Ebay moves to protect buyers against fraud.

Are you a five star Ebay seller? Under a new seller rating system, items you are trying to sell may become all but invisible in search results should your overall seller rating fall below a certain threshold.

Ebay last year adjusted its five-star ranking system, one of the internet’s first and most successful attempts to harness user feedback, to try to weed out unreliable sellers, and now rates them on more detailed criteria, such as whether they ship on time. In future, sellers whose overall ratings fall below 4.2 on the five-point scale will find their goods will fall to the bottom when buyers do product searches, the group said. Weaker sellers will also be forced to use a guaranteed payment system, such as Ebay’s PayPal.

Being good on price won’t cut it anymore, as communication and speed of dispatch of sold goods comes under greater scrutiny.