And someone from eBay will read this four days from now and post a reply informing you that your opinion is in fact correct. That's called eBay logic.
@fixnwear wrote:let them explain to me exactly how a bunch of bona fide facts can be morphed into an "opinion"
It's like saying: today is Friday (a fact), but in my opinion it's Tuesday!
@modestbods wrote:And someone from eBay will read this four days from now and post a reply informing you that your opinion is in fact correct. That's called eBay logic.
@fixnwear wrote:let them explain to me exactly how a bunch of bona fide facts can be morphed into an "opinion"
It's like saying: today is Friday (a fact), but in my opinion it's Tuesday!
That's just it - in real terms, eBay is the one that needs to be challenged on this, as they are the ones who have created a system that means a seller is "defected" if the buyer has a less than perfect opinion of their transaction, without going to any lengths whatsoever to even try and make sure that opinion is an informed one.
DSRs, as I have oft been seen to say ๐ , are fine as a general overview of buyer opinion, but buyer opinion never has (and never will) be equal to tangible evidence of poor seller performance, so it should not be treated as such.
eBay justify their defect system by saying that their stats show buyers are less likely to come back to eBay and continue to purchase if they have a transaction they leave 3 stars for (for description). It is a very small mind indeed that decided if a buyer doesn't come back to buy again because they weren't 100% over the moon with their item, it's obviously the seller's fault and they must be whacked with a stick.
Dear, dear eBay... A lot of the time when someone says "I'm never buying from you again!", the seller doesn't shed a tear over something that's such a great loss they don't know how they will recover, they breathe a sigh of relief, after taking a moment to stretch out their back from bending it over backwards. (And I recognise that it just may be that's what eBay do when a seller states they'll never use eBay again...except for the back thing, pretty sure eBay don't bend that way).
I also love how the new MBG guarantee and defect thing-y works, with the messaging / request thing causing a defect, and how eBay introduced a 'neutral' subject for buyers to select when they contact a seller so that they don't (and here I quote eBay) "inadvertently cause a defect".
Pfft. 
I would venture to say that the vast majority of defects are inadvertent - the only ones that aren't are the ones where the buyer has a full understanding of the system and chooses to cause one. In all other cases, it is a side effect of trying to do something completely different, like communicate with the seller about a problem.
Reading your post, I feel a strong urge to go play Mad Libs. 
(It's all the bleeps - although the bleeping words are kinda intuitive, the later at night it is, the more creative my intuition gets....but I digress).
Just to clarify - neither the communication nor postage cost DSR can result in a defect, no matter how low it is scored, so on those two fronts, sellers can relax a little.
I used to feel quite strongly about sending all my buyers a quick message after a purchase, it was just a couple of lines thanking them for their purchase, providing a specific date for postage (even if same day) and to contact me if I can help with anything else (before or after the item arrives), but as my sales have increased, something had to go and even though I had a message template that I would just copy / paste, then fill in the relevant blanks for that particular buyer, it started to take too much time away from doing the other stuff, like making, packing and posting orders, so it's been a while since I practiced that. Pity eBay no longer have the bulk messaging system (I believe it's still accessable via eBay Singapore?)
Surprisingly, my communication DSR is still at a full 5, so it hasn't hurt me to stop doing that. Personally, judging by how buyers used to communicate with me when I did send that message, I think the main benefit of doing that these days is that around 75% of the time, if a buyer needed to let me know something, they'd reply to my message rather than use the 'Contact seller' option.
I suggested ages ago, when I was still sending the messages, that eBay create a setting whereby the seller gets a liitle note letting them know the buyer has indicated they prefer no communication outside of the standard auto-updates, unless necessary (if they can do it for the HTML thing, that shouldn't be too hard. I assume, anyway ), but in the absence of that, and considering the diversity of individual preferences, the only thing I can do is what I would prefer, rather than worry about what everyone else would prefer, which is a philosophy I apply to other areas, like how I account for and charge postage etc. Or something like that. It's late, tired and rambling...
