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eBay Sellers React to Top Rated Seller Rollout
 

eBay sellers are now coping with the effects of some of the Seller Release 2 (SR2) changes that began rolling out on September 22, 2009, and seemed to impact many sellers on Tuesday. In a nutshell:

1) Top Rated Sellers (TRS) received notification from eBay that they qualified for the program.

2) eBay began promoting Top Rated Sellers (TRS) in search results.

3) Sellers began seeing a new Dashboard.

I'm hearing many concerns about the Top Rated Sellers (TRS) program. The first is from sellers who believe they should be top-rated but are not. Said one seller posting on the eBay discussion boards, "The only thing that's keeping me from Top Rated Seller status is the fact that I'm not a Power Seller. I thought they were doing away with that designation so smaller sellers have a shot at the badge?" But PowerSellers who feel their feedback and DSRs are high enough to qualify for the program are also frustrated.


Another concern is about buyers' perception of sellers who are not TRS. The TRS badge is appearing in search results. As one reader asked, "Does this mean everyone that's not top rated does not have excellent service and shipping?" Another reader asked, "Do they not get that not having the badge will say "This seller can't be trusted." ?"

An even bigger concern, it seems, is the purple box in search results that calls out attention to buyers that they have the ability to filter out anyone who is not a TRS. Said one user, I never thought a Top Rated Seller being advantaged in search meant there would be a filter to eliminate everyone else.



Finally, I don't see much discussion about the new seller dashboard.

I'd call this plain discrimination by Ebay.