Each time you buy or sell something, you have an opportunity to leave Feedback about your experience. That Feedback is an essential part of what makes eBay a successful community.
Feedback consists of a positive, negative, or neutral rating, along with a short comment. Buyers and sellers build reputations that are based on all the Feedback ratings and comments left by their trading partners.
This information is available in each member's Feedback Profile, and helps prospective trading partners buy and sell with confidence.
More fast facts about Feedback:
- Along with an overall rating, buyers can also rate sellers on the details of the purchase. These detailed seller ratings are anonymous, and don't count toward the overall Feedback Score.
- Since Feedback becomes a permanent part of your record, buyers are encouraged to contact sellers to try to resolve any issues before leaving neutral or negative Feedback.
- Buyers can revise Feedback they've left for sellers in the case of a mistake.
- Sellers can leave only positive ratings for buyers. That means buyers should feel free to leave honest Feedback without fear of retaliation. We also have safeguards in place to protect sellers against unfair negative or neutral Feedback.
How are Feedback scores calculated?
For each transaction, buyers and sellers can choose to rate each other by leaving Feedback. Buyers can leave a positive, negative, or a neutral rating, plus a short comment. Sellers can leave a positive rating and a short comment.
These ratings are used to determine Feedback scores. In most cases, members receive:
+1 point for each positive rating
No points for each neutral rating
-1 point for each negative rating
You should leave Feedback for each sale. However, we’ll calculate the other member’s Feedback score differently depending on whether the sales occurred in the same week. For Feedback purposes, we define a week as Monday through Sunday, Pacific Time.
If the sales occurred in different weeks | Each rating can affect the member’s Feedback score by one point. A positive rating raises a buyer or seller’s Feedback score by one point. A negative rating lowers a seller’s Feedback score by one point. |
If the sales occurred in the same week | Sellers: We’ll raise or lower the seller’s Feedback score by a total of one point, based on the total number of positives and negatives left by the buyer.
Buyers: We’ll raise the buyer’s Feedback score by a total of one point, regardless of the number of positive ratings received within the week. |
Why leave Feedback?
Leaving honest comments gives members a good idea of what to expect when dealing with other members. Leaving Feedback is also a way to express your appreciation for a job well done. Finally, if you are a buyer, you can help spread the word about a seller you like, and if you are a seller, you can help recognize and reward loyal customers, which encourages them to buy from you again.
Other Benefits:
This guide is to illustrate the importance of having excellent detailed feedback ratings (DSRs) and the difficulties acheiving it. The importance of getting & keeping excellent DSRs for Power Sellers is that it can substantially cut the cost of your Ebay fees and raise your search standings (how high up your item appears in a search result). Ebay offers final valuation fee discounts on a monthly basis for Power Sellers whose detailed feedback is above 4.6 in every DSR category for that month and who has a 98% or above overall feedback score. The discounts on final valuation fees are 5% for 4.6 in all DSR categories; 15% for 4.8; & 20% for 4.9. In addition, Ebay, during this holiday season doubled the discount for sellers who offer free shipping and subsequently has extended it until March 2009.The difficulty, I feel, in acheiving these DSR standards is that a 4 rating is a "good" rating in every category (3 is labeled as average), but bad enough to lose all the discounts. Mainly the problem with the DSRs for sellers is EPal's extremely flawed, unfair administration of it: Sellers get scored in tenths of a point, but buyers can only score in whole points, so every time a buyer leaves "good" 4s for a seller with scores higher than that, it harms the seller' DSRs. Also, I feel that buyers don't know this & think they may be doing the seller a favor by rating him/her a 4, but in reality, it causes his/her DSR standings to deteriorate below the fee discount level. That's because the scale doesn't allow the buyer any increments between 4 and 5 to choose, while the buyer might be suffering from the "Olympics judge syndrome" (nobody deserves a perfect score). To top that off, in my experience, buyers are extremely self centered & care about nothing but how fast they get it & how cheaply they get it. For instance, it isn't advisable for a seller to sell a $10 item for $2 and then charge $8 to ship it to make up for the difference (a lot of sellers do this) because the majority of buyer won't take this into account when deciding what to leave in the "shipping cost" portion of the DSRs. Recently, I shipped a $2 item with "free shipping" immediately, but got harmed with the buyer's feedback for "shipping time" because I sent it First Class instead of Priority. Apparently he did not care or take into consideration that if I shipped it faster, it would cost me more than he paid for the item. To put it mildly, it is very tricky to get and maintain high enough DSR ratings to qualify for the discounts. Buyers simply do not care enough to be fair about it & apparently neither does EPal.
So, to achieve excellent discount-worthy DSRs, the buyer must always pay particular attention to the following: an extremely accurate, detailed description disclosing all flaws in the item with nice big clear pictures ("item as described" portion of DSR); immediately thanking the buyer for the purchase via email & notifying him/her of when it will ship ("communications" portion of DSR); shipping the item promptly, the same day if possible via USPS priority mail if cost effective ("shipping time" in DSRs); & (my recommendation) including free shipping whenever possible by just adding the shipping cost into the item cost ("shipping cost" portion of DSRs).
The free shipping suggestion has an added benefit: then the buyer knows for sure that if there is a problem and he has to return the item, he will be reimbursed for his total cost. Also, if he purchases a warranty on a used electronics item & the seller is associated with a warranty provider for electronics like I am, then the buyer's entire cost is covered by the warranty he/she might purchase.
But there is even more to it than that because I do all of that & am still struggling to maintain my discount. I still haven't figured out a complete strategy. But I recently went back through all the items I sold in the last few months and sent letters to each of the ones who've never left me feedback. In addition to sending them an email feedback reminder, I included in each email an explanation of how the DSRs affect me & asked that they all leave me 5s if they feel I deserve it. I checked with an Ebay rep about the email who said it is okay to do that.
The strategy above was not successful because my scores are much closer to 5 than 4. The reason is that 4s are .8 below my average score, but 5s are only .2 above my score, so a 4 has much more negative impact on my score than several 5s do. For instance I got about 6 sets of straight 5s left me as the result of going back &asking for feedback, bringing my feedback up by .2. Then one guy left me 4s and erased the gain.That happened twice: a slew of 5s, then 1 set of 4s knocking me back down .2. So my new strategy is this message which I put in every item description & resend with my notice of shipment, which seems to be working:
"After receiving your item & you are fully satisfied with my service, & believe I deserve it, I would appreciate you giving me 5 stars in all of the detailed feedback categories. I am greatly concerned about my feedback & feel that buyers may not understand that 4-star ratings, while 'good', hurt my DSR scores, which are much higher. If you don't feel I deserve 5s, then I request that you do not leave me detailed feedback for this transaction. Very high DSRs help me save money on fees & in other ways, helping me to sell items on Ebay for less & I strive to earn the highest feedback. If you have a problem with this item or do not receive it, please contact me because I would appreciate the opportunity to resolve the issue for you & earn the perfect feedback I seek."
The Most Important Benefit: Trust!
Buyers will trust you once you have a higher score. This is essential to selling successfully on eBay. eBay also allows you to run "Dutch" auctions once your score is up. What is a Dutch Auction?
Dutch Auctions (also called "Fixed Price" auctions):
When you sell an item at a fixed price, your buyers have the convenience of buying the item immediately at a known price.
Choosing a fixed price format
Depending on whether you want to allow bidding on your item, you can either:
Create a fixed price listing, with no bidding allowed
Create an auction-style listing and add the
option so that buyers can choose whether to buy your item right away or compete in the auction.
icon next to the item lets buyers know that they can buy it right away.Requirements
To sell an item at a fixed price, you must meet certain Feedback requirements and list the item for at least $1.00.
Since PayPal offers buyer protection, Feedback requirements are lower if you have a PayPal account and accept PayPal as a payment method.| Requirements with a PayPal account | |
Listing a single item at a fixed price |
|
Listing multiple items at a fixed price |
|
Listing items at a fixed price Store inventory format |
|
| Requirements without a PayPal account | |
Listing a single item at a fixed price |
|
Listing multiple items at a fixed price |
|
Listing items at a fixed price Store inventory format |
|
In the next article, I will tell you about Drop-shipping (This is how I sold my $25,000 worth of items).
Screenshot of my eBay Seller Page
(After I found my niche product)
*NOTE: I whited out personal information
(CLICK to ENLARGE)
