eBay touting Buyer Protection

How would You like to wake up in the morning and find out that You just got 191 Negatives from the same Buyer ? On a lost lot of coins !
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Sel...rom/5200007004
I do realize that it looks like she is Drop-Shipping , BUT ?
http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs...rn=Received+by

Every time you add those eBay forum URLs I end up on the g-d forum. Then block somebody else.

It seems like people really think that eBay is dealing in good faith when, IMHO they are dealing in no faith at all.

Sorry
I looked for the thread's about the Atlanta airport I found references to the original post's from june 3rd to 9th but ALL the post about those being Suspended have Seemed To Vanish ???? ( must be a computer glitch )

Yep. Thios "glitches" seem to happen with a fair amount of regularity, too.

eBay's DSRs are really out of line and impossible to achieve. I'm going to lose my top-rated seller status over 3 1's and 2's from domestic buyers this month on shipping and handling -- never mind at last check that ALL my other feedback is straight across 5's on shipping and handling. I have no negs, one neutral (and the buyer tried to revise that and couldn't for some reason), perfect fives for international buyers, and my stars are 4.98, 4.99, 4.97 and 4.96 on the shipping and handling.

In my day job? Among other things I sometimes handle customer surveys for a very large company with very, very good customer service. When a customer survey comes back with a negative review I get to call the customers to find out why ... one time a member gave us really bad customer service scores on a customer survey card because the person she spoke to had a very light southern accent and she claimed they didn't speak 'proper' English and we should only hire people who speak 'proper' English. I've also talked to a customer who was angry because the cost of something increased $.12 cents from one month to the next.

Some people ... just aren't rational.

(On the other hand, resolving problems with irrational and angry people has certainly prepared me for selling on eBay -- LOLOL!)

And this takes us back to eBay, and their DSRs. I've had the store since May 2010. Since May 2010, on shipping and handling, I've had 1 "4" and one "3" and now, just in the last month, 3 "1s" and "2s" -- this is out of a couple THOUSAND transactions. All 1's and 2's have been on very low dollar items from newbie buyers -- I suspect a competitor may be messing with me, but when I reported this suspicion to eBay I got a form letter back in which the CSR called me "Jim" (totally got my name wrong) and copied and pasted eBay's DSR policies and didn't answer my question at all. I'm not sure he understood my question.

So -- here's where it stands. I have 650+ "5's" to counter those 3 low scores. No negs, at all. One neutral, resolved. No buyer cases. Tons of happy feedback. I've dealt with buyer complaints efficiently and professionally. I have perfect 5's from international buyers. No violations. I play by eBay's rules. I sell thousands of dollars of merchandise a month.

And ... I'm going to lose my top rated seller status.

---?

It's too high of a barrier. It's not realistic, or fair. It doesn't represent the reality of selling merchandise, or the reality that some sellers will try to sabotage their competitors.

On the other hand, even if I'm no longer a TRS -- I will still make a profit. So this is an annoyance and an aggravation, but it is not the end of the world. (And I'm going to spend a few hours today seeing if I can track a link down between those star-dinging buyers myself --one of the OTHER things I do in my day job is a small amount of fraud detection. Reverse telephone lookup and online geneology datases and Facebook, here I come ...)

CYGNET: You are missing the point of the DSR ratings. They are meant to undermine sellers, especially those small sellers selling used stuff and giving eBay the image of the biggest flea-market on the internet.

Were you aware that the cut-off for DSR ratings in any category was 4.6? If you average below that you are considered as underperforming. That means three-5s and two fours in any one category sink your boat. If eBay wants it to. The buyers are led to believe that a four is a great score, a five is for exceptional service in the category. Inviting fours to be left.

Ones and twos don't have to left by different people. One person, buying say several items, then leaving ones or twos across the board and you have had it. It could be your ex-wife, worst enemy, competitor or simply a prankster. And you're gone if eBay wants to get rid of you. You're allowed as !many! as three in any one category.

The DSR ratings were initiated to give eBay a pretext to get rid of those sellers it does not want to be associated with.

You may note that there are many sellers with feedback of 96% and less happily selling away, with lowered DSR scores as well. BUT they are mostly selling items eBay wants on their site and/or big corporations and foreign drop-shippers. That is the image and seller base eBay's current corporate directorate wants.

Actually, I think they aren't trying to get rid of small sellers per se, they're trying to get rid of sellers they don't make money on. Even if they don't have to pay it, every case opened costs eBay money in labor costs. Every complaint they have to handle costs eBay money. Every seller who ticks off a buyer to the point where the buyer says foo on all of eBay costs eBay money.

So they've made an iron clad rule that sellers who can't meet their standards are banned for life. Too many cases (which cost eBay labor, if nothing else), too many complaints, too many irritated buyers ... they might as well get rid of that seller, because that seller isn't making eBay money. I suspect the reason why they count ALL cases against a seller is that cases cost eBay about the same regardless of if they're found in favor of the seller or not ... the seller pays the refund cost from his Paypal account (like it or not) but eBay has to pay wages & administration costs that are probably about the same either way.

So they want sellers to deal with it themselves, and harshly discourage sellers from letting problems turn into Buyer Protection cases (even if the seller is in the right.) And I suspect that they are calculating that that low scores mean a seller might cost them money down the road in cases opened, or lost customers.

Personally, I think eBay's going about it the wrong way, though. They need to ban buyers who open too many cases, and allow sellers to block buyers who have opened cases. I'd LOVE to have the ability to block buyers who have over, say, 1% negs, who have given less than 95% 5's or who have opened more than, say, 1% cases. I bet eBay would spend a lot less money on dealing with administrative crap, and that would pretty much eliminate all the scammers I deal with ...

So utterly drinking, heck, bathing in the Kool-Aid and drinking the bathwater.

Look at the forums oh ye of little faith. You'll find sellers with 100% positive feedback averaging over 4.8/9 in every category getting "banned for life" for a few low DSR ratings, often from just one person, occasionally from just a few.

For instance I have five 1s & 2s overall. Three from one person, out of ~150 ratings. Most of my ratings are 5s. Those three are from a person who sells the same items I do.

If you look at the forums you'll see suspensions and bans of people with thousands of positive feedbacks. People who have been selling for a decade or more. People with loyal, long time buyers. Do you really think that these sellers cost eBay more than they pay in fees? Several, perhaps many, paid eBay several thousand dollars a month in fees. Do you think that their dissatisfied sellers filing a few, if any, disputes or calling support, actually cost eBay more than they made?

No John Donohoe, CEO, announced a while back that he wanted to purge eBay of sellers of used merchandise, small sellers who made eBay (in his words) "the flea market of the internet" and focus on big sellers of new product.

He proceeded to initiate policies that absolutely favor the buyer over the seller. Sellers can't leave negative feedback, for example, so sellers can't be warned about "bad" buyers. A buyer has to bid and not pay to get in trouble. But he can bid, pay, then file a dispute and end up getting his money back and keeping the item. And the seller can do nothing about it. This has happened a lot.