eBay Top Rated Seller & Mouseover Effect Changes

The new eBay changes are rolling out in regards to the new Top Rated Seller program. We noticed the TRS badge on several seller's pages but we also noted the badge in a product search. It is located between the item title and the listing format note.

Then we accidently mousedover the left navigation section and found an interesting surprise. Here it is:

We wonder just what kind of message this lovely purple lined pop-up is sending to buyers since a lot of sellers do not qualify for the TRS program? Is eBay trying to say that those without a badge are lousy sellers? If the sellers without the badge are not such great sellers, why are they allowed to remain on the site? Nothing like buyers being able to filter sellers right out of business!

What is interesting and notable about this program we had previously mentioned on our blog:
- Some eBay members who have been inactive for several months qualify for this new Top Rated Seller program and they never lost their PowerSeller status during this time (they should have according to eBay's policies and sales requirements). -

The biggest problem with this new program is the same as the old program but it is exaggerated a bit since buyers now have learned the power they have to make or break a seller. The problem: unverified opinions due to the perception of one member of the transaction. Without the ability of sellers to defend themselves, their accounts can fall under attack for any number of reasons, many of which may not be any fault of their own. Also not taken into account is that a competitor could be sabotaging another sellers account.

The other thing to note is this program is set up to be more secretive than the old one because it covers a 3 month rating period and there is a delay in revealing the ratings to the seller. This allows for more anonymity for buyers but it does nothing for sellers whatsoever.

The new seller dashboard rolled out also. We noticed that a seller can now download reports about their low DSR's but they are well after the fact which makes it impossible for a seller to rectify any problems. The most recent feedback we were able to access was for 09-15 (2 weeks ago). These reports also fail to reveal the specific transaction for which there was an issue so a seller has no idea of what it is that went wrong or if it was just a rating issued by someone who had personal issues with the seller.

There seem to be a lot of new tools to use against sellers. It's like eBay is doing everything they can to knock sellers down even further than they have since the last major changes in 2008.

It is our feeling that many sellers will no longer be at eBay next spring when the site starts axing people for not meeting the new requirements. All of this is just another step in their weeding out process that began 05-19-08.

The whole situation with eBay is very disheartening, to say the least.