A week or two ago, Terry Gibbs shared his thoughts about how sellers should best deal with the recent, and upcoming, changes to eBay in a free report titled “How To Survive eBay’s Recent Changes“. The report is a compiliation of three recent articles that appeared in Terry’s IWantCollectibles Newsletter.

Many of you may have already downloaded and read the report Some of you may already have taken actions to improve your eBay business based upon the information Terry provides. If you haven’t already downloaded it, I recommend to do so, give it a read, and consider what Terry has to say. It can be downloaded here.

I downloaded the report when it first became available but just found time to read earlier tonight.

While I feel the entire report is worthwhile reading, I think the section titled “Improving Your Detailed Seller Ratings” contains an idea everyone should seriously consider incorporating into their eBay business. I think Terry’s “Your Double Guarantee” insert that he is now putting into every package he ships is well thought out and brilliant.
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While there are still some people whining about the eBay feedback changes that will be going into affect in the next few months, there is additional information about these eBay feedback changes that many sellers should view as having a positive impact on their eBay businesses.

Lisa Suttora from WhatDoISell.com in her recent newsletter reported in part:

“I attended the eBay Developer’s Call this week (open only to eBay Certified
Providers) and found out a couple pieces of information that had previously not been made public that you’ll want to know about:

1. In May, eBay will go back and retroactively give sellers credit for previous repeat customer feedback. (Not sure yet how far back this repeat feedback credit is going to go. I’ll keep you posted.)”

Additional remarks made on eBay Radio over the last day or two make it sound as though these retroactive changes will extend all the way back to the creation of each eBay user ID.
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Earlier today eBay announced their new fee structure along with other policy changes that will affect all sellers.

In most cases, by the time you read this, you will probably already be aware of the details of the changes eBay will be implementing over the next few months, so I’m not going to go into detail regarding them. If you aren’t already aware of what will be involved you can get the details by reading recent posts at The Auctionbytes Blog, eBay Strategies, or My Blog Utopia.

For what it’s worth, here are my initial thoughts about the upcoming changes.

Fee Restructuring

For the majority of sellers overall fees are going up. There’s nothing new with that and it should have been expected. It happens every year. If you are selling on eBay in a serious fashion you should be treating it as a business. Any business, no matter what it is, faces increased costs of doing business. They should be expected.

The sellers most likely to feel the effect of these increases are those who primarily sell low-priced items, the mega-sellers listing thousands of items each week, and and those with very low sell-through rates.

Most people selling the kind of items talked about on The Auction Rebel should be realizing net profits that are sufficient to absorb these increases without it having a major impact on your business. If I’m making a $50, $100, $300, or more profit on an item, I’m not going to get in an uproar about an increase of a few dollars to sell that item.

I will however be reassessing some of the lower priced items that I have listed in my eBay stores to determine if it makes sense to let the remain as they are, to increase the price, or to remove them.
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In the upcoming months a seller’s overall eBay feedback rating will take on new importance.

Yesterday, in Lessening The Impact Of Detailed Seller Ratings In 2008, I talked about eBay’s plans to use a seller’s DSR in determining how their listings appeared both in search results and in eBay’s regular listings. From the information coming out of eBay, it now sounds as though a seller’s overall eBay feedback rating will be another part of the equation in making those determinations.

There is also a second area where a seller’s eBay feedback rating will come in to play more prominently in the upcoming months. eBay has already begun placing more emphasis on enforcing their Seller Non-Performance Policy. Basically, what can happen is this:

If the total of a seller’s neutral and negative feedback ratings received over the last 90-day period is greater than 5% of the total feedback ratings they received during the same time period, they are subject to temporary 14-day restrictions in the form of selling sanctions or reduced listing volume. If that figure is more than 10% they are now subject to indefinite restrictions until they improve their buyer dissatisfaction rates to less than 5%.

While the most of the impact of this renewed emphasis on Seller Non-Performance will be upon those sellers who list thousands of items a month, both new sellers and those who list only a few items a month may get caught up in the net also.

If a new seller who had received 18 positive feedback ratings received 1 neutral rating it would make them subject to temporary 14-day restrictions. The same could happen to a seller who had been selling on eBay for some time, but only listed a small number of items each month.

The majority of us are running our eBay businesses in a professional manner and shouldn’t have to worry about facing these restrictions. However, for those who are just starting out or who sell very few items each month, there are some things you should concentrate on to insure you don’t run into this problem.

• Make sure you describe all items accurately and include mention of any flaws or problems the item has
• Once payment is received, insure that you ship all purchases quickly
• Package all items so they arrive safely at their destination
• Respond to all buyer questions and concerns quickly and honestly
• If any problem should arise with a transaction be proactive and handle it quickly to the customer’s satisfaction
• Never become argumentative with customers no matter how obnoxious they may be
• If a customer is unhappy with their purchase seriously consider providing them a complete refund and let them keep the item
• If you do receive a negative or neutral feedback that puts you at risk of restrictions, send the customer a full refund immediately. Then begin negotiations with them in hope of agreeing to mutual feedback removal

Photo by James Holloway.

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