NEW TRS Requirement ebay USA

RFW wrote: »

Nothing new there then;) I saw a near riot in the US at an Ebay conference shortly after they removed sellers' ability to leave negative feedback for buyers.

I saw something about this a while ago. I think it's something Amazon are doing/have done there too. Interesting that companies are giving out more consumer rights when the government there is walking some of them back.

I don't often deal in products that would be prone to being returned but if you're a professional seller then it's becoming increasingly standard to offer at least a 14 day return. I could probably offer 180 day return and it would make no difference to me.

I can see how it could be a problem with clothing sellers but there are many examples of businesses in the clothing trade who do well out of offering returns.

I'm happy to offer change of mind returns, I think my objection is to having to pay the return postage. I can imagine that clothes sellers particularly will be badly hit with people buying half a dozen things from different sellers and returning all but one- and those sellers racking up huge return costs. The other issue they are raising is about providing return labels, in many US states ebay have a system with couriers and mail places that offer hugely discounted prices. However, the labels are time limited (like ours many have to be logged in the system the day of printing) and automatically picked up from the ebay listing addresses, there are suggestions that they will have to refund the full going rate of a return label so the buyer can buy it themselves, which can cost nearly twice as much as the outgoing postage.

One of the groups I read is crowd funding to send some members to 'ebay live' shortly. They are asking for small donations and have a list of people happy to go and represent the group , I was tempted to give a few dollars myself!

RFW wrote: »

It was the last official Ebay Live that I went to. The angry sellers were the main reason they stopped it, prior to that it had been high fives all round apparently. I can't see any Ebay rep giving in to an ambush by sellers.

What is the difference if they don't have TRS in the US?

It's always seemed like it was relatively easy to get TRS, perhaps they should throw in another tier after TRS for super sellers. That way the existing TRS wouldn't lose anything and they could give advantage to anyone who could offer the extra services.

I think they only get the10% discount like us, but most seem to think the higher visibility does work.

charlies_mum wrote: »

Higher visibility ??? I have lost count of the number of calls I've made to eBay trying to work out why some of my listings aren't visible despite being a TRS and offering premium service.

Mine does seem to work sporadically. Due to work and an excessive number of short breaks I switch to a 3 day dispatch quite often which loses my TRS visibility. When I do that my sales drop like a stone, I barely sell anything. Within 24 hours of switching back to a 1 day dispatch my sales start up again.

Obviously that could just be buyers filtering by speed of estimated delivery, but in many cases my items are fairly unique so if they don't buy from me then they don't buy at all. However, if I do a clean search my stuff is often ranked below sellers with no TRS, or poor feedback or even from overseas - so something must be wrong somewhere.

Generally though there has been a downturn in sales in the last few months. Add to that the fact that the summer is traditionally a slow period for me and I suspect I'll be merely ticking over for a few months now.