At a glance
The percentage of orders in the rolling window that ended in a “transaction defect” by eBay’s definition. The single threshold most likely to flip a seller out of Top Rated standing: TRS requires defect rate ≤0.5%. Above 0.5% and you’re out of TRS, lose the 10% FVF discount, lose the search lift, lose the badge.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your eBay data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK collectibles seller running ebay.co.uk only. Period: 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26 (30D). Rolling 12-month window also reported by eBay’s API.
Five things to notice:
- The 30D rate is on the cliff edge. A single additional defect in the next 24 hours pushes 30D defect rate to 0.56%, breaching the 0.5% cap. The Vortex IQ Nerve Centre is engineered to fire the alert at 0.5%, before the seller silently steps over.
- The 12M rate is what eBay actually evaluates against. TRS standing is checked monthly on the 20th using the 12-month window for established sellers. The 30D is a leading indicator. The seller is currently safe at 0.40% over 12M but trending upward; the 30D rate is a 0.10-point premium over 12M, signalling the trend is worsening.
- De-duplication matters. The four defect categories sum to 10, but only 9 unique transactions; one transaction generated both an INR auto-decision and a “Cases closed without seller resolution” defect (they’re the same incident counted twice in the row counts). eBay’s API returns the de-duplicated count.
- The four sub-caps run separately. Even at 0.40% overall defect rate, breaching the 0.3% cap on cases-without-seller-resolution alone (currently at 18 / 18,400 = 0.098%, safe) would lose TRS. The headline rate is one of four guard-rails; pair with Cases without Resolution, Late Shipment Rate, and Seller Standards for a full read.
- Recovery requires the rate to drop, not just the count. With the rolling window, defects persist for 12 months in the calculation. A clean 30 days won’t recover TRS; a clean 12 months will. Sellers who lose TRS in May typically don’t recover it until the offending transactions roll out of the window the following May.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in eBay Seller Hub:Seller Hub → Performance → Seller Level The “Transaction defect rate” tile shows the 12-month rolling figure that eBay uses for its monthly evaluation.For per-defect drilldown: Performance → Service Metrics shows the rates of “Item Not as Described” and “Item Not Received” claims, the components feeding defect rate. Timing, settlement, and reporting-lag table:
Why our number may legitimately differ from Seller Hub:
Cross-connector reconciliation against other connectors the same seller may run:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What counts as a defect? Five categories: (1) cases closed by eBay without seller resolution, (2) seller-cancellation due to out-of-stock or “can’t ship”, (3) late shipment with no tracking uploaded on time, (4) INR cases auto-decided against the seller, (5) “Item Not as Described” returns the seller refused or escalated. eBay groups several of these under “service metrics”; the Sell Analytics API exposes them individually so the card can show per-category contributions. Why is the 0.5% cap so harsh? TRS is eBay’s premium-quality signal to buyers. A seller pushing 1% defects is making 1 in 100 buyers unhappy enough to escalate, that’s 10x the typical Amazon threshold for similar reasons. eBay’s threshold is intentionally tight to keep the TRS pool genuinely high-quality. How long does it take to lose / regain TRS based on defect rate? Lose: one monthly evaluation (the 20th of each month) where the rolling 12-month rate is above 0.5% triggers the demotion. Regain: the rolling 12-month rate must drop back below 0.5% by a subsequent evaluation. Because defects persist in the 12-month window, regaining usually takes 6 to 12 months unless the seller had a single bad month that drops out of the window. What’s the relationship between defect rate and the Health Score? Defect rate is one of four inputs to the Health Score, weighted at 25%. A defect-rate jump of 0.3 points (e.g. 0.4% to 0.7%) drops the Health Score by ~7 points all else equal. Does Best Offer affect defect rate? Indirectly. Best-Offer-resolved orders involve more buyer messaging before the sale, which builds expectation alignment and tends to reduce the per-order defect risk. Sellers who run aggressive auto-accept rules (no human dialogue) lose this protective effect, their Best-Offer orders defect at the same rate as cold BIN orders. My multi-site defect rate, where does the variation come from? ebay.co.uk typically runs higher defect rates than ebay.com because UK consumer-rights law (Consumer Rights Act 2015) gives buyers stronger refund leverage and a 14-day cooling-off period; UK buyers escalate faster. ebay.de runs the lowest because German buyers tend to message before disputing. Look at per-site rates and tune practices accordingly. Promoted Listings: do they affect defect rate? Indirectly via volume. Promoted-driven orders defect at similar per-order rates to organic, but if you scale Promoted on defect-prone clearance / refurbished SKUs, the absolute defect count rises. Action: monitor defect rate when scaling Promoted, and pause Promoted on any SKU whose defect rate is above the brand average. Why doesn’t defect rate match Shopify or Amazon? Different mechanisms. Shopify has no defect-rate equivalent; refunds and disputes go through the payment processor. Amazon’s Order Defect Rate (ODR) has a 1% cap and counts negative feedback, A-to-z claims, and chargebacks. The categories don’t overlap cleanly with eBay’s five defect types. Treat as orthogonal metrics, not reconcilable. Today’s defect rate jumped 0.2 points but I haven’t shipped anything new, why? Two usual causes: (1) eBay closed a case-without-seller-resolution that had been pending for days, that defect just got recorded retroactively against an order from weeks ago; (2) a buyer left negative feedback that eBay categorised as a defect. The 30D rate updates retroactively on the day the defect is recorded, not the day the order was placed. Watch Cases without Resolution for the full forensic detail. Action playbook when this card alerts (>0.5%):
- Open Cases without Resolution. Identify any active cases approaching auto-resolution; refund proactively to close favourably.
- Open Open INR Cases. Respond to every case under the 5-day threshold.
- Audit out-of-stock cancellation patterns from the last 30 days, recurring cancellation = inventory-sync issue, fix the warehouse-to-listing flow.
- Pull the per-SKU defect concentration via Vortex Mind. 80% of defects usually come from 20% of SKUs; pause those listings or fix descriptions / photos.
- If the 12-month rolling rate is also above 0.5%, prepare for the next monthly evaluation, communicate to ops the cliff-effect on payouts and FVF.