The life of this eBay seller

The life of this eBay seller

(username: mobile_eaxchange_eauctions)

I have been selling used BMW auto parts, along with a variety of consignment items on eBay for four years as a full time job. In the beginning I was excited every day to wake up and see what kind of questions I could answer, how many bids I received overnight, and how much money was in my PayPal account awaiting transfer to my business banking account.

Of course, as with any business, there was the occasional “issue” that needed to be attended to, like a part doesn’t fit properly or something was damaged in shipping, etc. These are problems that we anticipate and correct in a swift and proper manner to keep our customers happy. Sometimes the issues were my fault, and sometimes they were the fault of another party, like the buyer or shipper. No big deal, we solve these problems so that everyone is satisfied….at least the customer is satisfied.

Back in 2007, when our economy really started to have problems, I found the world of “international buyers”. Our dollar was weak, and their money went along way with us. At one point I was shipping 20-30% of my BMW parts out of the country, and the Unites States Postal Service was taking care of 99% of these shipments in a satisfactory manner. Sure, their inexpensive shipping methods didn’t provide much in the way of tracking, but you rarely needed it. Packages just got where they were supposed to be….eventually.

At the same time, I was shipping a large volume of parts in the US with UPS Ground service. The UPS service was absolutely amazing. Rarely do I have an issue with their service, and when I do they fix it quickly. If they damage a package, I have to fill out some forms and fax them in. After I jump through a couple of small hoops, I get an insurance check in the mail within 7-14 days.

Thankfully, I didn’t have many issues with either company in those days when I was selling in higher volumes.

I was especially happy not to have many issues with USPS, because when I did it was a nightmare. I think I have processed one or two insurance claims with them, and have just given up and eaten the rest. I am not sure if this is the USPS profit strategy or what, but calling them on the phone is one of the most frustrating things I have ever had to deal with. It took me a while to figure this out, but I literally fond it to be in my best interest to “self-insure” my packages, or just pay out of pocket the losses caused by USPS. The time involved in processing a claim held more opportunity cost than I would receive if a claim were ever satisfied.

Over the last 3 years I continued to build my business larger, hired an employee to write my listings and ship my packages, and another to help disassemble cars. We posted more and more items for sale on eBay to get a better return. It worked well for a while, until eBay started making changes. It all started with the changes to the feedback system, which was one of the best parts of eBay. Now sellers can’t leave anything but positive (or maybe neutral) feedback or buyers, and buyers get to grade sellers with up to 5 stars in various areas of performance.

So now when a customer is unreasonable (as some are in every business), we have no way warn other sellers about them. I am sorry, but the customer is NOT “always right”. It doesn’t work that way, especially when you are not dealing face-to-face. People shopping on the internet do not act the same way they do in person. People get much bolder when they are typing messages from 1,000 miles away. They take for granted that you are trying to make a living, while they are trying to haggle with you to get the best deal. At least with the old systems we had checks and balances.

With the new “star ratings” for sellers, also came new incentives for seller to maintain a high level of performance. GREAT!! I finally get rewarded for doing better than my competitors!! WRONG! This system actually punishes sellers that don’t kiss the asses of their buyers. Sure you get incentives to maintain a high “DSR” rating. You receive 5% off your bill if you maintain 4.6 stars across the board, 15% off if you have 4.8 stars or above and 20% if you maintain 4.9 stars or better.

This is okay. We usually get either a 5% or 15% discount, but when we don’t it is due to a customer’s OPINION. Two of these “DSR Ratings” are “shipping cost” and “shipping time”. I am sorry, but most customers don’t run an eBay store of their own, so their concept of what it costs to ship something may not be very accurate. This is especially true of they were shipping with USPS Priority Mail 2-3 years ago. People think that we can send something across the country for $5, when we simply can’t. I DO charge a handling fee to try to cover the boxes I buy and the $9.00 per hour I pay the guy to pack these things up. Many of these customers are stuck on what THEY pay to ship something ,when they already have a box and don’t consider the time it takes.

Shipping time is something we STRIVE to be the best at. We RARELY have an order for more than 24 hrs, and I’d say 80%+ of our orders go out the very day the product is paid for. We are currently at 4.9 stars, but have been down as low as 4.6 with the same practices. I’m not sure, but I think they finally took international shipments out of the count. It was almost comical when someone in Tasmania was buying a part, paying for the cheapest possible shipping method, and then giving us a 2-star review because it took 2 weeks for them to get their package.

I am not sure what has happened in the last 6 months, but we have lost a tremendous amount of traffic on eBay. I subscribed to a product offered through eBay called “Traffic Reports”, which is really an interesting tool. It told us how many pages views, “visits”, and homepage views we got per day. It graphed this data on charts that compared today’s traffic with traffic 30 days ago and one year ago. This is a very powerful tool, and it has lead me to stop selling on eBay . My traffic has done nothing but fall in the last year. I am sure this is partly due to our “economic climate”, but it is also due to the way eBay’s searches work. When eBay went to this “DSR” feedback system, they also made “search standing” a incentive/punishment for providing a “5-star experience” to your customers. The old default search on eBay worked like this:

You type in say: “Vintage Coca-Cola Teddy Bear”

Maybe 100 listings would pop up in order sorted by which auction was ending the soonest….very logical

Now eBay’s default search is something called “Best Match”, which I kind of understand, but yet it kind of seems to have some hocus-pocus involved. Now, I guess when you type in “Vintage Coca-Cola Teddy Bear”, if there is a listing with exactly that title it will pop up first. If a listing title is “1986 Coca-Cola Teddy Bear, Vintage, Original Packaging, VGC” It may fall further down in the list of options that you are looking at.

Where it really gets crazy, in my opinion, is that eBay somehow also organizes these “best match” searches by your DSR rating. So if 5 sellers all have a listing that has the exact title “Vintage Coca-Cola Teddy Bear”, the seller that has the highest DSR may have earned the “above average” search standing, whereas I may have “standard”, or get this. “below average” search standings so I get put way down at the bottom of the list.

So, when you add this entire situation up, my listing doesn’t get seen because someone in Idaho thought that $75 was an unreasonable amount of money to pay to ship a TRANSMISSION to them from Indiana. Not only does my listing now get put at the bottom of the list, but I have to pay MORE to put it on eBay!! MORE MONEY FOR LESS EXPOSURE!!

Okay, so now I understand how to play the game. I have to send my customers a follow-up email asking (begging) them to give me a 5-star rating (this was a strategy suggested to me by someone at eBay). I tell them that my business depends on this. Okay, whatever. You guys make the rules and I guess I’ll have to follow them. I’ll try to manipulate the system so I can still pay my rent.

So here’s the nail in the coffin. I mentioned the traffic reports, which give me some really informational data. If you delve further into this application you can find WHERE all of your traffic comes from. I’m pretty curious, so I have always kept an eye on this. I used to get a HUGE amount of hits from search engines, primarily Google. I used to go in and Google things I was selling and my eBay listings would pop up...close to the top. Well, my sales have been really bad for the last 3-4 months so I decided to take a look at my “Traffic Reports”. All of the sudden I have NO outside hits. The only traffic I have is from eBay’s internal search engine. If you go to Google and type in anything related to my products you get no eBay listings on the first page.

In late 2009 we were struggling to get fair money out of great parts. On top of that international shipping with USPS has been about 60-70% successful. Granted we aren’t shipping much volume, but when you get 4 out of 10 packages returned or lost, from a company that simply has no reasonable course of action to help you, it becomes disheartening. Remember too that these international shipments cost good money. When they get lost someone has to take a pretty big hit.

Here’s today’s situation, which prompted me to type all of this mess out:

We shipped a product that we sold for $4.99 to Argentina. That shipment cost us $12.78, and I think we billed the customer $15.xx. So the customer paid over $20 for these pieces. We shipped the package on 01/15/2010. Today is 02/25/2010. The customer has not received their package, and the post office now tells me that the smaller “Priority Mail Flat Rate” box has NO coverage for loss. eBay won’t even let us sell separate insurance for packages any more. They want us to bundle that into the shipping fee, which the customer judges us on. Now, someone is going to have to eat this $20. It won’t be eBay, it won’t be USPS, and it won’t be PayPal. Most likely, this customer will file a dispute with PayPal, who will then take that $20 out of my account. At that point they will open up an investigation, and look at all of the facts. They will see that I printed a shipping label on 1/15, and that it wasn’t delivered to the customer. Since USPS doesn’t provide any real tracking, all that is seen is that I printed the label….which ain’t good enough for them to side with me. I’m not sure who in their right mind would print a $12.78 shipping label and not deliver it to the post office, but that is what they assume. I will be out my product, my shipping money, and my time. GREAT DEAL!! This one’s only $20, but this has happened to me on larger, more expensive shipping labels over the years. There are times when I ship items that sell for $20-$30 that require $70-$80 in shipping fees. Anymore my best bet is to walk into the post office with a prayer.

As of now, I have closed my eBay store, and list very little for sale there. I laid off my eBay listing/shipping guru, and plan to go an entirely different route. I instantly went from spending $300-$500/month to $30 (I’d been spending in the $800-$900/month range earlier in 2009). I have not gotten a phone call or a direct email from anyone at eBay wondering why I have cut my services so. Not a care in the world about my monthly revenue. I have just gotten a few generic computer generated emails trying to sell me on some special value listings. I think some of those may have been triggered by my lower volume, but I don’t know for sure.

Where is eBay going next??

I am posting this here on blogger because I can't find any direct way to contact anyone at eBay who might care. My perceptions is that I can only speak directly with people who either don't have any decision making ability, or don't care.

I doubt I will ever update this particular blog, but maybe that will change if I have good news to report.

PS, I realize there are still some people having tremendous success on eBay. To you folks, I hope nothing but the best! Maybe my strategies have just gone soft, or become misaligned. Or maybe my product is ultimately what has doomed my success in this marketplace. I can accept all of these possibilities, but do not believe this is the case.