Natural Born SNADs

The Natural Born SNAD is a listing which is internally inconsistent. It is logically impossible for seller to ship an item which meets all of the description.

Offering a Ford in the title, showing a picture of a Chevy.

Or more likely,
1. offering a ring in the title, but accidentally providing a picture of a watch.
2. supplying a textual description of a different item.
3. Saying it's 1 inch in the title, but 2 inches in the description

It happens to all of us.

Seller: if and when you discover your listing to be a Natural Born SNAD, you have three situations:
1. If your listing has no bids, you can fix it. If it was pretty clearly an error, this usually works.
2. If your listing has a bid, it cannot be fixed. If there are more than 12 hours left to go, cancel it now. Fix, and re-list.
3. Beg buyer for mercy. Your only choice any time later than 12 hours to go, including when you don't notice the problem until after the sale. This might work, but if buyer requests resolution of the SNAD, don't overplay your hand, insisting that buyer feel compelled by the "obvious mistake".

What not to do: add text disclaiming either the title, the picture, or earlier text. Many buyers don't read that far, and even if they did, the inconsistency remains. No, Ebay will not protect you. If the thing says 2 inches in one place, and 1 inch in three places, that doesn't make for a description of 1 inch.

Buyers: if you discover, either earlier or later, a Natural Born SNAD, think of yourself as seller. It's seldom a trick, rather it's a mistake. Be gracious.

PIcture Upload Unreliable

The user or security information provided to Picture Services is invalid. Check to see if security credentials have expired. (error code: ME200)

International Shipping remains highly dangerous.

I don't ship internationally.

This is directly related to the way Ebay evaluates me as a seller. The evaluation process focuses on small numbers of negative reports, and a very few can cause loss of TRS status, with resulting increase in Ebay fees.

The problem with this methodology is that the most problematic of buyers end up being the most important to sellers. Buyers who are inexperienced. Buyers who live where delivery is imperfect. And buyers who are quick to go off. Some would include malice here, and I'm sure that happens, but in my experience it's very rare. Problematic buyers aren't often malicious, but they do have a lot of bad experiences, and generate the majority of grief encountered by good sellers.

International selling is, by definition, to a problem buyer. While most western delivery systems are reliable, some, notoriously Italy, are not even close, and various others, including Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Israel, are imperfect.

Add to that the high customs taxes levied by most of Europe, and the culture of avoiding such taxes. Most European buyers have had experience with sellers who do their best to help, and they have had experience with sellers who refuse cooperation. The latter can expect rating consequences. Not usually, but when 1% consequences really matter, then it's going to be prudent to avoid the problem all together.

Ebay has tried to help, by not scoring all DSRs the same, and by protecting sellers from negative feedback which references customs issues.

But Ebay has left the big cannon in place pointed straight at seller: the INR dispute. Item Not Received. Sellers who encounter 1% INRs, regardless of what happens next, face serious Ebay consequences.

And the small cannon: international DSRs on positive feedback which does not reference any customs issue in the text. The text doesn't matter. The DSRs do. Clean text, dirty DSR, yields pain.

Many sellers are perfectly aware of the odds of getting their item delivered in imperfect situations. We're willing to refund when delivery fails. But, we are unwilling to risk the Ebay consequences of an INR or bad international DSRs when we've always done the right thing.

Solution: a seller who:
a. buys an Ebay shipping label to buyer's address
b. subsequently refunds, voluntarily, in a timely fashion, all money paid by buyer in response to buyer complaint

Should not face further sanction of any kind.

Local pickup, continued

The question was, "does a local pickup yield a non-compliance strike for failing to upload tracking information within 24 hours?"

Commenter Oleg suggested entering something like "picked-up-4-04-2012" into the tracking field.

I've recently had two LPU's, each of which involved 3 different ebay items. I followed Oleg's suggestion.

The results are, um, mixed.

I ended up with 1 strike.

I have no idea, perhaps I did something odd, but I take it as evidence that Oleg's suggestion is valid.

--
Next however, we find Ebay yet again trying their best to make LPU more difficult and/or dangerous.

Ebay does/will offer automatic 5 stars for communication when no communication has occurred in either direction. Except if LPU is offered on the listing.

I take that to mean that offering cash for LPU as a payment mechanism would disable the automatic 5 stars. That lack of an automatic 5 hasn't been a problem for me, mostly because I totally accept that some buyers will post a 4 no matter what I have done. However, many sellers pursue the 5.0 with intensity, and may well choose to avoid offering LPU to increase their chance of getting a 5 DSR.

Changes somewhat for the better

New automatic 5-star Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) for Communication protects sellers from getting low DSRs when there was no communication at all. Starting in April, you'll get an automatic 5-star Communication DSR when you specify same-day or 1-day handling, upload tracking information by the end of the next business day, and no communication was needed between you and the buyer. Of course, friendly, prompt and informative communication is always important, so on transactions where buyer and seller communications do occur, the Communication DSR will be rated by the buyer.

That's a good thing, of course, I guess.


The problem is, it fails to address the core issue of unavoidable negative communication stars: slow pay. Instead, it mitigates the '4' issue, which is trivial, and has no consequences beyond being an annoyance.

Sellers who harass slow payers, and sellers who refuse to fix SNADs, can expect a low comm star.

Sellers who end up with a UID filed 8 days or more after close of auction, and the buyer pays after the UID is filed, are in great peril of an undeserved negative comm star. If they're looking to improve good seller confidence, that's the kind of issue ebay should address, instead of the fluffy, doesn't happen, neg comm star from the blue.

One of the worst aspects of ebay selling is the tremendous impact a very small number of cranky buyers can have on a seller. It's like living in a war zone, where even good, skillful sellers can get shot down. It shouldn't be that way, and it doesn't have to be that way. Coercing good selling practice is good, but it can be achieved without intense focus on a very few cranky reports.

More details:

You will not receive an automatic 5 star DSR for Communication if there is any buyer or seller initiated communication related to the transaction in the eBay messaging system or a request for contact information by the buyer or seller. Operational emails such as invoices and invoice requests even if they contain messages added by the buyer or seller, and Best Offer communications are excluded from consideration and you will still qualify for an automatic 5 star DSR for Communication if there is no other communication between buyer and seller.