A lot of eBay's planned changes are positive, but most sellers are especially unhappy about the changes in the feedback system that are about to take place. While I am not thrilled with the idea of buyers being exempt from receiving negative or neutral feedback but allowed to leave negatives and neutral for sellers, I understand that eBay plans to greatly improve their listening skills when it comes to individual complaints, and implement stricter rules for bad buyers. I am willing to give this a chance before I really complain about it. One seller made a good suggestion at today's webinar on this topic: A dissatisfied buyer should be required to email a seller through eBay's My Messages before they can leave a negative or neutral feedback. If no response comes from the seller in 3 days, the negative or neutral could then be left. I think this is a good solution. EBay says they will use the 3-day waiting period to urge the buyer to contact the seller. I hope this works.

What I see as a problem that has not been addressed is the WORDING of the Detailed Seller Ratings. The scale of satisfaction for the first 3 categories is consistent. The scale of satisfaction in the DSR for shipping ratings does not follow the same pattern, forcing buyers to rates sellers one star lower than they should. I have posed this question to the Town Hall. I hope they will address this problem at Monday's meeting. I will be calling in to try and voice this on phone on Monday as well. Here is my email to them:

Hello Townhall,

My question is one that I didn't get to ask at Friday's webinar on the upcoming changes to the fee structure and feedback system.

Many sellers, myself included, have praised the majority of planned changes to the feedback & fee systems, and most can even see the upside of no negative feedback for buyers.

The Detailed Seller Rating system, however is widely considered unfair and inaccurate among sellers, and I agree completely. To achieve a high enough rating to make the 15% Powerseller discount on the shipping charges rating is simply not possible if you are an honest seller.

This point was raised again and again in the Q&A following the webinar, but none of the sellers who called to express their dismay addressed the main reason for the problem.

The main reason buyers are rating sellers lower than they should on shipping charges is due to the WORDING that the buyer sees when they fill in the DSR feedback report. They are not looking at the numerical rating, they are reading the rating descriptions. The top 3 choices all sound very positive and somewhat redundant. If the seller has charged USPS, UPS, or any shipper's standard rates, even with no handling fee, the buyer is highly unlikely to view these rates as "Extremely reasonable". This choice should be eliminated, and "Very reasonable should become the top choice. This would be also be fairer because it would make the shipping cost rating choices more consistent with the other three DSR ratings choices.

The only people who offer "extremely reasonable" shipping rates are those who offer "free" shipping. Obviously, there is really no such thing as "free" shipping. "Free" shipping just means the buyer has added the cost of shipping and handling to the item price, or occasionally absorbed the cost of shipping in order to promote their business. Offering "free" shipping has been encouraged by eBay, because eBay makes more money on final value fees if all the money paid buy the buyer is for the item.

To me, this makes eBay just as bad as the giant sellers who offer all their items for one dollar and charge incredibly high shipping rates in order to circumvent eBay fees!

Why not let the honest sellers who charge actual shipping and a small handling fee be viewed as the model citizens of eBay? The wording of the rating choices must be changed to accomplish this.

Best wishes,
selenecarroll