eBay is making significant changes to its Seller Performance Standards as part of its Fall Seller Update, which it will announce later today. eBay will judge sellers on two key metrics: defect rate and on-time shipping – and it’s changing how it calculates those metrics.
Negative and neutral buyer feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings will no longer count toward a seller’s defect rate, though they will continue to be displayed to buyers on the feedback profile page.
The changes will go into effect on February 20th.
Seller Defect Rate
With the new changes, the following will no longer impact sellers’ “defect rate”:
- Buyer feedback;
- Detailed seller ratings (DSRs);
- Returns requests that are successfully resolved with the buyer;
- Items not received requests that are successfully resolved with the buyer.
Instead, eBay sellers will be judged only on delivery time and two measurements that it says judges the effectiveness of the seller’s customer service to resolve any requests for help:
- Seller-cancelled transactions for items that are out of stock or cannot be fulfilled for any other reason;
- Cases that are closed without seller resolution.
Shipping Time Metric
eBay will create a new “on-time shipping” metric in order to measure seller shipping performance designed to be based on what sellers control: shipping items on time. eBay will consider shipments to be late only in the following two cases:
1) Tracking shows item was delivered after the estimated delivery date, and there’s no acceptance scan within your stated handling time or there’s no confirmation from the buyer of on-time delivery, or
2) Buyer confirms item was delivered after the estimated delivery date, and there’s no acceptance scan within your stated handing time or there’s no delivery confirmation by the estimated delivery date.
See additional coverage in today’s issue for information about other changes coming as part of the fall update.
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