Great News for eBay Sellers – Neutrals No Longer Count as Negatives
Well, it looks like sellers have made enough noise for the execs at eBay to let neutrals count as neutrals, instead of negatives. (Kinda makes sense, right?) According to this post on the eBay Announcement Board, beginning in late August, neutrals will not have any impact on the calculation of the feedback percentage. As of now, here is how feedback is calculated:
Positives
___________________________
Positives + Negatives + Neutrals
Under the new (sensible) calculation, the formula looks like this:
Positives
______________________
Positives + Negatives
This will really help some sellers get their higher ratings back after the change made in May. I checked my score by the new calculation and my feedback percentage will change from 99.3% to 99.9%. How will this change affect your score?
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Who cares? it’s too little, too late. After many years selling on ebay, mainly high end musical instruments and optical equipment, and with a 100% rating, I simply packed it in after the changes and the rate hikes. Putting the same amount of time and effort into my other business enterprises and sales methods yields more income than eBay hour for hour and is a lot less hassle.
Since I stopped selling on ebay my income has actually INCREASED.
I have lost count of the number of people I have spoken to who have done the exact same thing, with the same result. Ebay has shown–indeed has STATED– that it is no longer interested in the small sellers. But who is daft enough to buy High-Street items on ebay that they can go and pick up locally today, and not have to pay carriage on?
Furthermore, where once if I DID want an item that was on BIN, I would just hit that button, now I check to see if the seller has a “real” store, and if they do I call them up and explain I’ve seen the item on ebay, will they sell it direct–and in every case the answer was yes, and in every case I got a discount–most recently 10% on a violin. Why? Because who do you think ends up paying ebay’s inflated charges, made worse by the insistence on Paypal? The buyer, of course. Sellers have to simply build the extra costs in, so buying fixed price on ebay is more expensive.
And even if the seller doesn’t have a “real” store, a quick Google will always find an equivalent product at a better price than ebay, in my experience.
My advice– whatever ebay says or does now, whether you’re a buyer or a seller, just walk away. It has shown its contempt for the small sellers and collectors who made it what it is. Its current management have proved their incompetence, as is more than adequately demonstrated by ebay’s free-falling share price. Remember– ebay’s customers are NOT the buyers, but the sellers, and it sold them out.
Ebay can never be trusted again.