Saving an eBay account Top Rated Seller

[MrSparks]

I run a couple of niche websites which do pretty well and we've always sold a few things on eBay, but I recently went down the "lets sell everything" expansion route and basically various suppliers aren't as precious about my customers as I am.. so unfortunately we've had a few orders to cancel over the past couple of months due to stock issues and a few late deliveries (although I'm pretty sure buyers are just completely unreasonable as almost everything we sell arrives next day!).

We've now lost Top Rated Seller and are risking it going further. The problem is we don't really sell that much on eBay so it only takes a couple of order "defects" to put us in this position.

I have now had enough and removed almost everything that we don't have from stock, or from a very trusted source, and am going back to the good old fashioned value-add route! (not sure that's possible on eBay these days though!) almost all of the defects relate to one supplier anyway.

My thoughts were to buy some cheap easy to post items, maybe hearing aid batteries or similar? And list them for £1 or cheaper depending on competition, with fast and free and ensuring they get sent 1st class recorded.

This will cost us money but in theory could be an "easy" way to sell a larger quantity of item, which if managed correctly (it'll all be done in house) should see our defect rate % decrease and hopefully re-instate top rated seller status? I'm sure I saw a thread similar to this recently but can't find it, DSLiverpool was involved in offering advice so would welcome any advice! I'm not convinced simply listing something really cheap will mean it'll sell?

Previously we did really well on eBay so I do think the TRS does make a difference. We have had some price cutting competitors lately, but I don't really want to give up on eBay if I can help it. Has anyone had this issue before?

I'm really happy that I run niche sites and am diversified though as I can see how these issues can affect eBay reliant businesses! Same goes for Amazon which we're also having issues with due to same supplier.

[russy01]

MrSparks said:

.....but I recently went down the "lets sell everything" expansion route and basically various suppliers aren't as precious about my customers as I am.. so unfortunately we've had a few orders to cancel over the past couple of months due to stock issues and a few late deliveries (although I'm pretty sure buyers are just completely unreasonable as almost everything we sell arrives next day!).

Without sounding like a knob, you are saying your suppliers aren't as precious about your customers as you are...Id personally say you aren't particularly precious with them if you are selling them stuff that you dont have in stock. I know how it works as I retail online, but you have to be careful - if you are going to pre-sell stock you have to expect fall out if you dont deliver and with eBays ever tighter eTRS program you will suffer.

We only have a handful of suppliers that I trust and will presell stock when en-route. Everything else is put on our system when it rolls through the door - dont let somebody else and their mishaps bring your business down, get in control of it yourself. Your supplier issues is not your customers problem when they want or expect something by a specific date...

As for eTRS its pretty fair, if you lose it, you generally cocked up and deserve it - some customers ARE impossible to please, but eBay are well aware of this too. I say all this with lots of experience, we lost it on our last evaluation just before our busiest month. The drop in sales is evident, not to mention discount on fees - but we cocked up a big batch of orders and failed a whole load of customers. Its bloody annoying but with standards and expectations so high online nowadays you have to be on it...

As for saving eTRS you can sell a load of bulk in order to bring your % down, but depending what your volumes are it might not be feasible. I think DSLiverpool on here did something in the past with a load of batteries?
Anyway to put it in perspective, a week before evaluation day I worked out that in order for us to get our % back into TRS we had to do 5,000 more perfect transactions in that period... If you work yours out and its 20 extra good transactions you need then get on it...

[XMT]

I honestly wouldnt bother, When the new late delivery rate rubbish came in, I have lost mines a couple of times, has it affected my sales? No.

Ironically I have noticed when I don't have it, sales are up a little!

The main thing for me is not giving a st about it - so much more peaceful. It will come back on its own when you sort out the root cause which you already know.

I wouldnt chase it, DONT WORK FOR FREE!

[aka_kerrly]

XMT said:

I honestly wouldnt bother, When the new late delivery rate rubbish came in, I have lost mines a couple of times, has it affected my sales? No.

I wouldnt chase it, DONT WORK FOR FREE!

The last bit in particular, It is better to sell a smaller volume at a higher margin than it is trying to sell thousands of items at a minuscule profit in order to play the "I'm a big seller on Ebay game."

I also can't stand the number of inpatient people on ebay who won't pay for 1st class delivery (all my items are listed as "fast & free" 2nd class) and then start whining if an item hasn't arrived in 3days

[russy01]

XMT said:

I honestly wouldnt bother, When the new late delivery rate rubbish came in, I have lost mines a couple of times, has it affected my sales? No.

Ironically I have noticed when I don't have it, sales are up a little!

The main thing for me is not giving a st about it - so much more peaceful. It will come back on its own when you sort out the root cause which you already know.

I wouldnt chase it, DONT WORK FOR FREE!

I think it depends on what you sell and your volumes. I disagree entirely about the consequences, we see a sharp fall in sales on competitive lines where listing position in best match filter is important. Plus 10% fee discount cannot be sniffed at when you are doing significant volume.

But the moral of the story from both myself and XMT is to look at the cause and fix that...

[mickytruelove]

I gave up trying to keep ebay top rated seller a long time ago. It all depends on what you sell really but i tried the low cost/high volume to make up the numbers to try regain top rated but all it did was attract arse hole customers. Funny how you can sell the same items for a little bit more and avoid all the "item not arrived" "it was a present for my dog and now its too late" crap.

Ebay seems like a sinking ship lately, been selling full time on there for 4/5 years but Amazon makes up 80% now with ebay about 20%.

[MrSparks]

russy01 said:

Without sounding like a knob, you are saying your suppliers aren't as precious about your customers as you are...Id personally say you aren't particularly precious with them if you are selling them stuff that you dont have in stock. I know how it works as I retail online, but you have to be careful - if you are going to pre-sell stock you have to expect fall out if you dont deliver and with eBays ever tighter eTRS program you will suffer.

I fully agree with you to be honest, hence why I said I went down the wrong route of "sell everything" to grow the business... we do have some key suppliers who ship items direct for us but we know and trust them well. They aren't "dropship suppliers" in the true sense, we've just got to the point where we can send stuff direct reliably. Two of our top 3 suppliers sends everything for us, and they never let us down because we're in their top customers and they care about us and our customers like we do.

Ideally I just want to save the eBay account from further issues as we will go back to selling a few things on eBay at higher margins rather than more things at lower/no margin. We'll then just keep growing the niche websites where we add a lot of value, help and advice. I don't think the account has gone too far as it's only been a handful of issues, so we'll hopefully make it back up in the next month or two. I will likely list some items at a "good" cost just to get a few extra ratings in on the TRS system.

[DSLiverpool]

Bloody ebay hey! but it makes thousands of people lots of money and I have just finished a cunning plan to get back into ebay with a fault proof, return resistant highly desirable product that wont break if dropped - this time next year Rodders !!

Back to the issue of retaining TRS - search can be sporadic, if say Russ is not TRS he may not get found in search but another seller of say phone chargers would not notice any drop off. If it hits you badly then deal with it - its business, swings n roundabouts.

Personally my poor customer experience was due to a delivery to myself going missing I was selling a highly in demand item I knew was on its way to me but they never arrived and I grovelled but got a few bad ratings.

I sold batteries for phones - not sold as AAA Panasonic battery I sold hem as a set of batteries for a Pansonic KX-TGA210 etc etc as people mainly search that way for complex item batteries rather than a torch having 2 * D cells. (I dont expect you all to agree) it did the trick and we sold hundreds and hundreds so much so its part of my new master plan.

[MrSparks]

DSLiverpool said:

Bloody ebay hey! but it makes thousands of people lots of money and I have just finished a cunning plan to get back into ebay with a fault proof, return resistant highly desirable product that wont break if dropped - this time next year Rodders !!

Back to the issue of retaining TRS - search can be sporadic, if say Russ is not TRS he may not get found in search but another seller of say phone chargers would not notice any drop off. If it hits you badly then deal with it - its business, swings n roundabouts.

Personally my poor customer experience was due to a delivery to myself going missing I was selling a highly in demand item I knew was on its way to me but they never arrived and I grovelled but got a few bad ratings.

I sold batteries for phones - not sold as AAA Panasonic battery I sold hem as a set of batteries for a Pansonic KX-TGA210 etc etc as people mainly search that way for complex item batteries rather than a torch having 2 * D cells. (I dont expect you all to agree) it did the trick and we sold hundreds and hundreds so much so its part of my new master plan.

Thanks, I've had a look into it and I think our account will be OK now that I've ditched all products that we don't fulfil ourselves. We have lost TRS but I have a new plan for how we will use eBay next year which will all be from stock and whist the plan isn't "unique" it does attempt to add some value, it'll take a bit of effort which should put some others off copying, but it's by no means unique either... we'll see what happens. Still glad eBay is just a sideline!

[Fab32]

Ebay baffles me, we had a product that was selling very well, we burned through 2000+ sales with no issues, a competitor notices reduces his price and the battle begins.

However the issue is now, his price is 15% higher and he is currently beating us hands down for sales. I have literally tried everything to compete but he is either lucky or knows more than I do about staying at the top of the page. Reluctantly, its a case of good luck to him

[DSLiverpool]

Fab32 said:

Ebay baffles me, we had a product that was selling very well, we burned through 2000+ sales with no issues, a competitor notices reduces his price and the battle begins.

However the issue is now, his price is 15% higher and he is currently beating us hands down for sales. I have literally tried everything to compete but he is either lucky or knows more than I do about staying at the top of the page. Reluctantly, its a case of good luck to him

Look at his title and if he is a higher search rank qualifier than you

[Paddymcc]

Fab32 said:

Ebay baffles me, we had a product that was selling very well, we burned through 2000+ sales with no issues, a competitor notices reduces his price and the battle begins.

However the issue is now, his price is 15% higher and he is currently beating us hands down for sales. I have literally tried everything to compete but he is either lucky or knows more than I do about staying at the top of the page. Reluctantly, its a case of good luck to him

eBay measures the amount of feedback customers leave based on sales and it will effect sales/placement.

[long time lurker]

eBay is a funny one, we are currently top rated but I don't think that really does us any favours?
I know we are not the cheapest but we know what were selling and ensure we list everything correctly and we also have more product details in our listings than our competitors, which works for us and gets us sales.
We do try and keep stocks of everything listed but if it sells via our website etc and we don't have stock available, we have at least 2 backup suppliers, so we can still supply within timescales we list (we just loose a little profit!).