The eBay DSR 4-Star Misconception

By Cliff Aliperti
I couldn’t get through John’s recent video post about eBay’s DSR’s and International trade without having an old bug bite me.  This one has bothered me for some time now and I decided I needed to try to lay it out.  When I mentioned it to John he pointed me to a video he made back in December.  After talking it over we decided the issue was worth another look from my perspective.

The misconception referred to in this post’s title stems from this statement on the eBay Seller Performance Policy page:

To ensure a minimum performance standard from all sellers, eBay requires sellers to maintain at least a 4.3 average for each DSR (Item as described, Communication, Shipping time, and Shipping and handling charges).

And then a 4-star rating for each of those respective detailed ratings being labeled as thus on the Leave Feedback page:

• Accurate
• Satisfied
• Quickly
• Reasonable

All positive terms.

So the common thought I see expressed is if 4 stars on a single transaction are good, then how could an overall rating of 4.0 possibly be bad?

Isn’t the answer right there?  It’s two different things.

I don’t know why eBay hasn’t tried to lay this out in plain English, maybe it’d look like they were trying too hard?  I have seen the issue addressed, the question answered, but the MBA talking heads over there are pretty obviously incapable of breaking anything down in plain English for the layman.

Newbie eBay seller, there was a pre-DSR time in eBay’s history, a seemingly happier time where customer satisfaction was rated simply as positive, neutral, and negative.  I bought on such an eBay for 7 or 8 years myself with the personal criteria of using care if a seller’s positive feedback rating was under 99.0%, restraining myself from all but the absolutely gotta have it items if under 98.5%, and running away if the positives came in at under 98%.  I didn’t run all too often.

In other words, in this pre-DSR world of eBay this buyer thought you were a risk if you had 97.9% satisfaction or below.  Of course there are exceptions here, I mean if you had a 90% rating with 10 total feedbacks I’d probably give you a try, but I’m talking about experienced sellers with the feedback tally racked up a bit higher.

Look at this chart I pulled from SellerDome today:

I had to crop it some to make it legible in this space, but the labels on this, top column to bottom, are the Top 10, Top 100, Top 1,000, Top 10,000, and Top 100,000 eBay sellers, ranked according to their total feedback number.  I left the DSR’s visible for you as well.

As you can see, a 99% positive feedback rating is today’s standard.  Doesn’t that more or less render the statistic useless?  I’ve said it before, I have a 100% rating myself and I know I’m not perfect, so what does this number mean, if anything?

The DSR system is eBay’s way to better identify the good seller.  By it’s very name, and I think everyone will agree with this, it is more detailed.

So if a 4.0 brings connotations such as Accurate or Satisfied to the the table, then why in the hell does eBay’s Performance Policy call for a 4.3?

This is the same question John asked back in December.  Here’s what he had to say then:

Armed with some similar screenshots in addition to a baseball metaphor, it’s my turn to lay it out for you.

I’ll start by using a seller of my volume as the example.  I get about 1,000 DSR ratings per year:

What this assumes is that I’m starting with a 4.3 DSR rating after 1,000 DSR ratings.  What it shows is what it would take to fall to a 4.2.  I would have to get 1,000 consecutive 4 ratings, in other words at this volume, every single rating I get for the entire year would have to be a 4.  Much more likely to get in trouble for the 48 consecutive 1 rating’s, no?

This one’s even better:

It’s basically the same calculation starting me out from a 4.8.

One more for the smaller scale seller:

This one assumes you’re wondering what it takes to fall below the 4.3 you’ve earned after 100 DSR ratings.  Basically the math is going to show that whatever your DSR number is, you’re going to have to receive that number of 4 ratings, again consecutively, in order to drop from a 4.3 to a 4.2.

This is bad?

The greatest perception problem here is a misconception formed around the terminology, in other words, satisfied and accurate are positive terms, so then how come an overall rating that is greater than satisfied can get you into trouble?

Because every single 4 DSR rating you get is good in eBay’s eyes (unless of course it’s your first one), they are well aware your 4 rating means your customer was satisfied, just not very satisfied (a 5.0).

What eBay is saying is if every single customer feels satisfied rather than very satisfied you are in fact only performing at 80% efficiency.

Go back to earlier in this article, back to when we were talking about only positives and negatives before DSR’s came on the scene.  What’s 80% get you there?  Not any sales, that’s for sure.

Truth be told, if I’m the buyer and you’re squeaking along at the 4.3 standard I’m already thinking twice because that’s really only an 86% efficiency rating, isn’t it?

Here’s my final point, and why no matter how much people talk and squawk about DSR’s it’s not going to matter.  We have to assume eBay has established their Seller Performance threshold based on statistics.  We have to assume their honesty in this regard, but to the cynical I’ll say this—throw out all of the DSR ratings of Diamond Powersellers and there’s still such a high volume of total feedback remaining that I’d be very surprised if their removal tilts the statistics whatsoever.

So assuming even just a modicum of honestly, if buyer’s ratings were to adjust to more accurately reflect seller’s opinion on this subject—and I’m going to operate under the belief that the seller thinking the single 4 rating equates to an overall 4 rating would view a 3.9 as a below acceptable overall rating—then the moment eBay’s statistics reflected this, they would slide the scale for Seller Performance anyway.

More plainly speaking, if buyers were suddenly reflecting a 4.0 as their overall point of satisfaction, eBay would slide the acceptable minimal performance from a 4.3 down to a 3.9.

It comes down to this:

The single 4.0 rating I give you on an individual sale is not the same as your overall 4.0 rating.  Single instances of imperfection are not defined in the same way as your overall level of performance.

Put another way, take a .300 hitter in baseball.  .300 is excellent, it’s an All-Star’s batting average.  If our .300 hitter goes 1-for-4 one night he’s not suddenly a .250 hitter.

Now in the late 60’s when baseball raised the pitcher’s mound a .300 hitter became quite rare.  The standard for excellence slid as batting averages across baseball dropped.  Suddenly a .280 hitter was among the best in the game.

While the baseball example was based upon a perception, that perception was backed up by the overall sample of available numbers.  eBay would take the same approach if there was a sudden and drastic downward trend in their DSR numbers.

Is the DSR system perfect?  No, of course not.  It weighs apples and oranges as all apples, in other words Domestic vs. International sales and with few exceptions weighs the highest volume sellers in the same manner as smaller sellers.

But I think one place where time is wasted is over wondering why a single 4 is good, but an overall 4 is bad.  I’m really of the mind that if you can’t see why this is, you just don’t want to see it.

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