eBay has announced some updates to its Feedback, Seller Standards and Buyer Protection systems. The company says they’re designed to ensure your seller performance ratings are a "true reflection" of the service provided.
"When we know you delivered fast and free shipping on a transaction, we’ll make sure your rating reflects that," says Dinesh Lathi, eBay Vice President Seller and Buyer Experience. "We’ll also make it easy to report your experience with the buyer to eBay, and let you know what we did with that information."
When a seller offers, and a buyer chooses free shipping, eBay will automatically rate the transaction with 5 stars for shipping cost. "Starting in November, when you specify 1-day handling time, upload tracking information by the end of the next business day after the buyer’s payment clears, and we know your package arrived within 4 business days from when the buyer pays (or arrived by your estimated delivery if that was earlier), eBay will automatically rate the transaction with 5 stars for shipping time," says Lathi.
Starting late next month, sellers will have access to a reporting hub to share their experience with buyers with eBay. Links to this hub will be provided in many places, like: Feedback flow, in the Seller Dashboard, on the Contact Us page on eBay, the seller information page in the eBay Buyer Protection hub, and in Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro. Submitted info will be used by eBay to help identify and take action against buyers and sellers.
Also starting in November, sellers will see on the dashboard, the number of times negative Feedback, low DSRs, and Buyer Protection cases were removed from their accounts because of reporting and eBay’s detection methods. Item condition and delivery dates will also be in the Feedback flow.
As far as buyer protection, buyers will soon be prevented from opening cases too soon, and some cases will be removed from sellers’ performance records.
eBay is also releasing a new Duplicate Listing policy aimed at improving search for buyers and boosting exposure of sellers. The policy will prevent search results from being dominated by multiple duplicate listings of the same item from the same seller.
The item offered in a seller’s Fixed Price listing must be "significantly different in buyer benefit and value" from items offered in their other Fixed Price listings.
eBay will automatically end duplicate Fixed Price listings, keep the best performer, and credit Insertion Fees and listing upgrade fees for the ended listings. Sellers who continue to create duplicate listings for identical items may be subject to listing cancellation, loss of fees, limits on account privileges, loss of seller status, and/or account suspension.
eBay says newly listed Fixed Price listings won’t receive an upfront allotment of impressions in Best Match search results.