Detailed Seller Rating Revealed

17 October, 2007 by trevor. Average Reading Time: about a minute.

The other day eBay revealed detailed of the average rating being left on the eBay detailed seller ratings.

The detailed seller rating were supposed to enable sellers to give a fuller picture of the service that they received, and reward those that gave a truely excellent service. Here are the results:

	Bottom 10% of sellers	Bottom 25% of sellers	Median seller	Top 25% of sellers	Top 10% of sellers.
Item As Described	4.6	4.7	4.8	4.9	4.9
Communication	4.5	4.6	4.8	4.9	4.9
Shipping Time	4.3	4.6	4.7	4.9	4.9
S & H Charge	4.3	4.5	4.6	4.7	4.8

Looking at these figures it seems to me that detailed seller rating have the same problem as ordinary feedback, i.e. people normally giving high ratings and hence the score does not really give much indication of the quality of the service.

The difference between the 90th and 10th percentile for item as described is 0.4 i.e. an 8% difference. News is that eBay is going to be using DSRs to influence search results and PowerSeller Status. Whilst I applaud any way of prioritising eBay sellers which give a good service, is being 8% than the best worse a reason to start penalising the these sellers (i.e. those in the bottom 10%). Will this new system really separate out those who give truely awful service, or will it hit those who for some reason in a more difficult category (e.g. those who sell second hand items, who by there nature are more prone to problems).

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http://www.tamebay.com Sue @ TameBay

“will it hit those who for some reason in a more difficult category ”

Surely it won’t do that, because if it’s a difficult category, *everyone* will have worse feedback than the site-wide average, and so the sellers with the “least-worst” stars will still be at the top.

Still, I agree with you that there is not nearly enough difference between top and bottom for this to be used as a real measure of seller performance.
http://www.trevorginn.com trevor

I suppose what I really meant was that some sellers will be more suseptable to bad rating than others. People selling second hand stuff (e.g. trading assistants) will naturally have more problems with their stock than those selling new products which are more generic and so less room for problems.
Wei

It hits the international sellers a lot. I am selling from Taiwan to all over the world, and I do charge reasonable shipping (sometimes lower than if items shipped locally) and my DSR rating for shipping charge is 4.4, at the bottom!
Same goes with shipping time, even though I ship every single day, and provide all detailed information as often as I can.

Sad, but that’s what it is going to be = international sellers are going to be punished for offering their service to places that their products might be really hard to find.
http://www.princesstextiles.com PR

Ebay.co.uk
below is truely my opinion and comments based on my 2 years selling experience on ebay, i do like ebay and spend my all day in it so i think i have right to comment on little things ..we all want perfection but no one is perfect but we can all do better ..

I believe ebay should control detailed seller ratings, and how truthful is the information given by buyers?

1- as a seller clearly states their despatch time a buyer should not be allowed to leave low detailed seller ratings if the item is despatched with in the required despatch time period

Example; seller sold and item which was listed despatched in 10 business days. So if a buyer is leaving a feedback with in the 10-day period they should not be allowed to leave low detailed seller ratings as I send the item with in the listed despatch time period. (we should also add the delivery time -such as first class post 24-48 hr – so buyer cant leave low ratings before 12th day)

2- Secondly newbees
Half of the neutral or negative feedback sellers got is from newbees with less then 10 feedback, I think ebay should only let people start to leave feedback after they trade more then 10 times in ebay community.

**Also ebay should start to check the weight/strength of the feedback. like a positive feedback from a buyer with over 1000-feedback rating and a positive feedback from a buyer with 3-feedback rating should not be considered same.

In order to have a feedback strength system ebay should rate their users according to their feedback rating;

if some one has 1000 feedback rating or over ebay should give the maximum =10 strength (100 % true feedback) (a person over 1000 feedback hardly leaves negative feedback unless something really goes wrong)

if some one has 100 feedback rating or over ebay should give the maximum =1 strength (10 % true feedback)

if some one has 10 feedback rating or over ebay should give the maximum =0.1 strength (1 % true feedback)

this is more like if else loop …
3- third thing is packaging and postage charges ,

when a buyer clicks on buy it now button and then clicks commit to buy this means buyers agrees all the terms and conditions which also included the postage and packing charges .. as these charges are available for the buyer pre purchase my question will be why would ebay let buyers to rate sellers according to postage charges? Item price and postage charges are clear , when a buyer clicks buy it now button that should also mean “I like your item , and I agree your selling price and postage price ..” why let a buyer rate it again ???

If ebay believes fair postage charges ebay should bring/add to listings

** item weight
**item dimensions

so that you can decide the maximum postage charge for the given volumetric weight?
So that sellers shouldn’t suffer low ratings from a customer who is unhappy for some other reasons but can rate you down on all detailed seller ratings…

Additionally if they are not happy with the postage charge why would they buy the item .. doesn’t really make sense..

I would like ebay to consider all above discussions about despatch time, and postage charges .

as a wiseman says ” i would change the world if i knew the source code “