PowerSeller discounts are here! A couple questions answered

It's spring, and not only have the daffodils arrived, so have the long-asked-for PowerSeller discounts.  That means eBay's volume sellers who deliver a great buying experience (as measured by 4.6 or higher DSRs) are getting rebates on their fees of either 5% for at least a 4.6 average, or 15% for a 4.8 average.  (Learn more about becoming a PowerSeller.)

Over on the PowerSeller discussion forum (a forum restricted to only those who are part of the PowerSeller program), there were a lot of "I got my 15% - whoohoo!" type posts.

While most people are happy, I noticed two points of confusion out there. I spoke to Edurne Jorda, Senior Manager in charge of the PowerSeller program, to get clarification on the points below.

1) Sellers do NOT need to have received 10 Detailed Seller Ratings during the period to qualify for the discount. In actuality, whether buyers leave DSRs or not, does not impact the discount.  However, the average of any ratings received must still meet the minimum requirement (4.6 or 4.8) to qualify for the respective discount (5%, or 15%). What the number of ratings received does affect is whether the Dashboard will display individual scores -- we do not display the individual ratings when there are fewer than 10 left for the period in order to protect the anonymity of the buyers.

The pre-release version of the Dashboard can be confusing when a seller didn’t receive at least 10 DSRs, and also did not qualify for a discount. In this case, we don’t show individual scores that did not meet the 4.6 minimum, but only say “Your detailed seller ratings did not meet the minimum requirements.” When the full Seller Dashboard is released in May, this confusing content will be fixed. 

2)Inconsistency between the Dashboard and the Invoice.  eBay calculates all sellers’ discounts a few days (an average of 5) before the end of the billing period, taking a snapshot of the seller’s DSRs at that time. Therefore, by the time a seller sees his discount displayed on the Dashboard and on his invoice, that seller’s DSR scores may have changed since the discount calculation. The bottom portion of the Dashboard will reflect those up to date changes. This means that there are a very small number of people who may see they don't qualify in the dashboard, but then actually do get the discount  afterall ...and vice versa.  This shouldn't be an issue for the majority of sellers.