selling cycle was over. I have approx 10 international sales a year!!! How am I to improve my international selling status if I dont have any international sales in the next 30 or 60 days?? Its silly.

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The rule change is they stopped counting U.S. transactions toward your "Global", starting in Feb.  So our U.S. transactions are dropping off, leaving only the non-U.S. transactions to count toward "Global", and without 100, we will no longer qualify.  I guess eBay decided the U.S. was on another planet or something...

 It’s not just the US that they stopped counting. Any sites with their own trs system such as the UK, Germany etc., are not counted as global sales.

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[bpr103]

The answer is right here:

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@watchingbandswrote

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:
until about august, they WERE counting some other places for global. They stopped. Everything after that, only counts those other countries not included in the other regions. Oh and they also count the defects from all those countries, before august, but only let you fix your status based on the NEW metrics...

I remember this confusing email form eBay that they were breaking them al up, and I didn't get it at the time... Now that I got this message that my Global TRS is at risk, I get it. No big deal, I have about three sales outside of the US/UK/Germany.

[luckythewinner]

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@tiramisu41wrote:

Re: "Your seller performance status is at risk in the global program."  How stupid!

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Some sellers are quite interested in whether they qualify for TRS in the various regions. 

An indicator that a TRS seller might be going to lose TRS status in a region does not seem "stupid" to me at all. In fact, it seems completely sensible. 

On my list of the top 1000 things wrong with eBay, this would not never make the list. In fact, I would probably struggle to even classify it as wrong. 

[cinjamanbooks]

We don't even sell outside the US and we received this message this morning that we no longer qualified for TRS.  Made me think they meant overall, but it is only globally which since we don't sell internationally makes no difference to us.