Both animage and the figurine turned up yesterday, so I guess that's a tick in a couple of boxes at least. So now back to the scheduled post:
eBay has recently introduced a new policy that, by the looks of things, manages to top all of their previous idiocy by quite some considerable margin.
Last time I ranted on I hit the epoch of all swearing, describing them as a bunch of cunts. While this adequately and succinctly summed up my feeling at the time, it unfortunately leaves me with the situation that I have no higher level of swearitude to go to in order to express my displeasure.
I think what I'm going to do is use cunts^2 (or cunts squared - cunts multiplied by cunts) as I think it sums up the drastic increase in their cuntitude.
So what have they done?
Well, they've introduced a system used "DSR" which stands for "Detailed Seller Ratings" and are basically ratings out of 5 given by users on 4 elements:
- Item as Described
- Communication
- Dispatch Time
- Postage and Packaging Charges
And the idea is that if you get an average DSR in any of these below a particular threshold (4.3!) across either 12 months or 3 months, then you get 'punished'. Alternatively, they seem to have set some hard limits too, so that if you get 4 "low" DSRs (1s or 2s) you also get punished.
The punishments are that your item gets lowered in the search returns (don't really know how this works if your item is the only one or one of five in a search. Also, you can get suspended from e-bay - that is, they won't let you sell anything until your DSRs normalise.
If you've more than about 4 brain cells I reckon you can already pick about a million holes in this whole system, but let's focus on some particularly juicy points:
The scorecard is weighted. That is, you may think, like a normal, sensible and rational human being, that, on a scale of 5, 'average' is 3, 'good' is 4 and 'excellent' is 5. Well look at the number you're required to get - 4.3. That means that if all your customers rate your service as 'good' you get punished.
How in the name of fuck is that a sensible way to set your system up?
Unless you're a cunt^2, of course.
Then there's the punishments - my ratings get lowered or I get banned from e-bay because one or two douche bags give me low ratings?
Yeah, that's fair. Especially when I have absolutely no way to retaliate. For example, did you know it's actually now impossible for a seller to rate a buyer negatively?
What else?
Well, according to some postings around the web and on the support forums, your buyers don't actually even have to rate you low to fuck you over - if they don't leave any DSRs (so they just give you the normal rating) then that counts as a "0"!
So their laziness rapes me in the arse.
Also, reading around, everyone is getting low DSRs on postage and packaging. I've ranted on this before that people don't seem to have any idea of how much postage costs - they don't even go and look at the god-damn Royal Mail website and check, they just seem to think you're ripping them off automatically.
Well guess what - even people who have buckled to the previous shit-sandwich e-Bay served us sellers and started doing free postage are getting low DSRs for postage. I mean seriously, if you offer free postage, some people still won't give you a 5! Not that you need to be a genius to work that out, just a cunt^2 not to take it into account.
There's tonnes of other stuff and I could go on for ages, but the last thing I'd mention is what seems to be behind this.
There's a distinct air that what's motivating it is that e-bay wants to get rid of small-time sellers like me. By the sound of things they basically want to become a wholesalers outfit.
So they want to abandon their whole business model and shed the core customer base.
Bunch of cunts^2.
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