Friday, June 18, 2010

All the things I hate about DSRs to begin with

I'm going to put this out there and hope someone at eBay gives a tinkers dam as my mother used to say (I doubt it but I can dream): Forthwith....

1. DSRs are left by buyers for sellers. BUT Feedback is voluntary.  If you (ebay) are going to make my livelihood and my discount contingent on DSRs, then make feedback mandatory so ALL my buyers have to leave it or scrape the whole system

The reason feedback was so unique as an eBay attribute was because NO one else had it then.  Now everybody has it and it's useless.  Doesn't really tell you anything about a seller (because I know some who are incentivizing good feedback from buyers and some buyers are blackmailing sellers to incentivize themselves at the seller's expense). Buyers can't even get back feedback any more so there is NO honesty there even when they blatantly rip off a seller.

2. I sell approximately 100 things a month if I'm lucky these days. 50% of buyers don't leave ANY feedback. So if I get one or two low ratings or middle of the road "she's not really very good" then I'm stuck with them for a year.  What does that mean?? This:
A) - I lose the 20% discount that TRS sellers get and only get 5% - last month was $4.  ??? think that makes me work harder eBay?? Not so much, look how many listings I let expire or outright cancelled this last month, just an FYI.

B) I lost TRS because of 2 incidents a year ago...both for items that I couldn't fulfil for a variety of reasons.  I understand eBay wanting to delight buyers but Honey, even Walmart runs out of things. An unfulfilled order shouldn't create a year-long purgatory, added to the loss of the discount.

C) since I'm not a TOP-rated seller, I also became invisible in search.  Which would be bad enough but eBay made it MUCH worse by putting a check box on the left nav bar of the search page that said "Show only Top-Rated Sellers" like the rest of us didn't pay for our listings and don't deserve to be included in the results..

D) Shippng Costs - I am not yet the "EMPRESS OF THE UNIVERSE" the title I was born to hold.  So I do not control UPSP or even UPS unfortunately, So exactly how do I have control over this? Further more, if I offer two options and the buyer chooses one that costs more? And if I don't have control over it, or offer the least expensive and pay to ship it (sometimes more than the buyer paid me) THEN PLEASE EBAY GODS! ?? WHY am I being rated on it.   Tell the buyers NOT to buy if they don't like the shipping cost. GO Pay Walmart FULL PRICE (not for my antiques but you know shoes etc)

Heaven forbid I offer FREE shipping and the buyer can still rate me as a -1.. Makes perfect sense to me...NOT!

E) Shipping time.... I ship, normally, within 24 hrs of payment. The exception is Sunday's and Holidays...or high holy days. Then the shipper/aka POST OFFICE takes three weeks to deliver to the other side of Philadelphia.  This is MY fault how?? If eBay means "handling time from seller to shipping company" then that is what they should say. Because I'm seeing people who get 5.0 for packages who don't ship all that fast or even that often, while I'm getting 4.83 for next day shipping.  Doesn't seem fair does it?  Nope.  If you want to rate someone, give the USPS Dsr's... especially on their breakage rate.

So These are the major things stuck in my craw this morning about DSRS....NEXT? (oh yeah see my blog ON MY SOAPBOX ...there's a few things there

5 comments:

Kat Simpson said...

you tell 'em girl

Kat

another A.S.S. from eBay

Sushiboofay said...

Part of the reason I closed my store. The little part-time guy (or gal) just can't compete with all this going on!

http://sushiboofays.blogspot.com/

#blog30

The DSRS of our lives said...

Thank you Kat and Cat. I appreciate the support.

kdmoretti said...

I seriously agree with you BUT I think the whole FEEDBACK nonsense (cuz that`s what it is to me ) should be scarapped TOTALLY What good does it do ?? The only person that really benefits from it is the BUYER because you HAVE to give them a POSITIVE or leave Nothing. And they don`t have them Damn DSR stars to worry about.

FindOverstock.com said...

Couldn't agree with you more. DSR's have hurt virtually every seller because buyers have no reason left to be honest and think twice before rating. this whole feedback system is a big fat joke. Over 100 of our customers closed their ebay stores completely, and probably another 200+ have downsized them to a minimum. What is ebay thinking?

Maria

www.findoverstock.com
find great suppliers of products to sell on ebay