eBay is the Grinch that just stole Christmas! After a disastrous economy and slow summer I was biting the bullet just waiting for the Christmas season to get back on my feet. So what does eBay do? Introduce a major significant untested change (always likely to have unforeseen consequences) just a few weeks before the holidays. You just destroyed my holidays. On October 1st my sales virtually disappeared (my crowded niche requires me to buy features to get exposure which now only top rated seller can buy - a huge and unfair competitive advantage to top rated sellers who may have only a handful of feedbacks after a couple of years, and haven't sold enough items for anyone to bother giving them a low DSR).
I am a power seller and have been on eBay for over ten years. I never had a negative feedback, though I have a few too many low DSR's for Top Seller. eBays TRS program both sets the bar too high, makes the statusd too unreliable and gives it such an unfair competitive advantage than any small business seller is basically screwed. First, the DSR as we already know is completely counter -intuitive, Every single rating system with a five point scale in the world uses 3 as the average.
Second, buyers currently identify a good user experience with reliable PowerSellers. replacing that designation and logo with NOTHING just tosses every single highly rated power seller in with everyone else, while top-rated sellers get all the best position and exposure. There is even a button buyers can use to EXCLUDE anyone else - stealing my listing fees from me by not giving me all the search exposure I am paying for (I think that some attorneys general in various states will be looking into this).
Finally, this is a fragile program. I have thousands of positive feedbacks that mention my fast shipping, yet I always get one or two nut jobs that think Labor Day is no excuse for an item to arrive a day later! I have a 4.9 on shipping costs even though everything I ship is free shipping! And this is the program you are building your business model on??? Even if you made top seller this month, who knows how long you will keep it and how long it takes to get it back. When you go down from Platinum to Gold, it doesn't change your sales results - you just lose a few benefits. But if you loose top seller status you lose you place in the searches, any featured listings, and any promotional visibility at all! Your basically screwed!
I suspect eBay has once again screwed their base, the small business power seller. Less than 20% of the searches I ran in my tests came back with TRS's, meaning 80% of us were screwed.
This month I couldn't pay my high ebay fees for the very first time ever. I am now payng them off, but they are late - because I have not had the sales I had even when things were slow. I am in the process of working my way out of dependence on eBay forever after this. It was a nice ride ebay, but like my ex-wife -we've grown away from each other - or you have grown away from me, and so a separation is in order. I'll be investing the thousands in fees I paid every month into Google Adwords in the future.