Firstly I'd like to begin with saying that my selling practices have not changed in the last year-doing exactly has I had successfully done to obtain Top Rated Seller status for.
Now with new policies, it has made my status decline & I'm fed up with loosing such large amounts of money to dishonesty, deception & greed.
Below I will highlight some areas sellers should be absolutely aware of now.
1/ With the new eBay moneyback guarantee it requires ALL ITEMS BE SENT WITH TRACKABLE POSTAGE....PERIOD, to receive seller protection.
If a seller does not send an item via a trackable means of postage, any & every buyer can open a request, even when they have received the item, to claim their money back. Even when the buyer has declined paying for the upgrade to trackable postage. eBay has opened itself up to abuse via dishonesty.
2/ Now I had always offered free postage with several options to upgrade that to a trackable form at the buyers expense, that typically buyers waive at checkout.
eBay receives a fee of that postage amount if a buyer does upgrade which is utterly wrong as eBay do not provide that service at all. eBay already receive a fee from the collection of those funds through PayPal.
Estimated delivery on items is misleading. Countless times I'm asked, 'said my item was to be here <such & such a date>. Australia Post policy states that a standard delivery item can take up to 10 business days. eBay should be following Australia Posts policy, not their atomatically generated 'estimate' which buyers mostly take as being a guarantee of delivery.
3/ Returns: A buyer can now open a returns request. The seller can accept the return. The buyer does not need to return it & can escalate it later to receive a full refund. Appealing this does not gain a result. Buyers do not need to provide tracking of the return.
4/ Below Average Seller status results in PayPal freezing available funds for up to 21 days. The Financial Ombudsman Service www.fos.org.au is eager to hear from all who have this issue.
Simply go to the website, click lodge a dispute (green button to the right), then lodge a dispute button again (green button bottom) & fill out the form.
The only way to increase your status & release funds quicker is to provide tracking numbers.
Funds are released when feedback is received, so PayPal have informed me.
Now a dispute process is already available, so the 'freeze' of funds is unwarranted.
5/ Every request opened becomes a defect on your seller status. ie, your positive rating declines.
6/ Negative or Nuetral feedback when unwarranted or unjustified even when you can prove it, will still not removed when reveiwed by eBay. Basically, as long as there is no profanity, contact information or threats, then a buyer can say whatever untruth they wish without having to worry eBay will reveiw their account.
I have maintained a 1 business day mailing out policy as I have done for over a year now.
Had my great service reflected in the excellent feedback I was receiving. (Yes you'd have those customers who are not satisfied with any solution to a problem & would leave negative or neutral feedback.)
Now since eBay have introduced new policies without prior warnings of the changes, my seller status has dropped to 'below average' even tho I have not changed a thing.
The new moneyback guarantee is to blame.
It has given free reign for all standard mail items sent to be refunded if the buyer opens a request.
Simple solution is to increase the prices, yeah. In theory. eBay is all about the lowest price gets the sale. Increase in my price means I wont get the sale. Bigger stores have better postage deals with Australia Post and therefore can sell cheaper.
The returns request has also been changed & can easily be manipulated. I've had several buyers ask for a return. I accept as I should. Item does not arrive, buyer escalates for review & I have to refund & the buyer keeps the item, no return tracking needed.
Recently I was in hospital for just over 3 weeks. Arranged for someone to maintain the processing of my daily sales. Messages & my PayPal account were not.
Upon coming home, I was fuming to find that both eBay & PayPal had been refunding my money. In PayPal 2 large $$$ trackable purchases marked 'delivered' had been refunded by PayPal because I had not responded to their requests for the tracking information. I appealed and gave the information they had requested. It was rejected as I had not provided the information in the time they had asked for it. in eBay was simply the requests to say the buyer had not received their item. Item packaged & sent. Even if there was an issue like Australia Post loosing an item or unsecure letter boxes, (which I have always replaced at my expense in the past when it occurred), the sharp increase in buyers saying their item has not arrived has to lie with dishonesty. & as the seller, I pay the price.
Yet again, dishonest buyers getting the approval to continue being dishonest without any consequence.
Sellers have no protection unless you spend the $$ to buy tracking.
In my case, I sell items that cost from $10-$30 typically. Cost to send is $1.40-$3.50. Where's the justification in buying postage of $7.20 per item to get tracking? Plus the rediculously high eBay fees on top of that, then PayPal fees. Makes selling the cheaper items (which sell so well), not profitable at all. When sellers in my genre of DVD/Blu ray don't make much on each item sold to begin with.
Australia Post have teamed up with eBay for postage options. Why Australia Post is not doing 'large letter parcel postage' pricing is detrimental to them. Oh, but that's right, Australia Post 'claim' standard mail is not making them money so they want to cut it. Initiatives to increase sales in the standard mail forum would be more beneficial.
Anyway, theres my warning & rant.
Anyone else have views of their own on this sunject?
