EBay’s new 2016 Seller Standards have gone live and they are all about the buyer feedback. This doesn’t bode well for merchants who may lose their top seller ratings when a parcel arrives late though.
The online auction site has deemed the changes ‘objective’ rather than ‘subjective’, but how these effect you, as a seller, is very much individualised. A customer can now rate the delivery service and timing of their order, which could easily lead to the downgrading of a merchants rating.
How they monitor this is also controversial. Merchants can upload the tracking number of parcels into eBay’s own data base with the intention of rewarding merchants for on-time deliveries. Merchants expressed concern however at being penalised for tracking inefficiencies with certain Royal Mail services.
A spokesperson for eBay said: We’re currently working in partnership with Royal Mail to find a solution to the issue around tracking on a number of their services. In the meantime, to protect sellers, we will be automatically removing any late deliveries sellers might incur when using Royal Mail Tracked/Royal Mail Signed For services, as long as you’ve uploaded the tracking number to My eBay.”
These services include:
- Royal Mail 1st Class Signed For
- Royal Mail 2nd Class Signed For
- Royal Mail Special Delivery
- Royal Mail T24
- Royal Mail T48
The changes come as eBay attempts to tackle its competitors like Amazon Marketplace who have prioritised customer feedback to expand its merchants customer bases.
