eBay’s Top Rated Sellers Program: Improvement or Rip-Off?
Posted by Madison Claire on Wed, Nov 04, 2009 @ 04:25 PM
eBay’s newest fiasco, the so-called Top Rated Sellers Program is being touted on the Bay as an (ahem) improvement…but is it?
Well, yes, it is.
Unfortunately, though, it’s an improvement for eBay, not sellers.
So what else is new?
Top Rated Sellers are going to replace Power Sellers. The old Power Seller will soon be obsolete, replaced by the TRS with its dorky looking “badge” or medal or whatever the thing is supposed to represent.
It brings to mind the blue ribbon logos on certain brands of dog food cans, and that seems apropos, since eBay treats sellers like man’s best friend.
This latest “improvement” is downright laughable in its pathetic transparency. Obviously, eBay is desperately trying to shore up its sagging bottom line and is casting about frantically for ways to increase revenue.
As usual, eBay's solution is to gouge sellers for more money.
Now, at first glance, some of the latest changes don’t seem all that bad. The Top Rated Seller program, for instance, will give Power Sellers a 20% discount off their Final Value Fees.
But here’s the thing: There WAS a 20% discount, as well as a 15% discount and a 5%, discount, depending on what a seller’s Detailed Seller Ratings were.
If a seller maintained 4.9 or above, there was a 20% discount of Final Value Fees.
If a seller maintained 4.8, then the discount was reduced to 15%.
For DSRs of 4.6, a seller receives a 5% discount off Final Value Fees.
In the overall scheme of things, these discounts may not seem like much. But that actually depends on how much a seller sells on eBay. If someone is doing a big volume of sales, then even the 5% discount off of Final Value Fees could be a nice little chunk of change.
Sadly, this will be over in April of 2010.
At that time, eBay will do away with that program and replace it with the Top Rated Sellers program entirely, which has a flat 20% discount off Final Value Fees IF a seller qualifies.
Ah…..there’s the rub.
EBay has raised the bar yet again on its unrealistic standards of excellence. To qualify for the Top Rated Seller discount, a seller must have less than one half of one percent of buyers who leave low DSRs.
0.50 of 1%.
In other words, if more than two measly buyers out of 100 give a seller a low DSR---BAM---blown out of the water.
Not only will the seller lose the Top Rated Seller status, he or she will also be ineligible for any discount and have their auctions lowered in Search.
Why would eBay do this?
Many educated guesses have been made and the prevailing opinion is that too many sellers were managing to get a discount of either 5%, 15% or 20% off their Final Value Fees, so eBay had to put a stop to that leak of much needed cash by making it almost impossible for any seller to get a discount.
Just another day in paradise on FeeBay!