eBay seller standards: defect rate, Below Standard, and how to stay safe
How eBay rates sellers, what counts against you, what dropping to Below Standard costs, and the habits that keep a shop in good standing.
Updated · 7 min read
eBay rates every seller as Top Rated, Above Standard or Below Standard. Your level affects your fees and how prominently your listings show. It’s worked out from a handful of measures over a rolling evaluation period.
What eBay measures
- Transaction defect rate: the share of your transactions with a defect, such as an order you cancelled because you’d run out of stock, or a case closed without you resolving it.
- Cases closed without seller resolution: buyers asked eBay to step in and you didn’t put it right first.
- Late shipment rate: orders dispatched or delivered after the time you promised.
- Tracking uploaded on time, for Top Rated status.
eBay checks these every month, usually over the last three months, or the last twelve for sellers with fewer orders. The exact thresholds for each level are in eBay’s seller standards policy for your site.
What Below Standard costs
Below Standard sellers pay a higher final value fee (an extra 6% at the time of writing) and can see their listings shown less often. A shop can drop there quickly: the line for transaction defects is a 2% defect rate, so a shop with 300 orders in the period is there after just seven defects.
Why open cases are a risk you can measure
Every open return, item-not-received request or case is a defect waiting to happen. You can work out the risk: divide one by the number of orders in the period to get what each lost case adds to your rate, then add that for every case still open. If losing them all would take you over the line, they come first.
Habits that keep you safe
- Never cancel for being out of stock. Keep stock levels honest, and pause listings rather than sell what you don’t have.
- Set a handling time you can always meet, and upload tracking the same day.
- Answer returns and inquiries inside the deadline. eBay counts many deadlines in business days, so a Friday request can be due sooner than it looks.
- Resolve it before eBay has to. A refund or replacement you offer counts very differently from a case eBay closes against you.
- Tell buyers early when you’re late. A short, honest message prevents many item-not-received requests.
- Fix listings that cause returns. If “not as described” keeps coming up, the listing is promising something the item isn’t.
See how SellerDesk counts deadlines in business days, suggests an answer for each case, and shows how close open cases bring you to Below Standard.