It was, as moderator eBay's Uncle Griff put it, like a "dysfunctional relationship" trying to recover at the PowerSeller Panel with Executives at a Saturday session at the eBay Live conference. There were acknowledgements of affection from both sides, but lingering grievances from sellers and an appeal from Lorrie Norrington to "give us a fair shot."
"The people I work with every day are working their backsides off - just give us a fair shot," she implored, adding, "I read the blogs every day."
Seller and eBay book author Joel Elad said he felt like the last couple of years it's been "the year of the buyer - we need to start saying the "year of the seller."
"How many think it's time for seller love?" asking for a show of hands, and received much clapping.
Uncle Griff said that what they can give to sellers as a token of our love was "more sales."
Stephanie Tilenius, General Manager of eBay North America, pointed to the protection and pricing changes for sellers they'd rolled out.
The shipping and handling DSR rating and the recent policy change of neutral feedbacks counting as negatives were among the most mentioned issues in the Q&A session. A seller who identified himself as Dr. Goldstein said, "Three of four DSRs are related to quality of services, but "shipping and handling is an issue for which you're asking for a qualitative assessment."
"I argue we don't need a shipping DSR because the buyer has all the info they need," he added.
But, he said, if that doesn't happen, "I'd like to see a breakdown of DSR ratings on the seller dashboard - by country, items sold, etc. "I need to know who's complaining."
Griff said that was a "brilliant suggestion," and Dinesh Lathi, VP of Seller Experience, said, "love that suggestion" and that they would "take that one back."
The question about neutrals probably elicited the most agitation from the audience. "Your math has taken a zero and made it a minus one!" complained one seller, adding, "What gives you the right to turn it into a negative?"
This brought a lot of clapping, and one lady in the audience called out to the executives, "You all get frowns on your faces when we clap! You look like the cat who ate the canary."
Brian Burke, Senior Director of Global Feedback, said that the reason they did that was when they looked at the comments people made, it "wasn't truly neutral, if you look it up in the dictionary." A lot of the neutrals, he said, would have really been negative.
But Griff assured the seller "we do hear you on this."
"The customers are not communicating with us," said another seller, and suggested, "let's give the powersellers a forum to document their actions on eBay. That will dictate what level of coupons they receive." This received much applause.
Burke said, "About buyer-seller communication. We've made some inroads there. We've put in a seven-day block, enhanced the interstitial page, but "we know we have more work to do there."
About sellers rating the buyer, "I'd rather you report the buyer so the buyer requirements we've developed will be better."
"But the community does not see that," said the questioner.
Greg Fant, Vice President of Buyer Experience, said he thought buyer-seller communication was "a key takeway."
A question about the Links Policy was raised by Community award winner "Uncle Joe" who asked if they'd consider revising the policy by designating some sort of "super user" for people who were using the policy to educate, etc., so not everyone would be banned from losing the links.
Burke said eBay was committed to coming back to sellers with more information and said it would in the month of July.
The panel stayed about 15 minutes overtime to take more questions, but Norrington said the executives had to leave by quarter til six to get to eBay's annual ritual of the "clapping tunnel" at the Saturday evening Gala.
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Julia Wilkinson is the author of "The eBay Price Guide" (No Starch Press, 2006) and "eBay Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks" (Wiley, 2004-6); Her latest ebook, "Over 500 Books that Sell for $50-$5000 on eBay," is available on her website (http://www.yardsalers.net/500Books.asp ).
