This guide is to illustrate the importance of having excellent detailed feedback ratings (DSRs) and the difficulties acheiving it. The importance of getting & keeping excellent DSRs for Power Sellers is that it can substantially cut the cost of your Ebay fees and raise your search standings (how high up your item appears in a search result). Ebay offers final valuation fee discounts on a monthly basis for Power Sellers whose detailed feedback is above 4.6 in every DSR category for that month and who has  a 98% or above overall feedback score. The discounts on final valuation fees are 5% for 4.6 in all DSR categories; 15% for 4.8; & 20% for 4.9. In addition, Ebay, during this holiday season doubled the discount for sellers who offer free shipping and subsequently has extended it until March 2009.

The difficulty, I feel, in acheiving these DSR standards is that a 4 rating is a "good" rating in every category (3 is labeled as average), but bad enough to lose all the discounts. Mainly the problem with the DSRs for sellers is EPal's extremely flawed, unfair administration of it: Sellers get scored in tenths of a point, but buyers can only score in whole points, so every time a buyer leaves "good" 4s for a seller with scores higher than that, it harms the seller' DSRs. Also, I feel that buyers don't know this & think they may be doing the seller a favor by rating him/her a 4, but in reality, it causes his/her DSR standings to deteriorate below the fee discount level. That's because the scale doesn't allow the buyer  any increments between 4 and 5 to choose, while the buyer might be suffering from the "Olympics judge syndrome" (nobody deserves a perfect score). To top that off, in my experience, buyers are extremely self centered & care about nothing but how fast they get it & how cheaply they get it. For instance, it isn't advisable for a seller to sell a $10 item for $2 and then charge $8 to ship it to make up for the difference (a lot of sellers do this) because the majority of buyer won't take this into account when deciding what to leave in the "shipping cost" portion of the DSRs. Recently, I shipped a $2 item with "free shipping" immediately, but got harmed with the buyer's feedback for "shipping time" because I sent it First Class instead of Priority. Apparently he did not care or take into consideration that if I shipped it faster, it would cost me more than he paid for the item. To put it mildly, it is very tricky to get and maintain high enough DSR ratings to qualify for the discounts. Buyers simply do not care enough to be fair about it & apparently niether does EPal.

So, to achieve excellent discount-worthy DSRs, the buyer must always pay particular attention to the following: an extremely accurate, detailed description disclosing all flaws in the item with nice big clear pictures ("item as described" portion of DSR);  immediately thanking the buyer for the purchase via email & notifying him/her of when it will ship ("communications" portion of DSR); shipping the item promptly, the same day if possible via USPS priority mail if cost effective ("shipping time" in DSRs); & (my recommendation) including  free shipping whenever possible by just adding the shipping cost into the item cost ("shipping cost" portion of DSRs).

The free shipping suggestion has an added benefit: then the buyer knows for sure that if there is a problem and he has to return the item, he will be remibursed for his total cost. Also, if he purchases a warranty on a used electronics item & the seller is assocciated with a warranty provider for electronics like I am, then the buyer's entire cost is covered by the warranty he/she might purchase.

But there is even more to it than that because I do all of that & am still struggling to maintain my discount. I still haven't figured out a complete strategy. But I recently went back through all  the items I sold in the last few months and sent letters to each of the ones who've never left me feedback. In addition to sending them an email feedback reminder, I included in each email an explanation of how the DSRs affect me & asked that they all leave me 5s if they feel I deserve it. I checked with an Ebay rep about the email who said it is okay to do that.

The strategy above was not successful because my scores are much closer to 5 than 4. The reason is that 4s are .8 below my average score, but 5s are only .2 above my score, so a 4  has much more negative impact on my score than several 5s do. For instance I got about 6 sets of straight 5s left me as the result of going back &asking for feedback, bringing my feedback up by .2. Then one guy left me 4s and erased the gain.That happened twice: a slew of 5s, then 1 set of 4s knocking me back down .2. So my new strategy is this message which I put in every item description & resend with my notice of shipment, which seems to be working:

"After receiving your item & you are fully satisfied with my service, & believe I deserve it, I would appreciate you giving me 5 stars in all of the detailed feedback categories. I am greatly concerned about my feedback & feel that buyers may not understand that  4-star ratings, while "good", hurt my DSR scores, which are much higher. If you don't feel I deserve 5s, then I request that you do not leave me detailed feedback for this transaction. Very high DSRs help me save money on fees & in other ways, helping me to sell items on Ebay for less & I strive to earn the highest feedback. If you have a  problem with this item or do not receive it, please contact me because I would appreciate the opportunity  to resolve the issue for you & earn the perfect feedback I seek."