eBay does not care.

[clial-9728]

I had a car accident last month and my eBay boxes were tossed out of my trunk. I was rear ended on the interstate during a storm. 

I had to tell my customers that their money was going to be refunded. I even showed my car with one box still in the trunk smashed!

So now I'm below standard and eBay steals 6% more of everything I sell. It's a G.**bleep** money grab and I'm sick of it. There's other places I have used and now I will start selling there. I'm not mentioning the place because if you're reading this thread, I don't want you to decide the same place because of me. 

Once again eBay is screwing over the U.S. seller. China is again ruling with their drop shipping, thousands of overnight sites. One goes down three pop up. 

[lakefor94]

Sorry to hear of the accident, hope you were not injured.

There are not any circumstances that are accepted for not shipping product and having to cancel orders. None.

The defects will fall off your account after a year and you won't have to pay the extra 6%.

In the mean time, don't make any mistakes with what you have listed now as more defects will prolong the 6% in extra fees. 

Best of luck moving forward and keep an eye on your seller defect rate and seller metrics.

[luckythewinner]

I even showed my car with one box still in the trunk smashed!

At the risk of sounding cold ... if sending a picture was enough to avoid Below Standard, then every seller facing Below Standard would send a picture.

So now I'm below standard and eBay steals 6% more of everything I sell.

eBay clearly feels that canceling for Out of Stock discourages buyers, and that affects all sellers on eBay - not just you. IMHO eBay does not care WHY you had to cancel for Out of Stock; they only care THAT you canceled for Out of Stock.

Once again eBay is screwing over the U.S. seller. China is again ruling with their drop shipping

Being in the USA has nothing to do with it. What happened to you would have happened to any seller anywhere. Even one in China.

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi @clial-9728 

wow, so sorry this happened to you. How dreadful! Yes, it seems unfair to be penalized for something like this.

All that can be said is that eBay is a commercial global behemoth, and therefore it’s not quite reasonable to expect it to have feelings about anything, one way or another. With millions of sellers to manage, it cannot feasibly make rule exceptions for interruptions to an individual’s selling responsibilities, even when those circumstances are tragic or beyond one’s control.

There is little one can do to offset such an unexpected disruption like you had, except to have a shrinkage plan or Plan B in place ahead of time. For example, as a one-woman show, i have left written instructions with a responsible party on how to handle my eBaying if something should happen to me. Beyond that, we just have to roll with the punches.

[clial-9728]

EBay punished me because of the seven packages lost, damaged. 100% feedback, next day shipping, trustworthy seller here. 

Nope, no warning. Just take 6% more on top of their ridiculous fees. Imagine you having the same problem, getting ill, or having an accident and can't get to the post office. 

I should have read the eBay threads and watched YouTube videos. Sellers do get screwed in so many ways. 

[inhawaii]

Yes, ebay should cut sellers a break in the event of...

Car accidents.

Health issues.

House fires.

Natural disasters.

Death in the family.

Suicide.

Crime victims.

War.

[clial-9728]

Not for me anymore. I won't roll with eBays punches at all. Forbes wrote that eBay has lost millions of subscribers to Amazon and now I see why. 

Scammers that are buyers. eBay not helping sellers when they are clearly correct. eBay not giving warnings to sellers, 'especially if it's a first mistake.'  

After seeing that I was getting more ripped off, I did some homework. YouTube videos of former sellers telling why they left. Search results of EBAY SUCKS has lots of mad former sellers. 

I hope that eBay does go out of business to Amazon.  At least you as a seller get warned and everything you send to a customer gets screened by Amazon. The buyer can't say that the item wasn't in the box or that the seller sent something broken, or not as described.

Just add me to the many people leaving. 

[lakefor94]

"Just add me to the many people leaving."

Still wishing you the best of success with the items you still have up for sale now.

[farmalljr]

No eBay does not care. Neither does any other site.  Amazon included. Fail to ship and refund for out of stock, you would likely just have been banned at Amazon, with no ability to continue to sell at all, fee hike or not. 

[lakefor94]

---

@farmalljr wrote:

No eBay does not care. Neither does any other site.  Amazon included. Fail to ship and refund for out of stock, you would likely just have been banned at Amazon, with no ability to continue to sell at all, fee hike or not. 

---

That is a really good point.

[mam98031]

@clial-9728 

I am very sorry to hear about your car accident.  Was anyone hurt?  If so is everyone mending OK?

I understand your frustrations with this.  You have been put in a very bad position and likely did the best you could with this bad situation.

Ebay has rules.  So many Rules.  We all are painfully aware there are lots of rules.  We get upset with Ebay when they don't follow the rules and we get upset with them when they follow the rules.

Ebay is just doing what their policy says they will do in this particular case.  I know that doesn't make it any easier to deal with, but it certainly does NOT mean that Ebay is stealing from you or doing a money grab.  They are doing exactly what the policy says they will do, you just don't like it [I wouldn't either] so you want this to be about big bad Ebay.

The quickest way to work out of this problem is more transactions so you can dilute the numbers.  List low $$ items that you think you can get to sell.  Hold off on your higher $$ items for a little bit to see if you can get yourself out of the penalty fees first.  So the key is to do what you can to get more transactions in order to dilute the numbers that are putting you into the penalty zone.

Keep a close eye on your Seller Dashboard and the number contained within.

I hope this works out for you.

[fashunu4eeuh]

“I hope that eBay does go out of business to Amazon.”

@clial-9728 I can see how upset this experience has made you. I wish for your sake that eBay could make exceptions. But your above statement is hopeful thinking that (rather heartlessly) wishes ill on many, many sellers who currently rely on this platform.

eBay is not going out of business, thank goodness, as there are sellers with vintage or used items that cannot be sold on or are not accepted by Amazon. You are not taking into account that eBay fills a purpose for many who otherwise might not have a global network available to sell on. eBay works for more sellers than not.

In fairness, if you check out other selling venues’  reputations online, you will find plenty of their former disgruntled sellers who rival those you discovered on YouTube, mad at eBay. eBay has not cornered the market on dissatisfied users. No selling platform is free of those who have run afoul of the rules or failed for other reasons, some of which undoubtably were user-based but who lay blame elsewhere. Not everyone had an issue beyond their control as you did.

“…everything you send to a customer gets screened by Amazon. The buyer can't say that the item wasn't in the box or that the seller sent something broken, or not as described.”

Sure the buyer can, and does, complain of those things. The fulfillment items are mostly sealed by the seller and go directly into the packaging at the Amazon shipping center. That is no guarantee of quality control at all, and while most are honest, not all may be. Shrinkage occurs at Amazon warehouses like anywhere else.

[clial-9728]

The best answer for me 'to get rid of such nonsense'  is to leave eBay.  As one Chinese seller told me, "To alleviate the problem(s) is to stop selling, close the account, and then change everything. Change email address, change eBay seller name, use another bank account number." This seller in China is selling hundreds of items a week. Closing his account and then reopening has saved him that 6% extra fee for poor performance. So if he was making $1000 a week and eBay was taking that extra, it's well worth doing what he had done.  Yes, he will start at zero but buyers will still buy from 'new seller's.  By the way, this seller has been charged that extra 6% because he had out of stock items.  Now his shop is back to being full and he's thriving again.  

[buzzapparel]

Very sorry to hear about the accident, I wish there was some way to avoid incurring the fees.

Having said that, eBay doesn’t care, Amazon doesn’t care, Poshmark doesn’t care, Mercari doesn’t care. The only thing that matters to these “faceless” enterprises is results. So it’s nothing personal against you, just your business model presented a point of failure. I certainly don’t agree with it, but ultimately all of the above require you to perform at a standard business level to remain competitive. 

[deltilogical]

Do you store your ebay material in your car trunk?