The Ebay DSR Debacle

[kudo623]

The DSR concept originated under the guise of 100% Customer Satisfaction.
Peeling the layers back, however, it was a direct response by management to its investors to remove the longstanding stigma and failure to reduce fraud on its site.

In other words, heads had to roll and it wasn't going to be the trust and safety management team at ebay. The writing was on the wall for many long standing Power Sellers who thought the system worked just fine as it was. Feedback had always been the simple performance rating of a Power Seller. Not anymore.

It was a monumental shakeup, or cataclysmic e-sunami, which left many Power Sellers in its death wake. This is no joke, many people lost their way of life, their homes and even their marriages in the process. If there ever was a need for a class action lawsuit against ebay, this is it.

It shows the Dumb Stupid Ridiculous heartlessness of ebay management who would shoot their foot to spite one bad toe. The rotten apple of fraud will always be on its site and how many more good apples will ebay ruin in the process?

[rsot]

Good speech. Discuss.

[GrannyT]

Cannot fault anything you have said so now .................?

[kudo623]

For one, many buyers have a built-in negative connotation in buying goods on ebay.
They have either heard horror stories or had a bad experience personally and so they are always weary of the 'rip off'.

So on the onset, DSR's are unfortunately 'subjective' to already negatively weighted preconceived ideas, buyer expectations, trust issues, connotations or even the mood of the buyer (how he happens to feel) at the time he gives your DSR scores. You have no control over this.

Therefore, DSR's by buyers should not be the view of ebay toward its sellers, but sadly enough ebay blames the sellers of some level of fraud every time a DSR less than 5 is given. You can't see who gave you what and have no recourse. Instead of their long term mantra that 'all people are basically good' Ebay here changes their mantra to 'all people exercise varying degrees of fraudulent activity'.

To remedy this situation, the only thing sellers can do it to place built in terms and conditions in their ad that the buyer must agree to before they place a bid.

Of course you cannot say anything against ebay DSR policy, but you can place the burden on the buyer to contact you before leaving anything but +feedback and 5 DSR across the board. At the very least the buyer will probably not even leave any feedback/DSR.

[ShadyOne]

Good write up.

[duongdynasty]

Have you have the buyers leaving you a -FB and low DSRs without contacting you? They might not read your policy or care about it. What would e*** do in this case? I think they would still side with the buyer. What are your experiences in this case?

[longstory]

To remedy this situation, the only thing sellers can do it to place built in terms and conditions in their ad that the buyer must agree to before they place a bid.

Of course you cannot say anything against ebay DSR policy, but you can place the burden on the buyer to contact you before leaving anything but +feedback and 5 DSR across the board. At the very least the buyer will probably not even leave any feedback/DSR.[/QUOTE]

Do you mean simply adding a line in you listing saying "contact me first blah blah...." or is there another way to do that?

I have in HUGE letters on top of my listing page in every listing a statment asking to contact me first and that I fix all problems and so on. I also put insert in to all the packages that go out saying how I WILL fix what ever the problem is and how 5 star DSR super important to me and so on

and guess what even with all of that i'm at 0.51% for as discribed rigth now and did not get my top seller this month ;(