Dear eBay Queen:

I am frustrated with eBay today. I happened to check my dashboard and noticed that I received a 1 star rating for shipping charges from a US buyer. I don’t know how this happened, as I have free shipping on my entire eBay store. I called eBay and the representative tells me “it appears that the buyer chose to upgrade their shipping, so they were able to leave you a low rating.”  Since I offer the choice of upgrading to Priority (for $2.95 by the way) and the buyer opted to do so, they then had the opportunity to ding my stars. Nice… To top it all off, the order was shipped within 10 hours of purchase for $2.95 (and my cost was $4.95) and it arrived at their post office in less than 48 hours. I know exactly who it was because I had precisely 1 person upgrade their shipping during this time period. To top it off, I just lost my TRS (Top Rated Seller) over shipping.

I was encouraged to contact Jim Griffith who I have never had any dealing with, I did contact him and I received a “canned” email in response and then never heard another word. The truth of the matter is that the feedback DSR system is set up in a way that puts tremendous power in the hands of buyers, many of which have no knowledge of its importance and others who know too much and abuse it when they don’t get what they want. It is a system that looms over the heads of sellers and makes us jump through hoops when in the real world this would not be going on. I really love selling on eBay, but the DSR/feedback system is very anti-seller and a total moral killer that needs to be revised seriously.  Thanks for listening to me complain.

Jessica

Dear Jessica:

That really stinks! I wish I had a solution for you.  Unfortunately if you’ve already spoke an eBay customer service rep and emailed Griff, there isn’t much more for you to do, beside prevent it from happening in the future.  I would consider upping the price of all of your listing to reflect free shipping for priority, that way this situation will not repeat itself.

One other option is to call into eBay Radio and speak directly to Griff.  eBay has two radio shows a week. For more information http://groups.ebay.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1278

Dear eBay Queen:

I think I received a phishing email that I’ve heard about from so many people.  I recently received an email from PayPal requesting for my social security number.  Do you think this is a scam?  How would I know for sure?

I feel very uncomfortable typing my social security number into a box at a website, secure or not.  I think this request must be based on my sales of a few years ago, as it can’t possibly be based on recent activity (virtually nil).  Either that or they are sending the same request to everyone who’s ever received a payment.   I don’t qualify to get a taxpayers ID number, so it’s got to be my SS#.  Could you help me with this?

Just a Number

Dear Number:

Starting in 2011, PayPal will be required by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to report sales information to the IRS about sellers who receive payments for the sale of goods or services through PayPal.  The requirements are as follows:

•   Applies to sellers receiving over $20,000 in gross payment volume AND over 200 payments
•   Applies only for sales on or after January 1, 2011

I understand being a little leery of putting your Social Security Number online. I did a little research, and according to PayPal’s site:

“PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128 bits (the highest level commercially available). Before you even register or log in to our site, our server checks that you’re using an approved browser – one that uses SSL 3.0 or higher.

Once your information reaches us, it resides on a server that is heavily guarded, both physically and electronically. Our servers sit behind an electronic firewall and are never directly connected to the Internet, so your private information stays private.”

If you still don’t feel secure about giving your personal information online, you could call PayPal at 1-888-221-1161 or check out the link here:  https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/IRS6050W

Strange eBay item of the week: eBay item: 130596417265 (enter this number in the eBay search box in the top right corner of the home page.)  Do you like old cars and pie?  Check out this 1904 Curved Dash Oldsmobile Pie Wagon. SOLD $51,350.00  HERE

Suzie Eads is a nationally known eBay marketer and eBay trained Education Specialist. She lives in Rantoul. Do you have a question for the eBay Queen? Email: questions@asktheebayqueen.com

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