@davewil1964 wrote:
TRS does not, and never has, confer any special privileges. It is simply a measure of sales volumes and amounts.
It allows a TRS a warm and fuzzy feeling. And makes it a little harder to fall below standard. And stops unhappy buyers from leaving a neg for 7 days, allowing them to cool off a bit before leaving it.
I believe you're thinking of Power Seller, as that is decided by volume / value of sales, and stops negs from being left for 7 days.
You do need to be a Power Seller in order to be TRS, but TRS looks at transaction defect rate, feedback percentage (98%+ required) and late shipment rate, so TRS badging is designed to indicate to buyers that the seller experiences a low rate of transaction problems (compared to their total transactions), but that is undermined by sellers who technically qualify, yet look like they shouldn't (high volume sellers at 98.1% for feedback, racking up hundreds, sometimes thousands of negs a year, can still qualify, so it's less a true picture of the seller, and more like only knowing the temperature on any given day, but not the actual weather conditions). Whether or not your average buyer on eBay looks at feedback and is affected in any way by seeing the seller is a TRS, is debateable. I am sure it has swayed some, judging by the occasional "the seller was a TRS" type comments in threads about a bad transaction, but probably matters little to many others).
I don't think eBay officially list any benefits to being TRS, aside from saying your selling performance can affect best match ranking (this is different from saying you'll always be high up the list if you're a TRS, plus, don't forget millions of other sellers are also a TRS, and you have no way of knowing how their performance compares to yours in real terms). They certainly don't go out of their way to indicate to buyers which sellers are TRS and which ones aren't, either, since the only place it appears is on the feedback profile.
So, ultimately, there is no tangible point to being a TRS, it's a bit like an "achievement unlocked" badge that pops up and calls "taking 1000 steps in-game" an achievement - "you (temporarily) qualify for this trophy, we'll display it in the small cabinet out the back, some people might see it, and a few might even be impressed! We also reserved the right to retrieve the trophy if we don't like what you're doing".
