Dive Brief:

• EBay sellers will no longer face penalties for returns, late shipments, or exchanges that are outside of their control.

• The move has been sought after by merchants, whose ratings are key to success, and sometimes even presence, on the site.

• The change was announced on the newly solo marketplace’s 20th anniversary last week by new CEO Devin Wenig, who also took the opportunity to obliquely slam Amazon, saying the company is determined to remain people-focused, and not a marketplace driven by “drones.”

Dive Insight:

EBay has a vast number of sellers, from companies and resellers to individuals unloading used merchandise. One way to impose order on its sprawling marketplace is to be strict about its consumer-facing attributes, including penalizing sellers that don’t fulfill orders swiftly enough or that see too many returns.

It can be a Draconian system, with some sellers losing their accounts if their ratings are low. That has changed as of last week, at least for situations that are out of sellers’ control.

“It will take the stress, hassle and cost out of the returns process to allow you to serve customers better,” Wenig said at the eBay Seller Summit in San Jose, CA, last week. “We are very clear that it is critical that standards are fair, that you can have control over them and that they are predictable.”

Sellers still face pressure to fulfill orders in a timely manner, however; eBay says it will continue to judge them on seller-canceled transactions for items that are out of stock or can’t be fulfilled as promised and for cases closed without resolution by the seller. EBay will consider a package late if tracking shows that an item is delivered after the estimated delivery date without a scan or buyer indication that the package arrived on time, or if a buyer or a scan indicates that a package was delivered past the promised date.