eBay Selling

The new postage rates will be here on May 12. The new rates will affect first class, Priority, Parcel, Express and International mail rates. To save a little, stock up on forever stamps now. They’re only going up a cent apiece on the 12th, but in bulk that can mean a lot.

If you have a postage meter, the company will send an update to the meter to the correct rates.  To take a look at the new rates, go to the USPS site and take a look at the individual changes. But like the last change, it’s not as simple as a simple rate increase. The new rates have a lot to do with the weights and sizes of the packages. Some prices will stay the same and in some circumstances they will actually go down slightly. Leave it to the post office to make the new rates as complicated as possible.

The new expanded feedback percentages aren’t as new as some of the other changes, but they are still something that long-term sellers are getting used to. The percentages are broken down into four separate criteria, each with its own percentage of 0-5. The latest changes to the search engine, occurring at the same time as the feedback changes, have made the exact percentage point extremely important.

The default search is no longer what items are the best match that are ending the soonest. The new default is items that are being sold by people who have at least a 4.7 on each of the four criteria. Many sellers have found this hard to achieve because of unrealistic buyer expectations and the higher fees that sellers have to charge. One of the criteria is shipping and handling charges, which many sellers have had to raise with the latest round of fee increased. Add the fee increases to the upcoming postage increase and there’s a perfect storm of handling charges that sellers are simply going to have to charge to keep making a profit. All that sellers can do right now is to do the best they can and hope that the ratings will follow.

One of the changes that has bothered sellers the most, judging from the message boards on the site as well as blogs around the country, are the changes to eBay’s feedback system. Sellers are no longer allowed to leave a negative or neutral rating for a buyer. That might make buyers feel better about buying through the site, but it also gives them an unfair advantage and leverage to get unfair deals.

Feedback extortion has long been a problem on the site. This occurs when a buyer emails their seller with a demand that must be met in order for the seller to escape a negative. Long, long ago, that was an offense that automatically earned the buyer a suspension. A few years ago that changed to something that was frowned on but not punished by the site. This was changed again a few days ago. The offense is now something that can get buyers suspended again. That’s good news for the sellers who know about it, but millions of sellers probably don’t. Unless they read every email from the site and/or check the announcement board frequently, they are still vulnerable.

If you get an email that demands a refund, return or discount and mentions your potential feedback, keep that email. It should be forwarded to the Trust and Safety department right away. If a buyer has already left a negative because you didn’t cave to their demands- it isn’t too late. Under the new rules the feedback can be removed and the buyer can still be suspended. If you’re a victim of this practice, don’t take it lightly. By acting you will not only save your own reputation, you will save other sellers from being taken advantage of by the same buyer.

This is the first post of eBay Selling, a blog dedicated to the latest news about eBay, seller’s tips and tricks and advice about getting better sales. I welcome comments and questions about individual sales problems or about eBay in general.

One of the things I’d like to cover in detail is the recent changes to the site and how that is affecting sellers. Some of the changes will not be implemented until May, but many are currently in effect. One of those is a restructuring of many of the categories. Some of the subcategories are being moved around, others are being consolidated with others and there are a few new ones as well.

This will force sellers to make changes in their store listings and relisted auction and fixed price listings. It may also affect the ability of customers to find the items they are used to searching for elsewhere. But, after a couple of weeks, it shouldn’t have much of an effect. Since most buyers search by keywords, the categories don’t matter as much as some of the other changes. The worst of those changes are certainly the extensive changes to the feedback system, but let’s save that for another post…