Hello everyone…over past few months we have been making various changes on the site to improve the buyer and seller experience to make eBay the most preferred online shopping destination for shoppers.
While improving functionality on the site is critical, a big part of the buyer experience is in our sellers’ hands. We recently launched Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) to give buyers more information about the kind of service they can expect from a seller and help differentiate sellers who deliver a great buyer experience from those who do not. While the vast majority of eBay sellers deliver consistently positive experiences to buyers, a very small minority -- just 1% -- of sellers currently cause fully 35% of bad buying experiences. This small minority not only damage their own reputations, but also indirectly damage all of the good sellers who benefit from a strong and vital eBay marketplace. To address this problem, we have begun enforcing our Seller Non-Performance policy in stricter ways than in the past by considering a seller’s buyer dissatisfaction rate.
What is the updated Seller Non-Performance Policy?
With the updated policy, all sellers who have more than 5% dissatisfied buyers over the past 90 days will be subject to reduced listing volume or temporary 14-day restrictions in the form of selling sanctions. Sellers with dissatisfaction rates that are 10% or greater will be subject to indefinite restrictions until they improve their buyer dissatisfaction rates to less than 5%. The buyer dissatisfaction will be calculated based on the following:
1. Item not received (INR) disputes
2. Item significantly not as described (SNAD) disputes
3. Negative or neutral feedback.
Why neutral feedback?
Some of you have asked why neutral feedback ratings have become a part of measuring buyer dissatisfaction. Through our quantitative research as well as many conversations with community members, we have found that neutral feedback is most often an expression of deep buyer dissatisfaction. Therefore, leaving it out of the calculation would mask a significant part of the issue. Ultimately, only positive feedback is an indication of satisfied customers.
Will DSR’s (Detailed Seller Ratings) be included to calculate Bad dissatisfaction?
Detailed Seller Ratings are not used in our buyer dissatisfaction calculations currently, however, as we gain experience and data, DSRs look very promising. We expect them to eventually become an additional input in our calculation of buyer dissatisfaction. We will keep you updated on adding DSRs as part of our calculations, and how they will impact a dissatisfaction rate.
Helping sellers improve their satisfaction rates and become successful is goal #1
Please know that our goal in restricting or sanctioning sellers is always to drive sellers to resolve their business challenges, improve their satisfaction rates, and remain in the marketplace as successful sellers. Our communication to impacted sellers spells out specific actions they should take to improve their rates, such as settling any open buyer dispute issues, refunding buyers when appropriate, asking for mutual feedback withdrawal when disputes have been resolved, etc.
Please remember that this new enforcement impacts the bottom 1% of current sellers, who cause 35% of the negative buying experiences on the site. The vast majority our sellers provide great buyer experiences by following these and other best practices:
• They accurately represent the condition, size, and quality of the item directly in the listing.
• They accept payment for an item at the end of a successful sale.
• After payment is received, they promptly ship the item with proper packaging.
• They proactively and professionally communicate with the buyer throughout the transaction.
We believe that the initiative to crack down on bad buyer experience in this way will benefit the whole of eBay India, and especially the 99% of our good sellers. If you have a question around this policy, please feel free to post it here. I will try to revert back on them as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Sharat Digumarti
Senior Manager, Trust & Safety
