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9 months STRAIGHT of Ebay’s 3 days after delivery fund holds on a 100% positive feedback seller (established seller)
Summary: cranberry.cloud.charms expressed frustration with eBay's ongoing practice of holding funds three days post-delivery, despite having a 100% positive feedback score from over 130 sales. They described a series of changing explanations from eBay, including glitches and quality control, and shared a sense of being unfairly penalized for uncontrollable factors like sales volume and external circumstances. mr_lincoln responded by suggesting that low activity might be the reason for the holds and shared their own experience with changes in eBay's promotional strategies affecting sales. Both participants discussed skepticism around eBay's policies and considered alternative selling platforms, feeling eBay's approach had become excessively corporate-focused.
I have 100% feedback from over 130 sales but for the past 9 months straight, Ebay has placed 3 day after delivery holds on all of my sales. I have been told that it was entirely random, it was because some of my items are higher-priced, because it is solely due to quality control, but, COMPLETELY RANDOM, most recently I was told that bc I was 1 day late shipping (meaning 1 day late printing out my shipping label due entirely bc ebay’s system glitch for an entire 24 hours not allowing me to print a label) though I let the buyer know who totally understood it was out of my hands and yet, when I was finally able to print a label the next day, the buyer still received their package within the original expected delivery timeframe. Ridiculous and was told that they noticed that I ALLOWED my TOP seller rating to go down bc my items hit a bit of a low selling patch for about 60 days (um, sorry?!?! As if I have any control over another individual’s decision to buy from me or not. Lord knows I increased the promotional percentages and STILL wasn’t getting any sales, work in your algorithm Ebay bc your promotional experience is for @$!T!) After being treated as though I robbed the representatives grandmothers home and was about to get away with it, they launched a final warning by saying that if my “behavior “ improves, MAYBE the holds will be lifted one day. Is anyone else being treated like this? I welcome anyone to read my feedback and then tell me I shouldn’t wonder what the heck is up with the hate from Ebay. How do they justify a 9 month straight 3 days after delivery hold on funds on a stellar seller? Seriously, what’s with the grudge?
mr_lincoln
Mentor2 weeks agoHi @cranberry.cloud.charms
I think the short answer is you need to sell more items. You have sold 4 items in the last 90 days. You have sold a total of 109 items on the account that is just over 12 months old ... that's about 9 per month on average.
New and low activity Sellers can and do have their funds held for up to 31 days ... if you only have to wait 3 after delivery then you are doing better than other Sellers.
Transaction holds | eBay
eBay has some algorithm that determines when funds are placed on Hold and when they aren't ... unfortunately we are not privy to that and can only share policy as it is published.
cranberry.cloud.charms
OP2 weeks agoNah, I this was put on my account when I was selling far more consistently and for months after, still consistently and I was told it was random as a quality control measure, then (while still selling as consistently as ever, the excuse was bc I have some higher priced items listed, THEN it was I printed out a shipping label 1 day late even though ebay was well aware that occurred bc of a system glitch at their end which caused the “print shipping label” option to disappear for 24 hours, buyer was aware and fine with it, I was able to print my label the next day and they received their item within the original expected delivery timeframe. It’s entirely unwarranted. My sales fell low bc I pulled half my listings off bc I was getting absolutely no views, even when I increased their ridiculous promotional percentages up and up, NO VIEWS. I thought I’d relish as entirely new listings one by one but I still have dozens of listings still going but I wasn’t able to get them relisted for 60 days bc my father-in-law suddenly declined in health and then sadly passed away, relisting somehow didn’t make my top 5 things to do those 60 days. I do not think any seller should ever be penalized for their sales consistency dropping. I have another account, an actual has been active for 25 years, I have many items listed but don’t make more than a sale every 4-5 months on average. Do you know, I’ve never had a single hold placed on that account and I have done high priced listings on there too, yet still, never a hold. Seems strange that if low sale numbers were an actual thing, THAT account wouldn’t be held to the hilt. My biggest beef is the rude and inexplicable way that they reply to me, it’s as though I’ve committed some ebay crime when all I’ve done was consistently defend, denounce and refuse to stop calling ebay out on their absolutely feckless attitude towards a highly rated seller, it’s absolutely abominable and utter tripe.
But thank you for your response, I appreciate you.
mr_lincoln
Mentor2 weeks ago@cranberry.cloud.charms
You are more than welcome. I can't believe eBay would tell you that the short term hold was random and about quality control ... NOTHING they do is random so I think somebody was lying to you.
In 2022 eBay launched Promoted listings Advanced, changed how Views are counted and magically doubled and tripled the Promoted Listing Standard ad rates. I had been growing my account steadily prior to that and had reached 51K ... after those changes my sales started to decline, like somebody flipped a switch. In preceding years sales dropped 2.5K, 10K, 9K = 21.K in just 3 years. They have NOT rebounded. Nothing I did caused them to rebound, it was all because of the changes eBay made. I stopped using Promoted listings at the end of 2023 and rely on organic sales now. I have changed what and how I sell and stopped trying to attain my initial account sales goal of 75K annually ... currently I sell about half that give or take a grand here and there. Imagine what I could do with all that lost profit?!?
cranberry.cloud.charms
OP1 week agoI have noticed that 98% of sales I have state that they are due to “Promoted Listings” yet, I checked views for all my items for 2 weeks each day just to document how effective the promotion could potentially be for increasing my number of views verses organic views. I found that on average, my organic views were double than the promotion driven views and yet 3 of the items I sold during that 2 weeks were all marked as sold via promoted sales yet when I checked my log for those items, all had far more organic views so, I find it suspect that my items are all sold through the promotion and I believe that Ebay merely lies so they can tack on additional fees. Im removing those from my listings. Fingers crossed. I used to feel that Ebay was a wonderful resource for selling old treasures and making a bit of cash on the side now, it feels like any other corporate rat race, sell, sell, sell or your be penalized and ignored. I guess I should have researched the new ebay attitude before signing back up to sell, things are no longer meant for selling here and there like before. My bad. I appreciate all of the insight and advice everyone! Thank you!
mr_lincoln
Mentor1 week ago · Edited@cranberry.cloud.charms
If the items were clicked on during the Promotion period and sell within 30 days regardless of the Views count and even if the Promotion period ended prior to the end of the 30 day period the Seller is charged the Ad rate. The reason I abandoned PLS (Promoted Listings Standard) at the end of 2023 was because eBay magically raised their suggested Ad rates in early 2022 and my Campaigns stopped producing like they did prior to that. Like clockwork I ran one 30 PLS campaign per quarter putting ALL my BIN items on it for one set Ad rate. I would sell on average 2-3 items per day and it was a nice boost each quarter. In 2022 and the new rates my average sales during 30 day campaigns dropped to 1 to 1.5 per day, basically cut in half. The other thing that happened is BIN listing sales dropped off noticeably between Campaigns.
After a year and half of that I did a short 17 day Campaign with jacked up Ad rates (12%) for my categories and sales shot back up to 2-3 per day during that period. Combining the Ad rate with FVFs of about 13% and what it was telling me is eBay wanted 25% Fees on my sales, that is not sustainable based on my pricing structure and target profit margin, period.
In 4th quarter 2023 I did NOT run my regular Campaign and two weeks after the approximate normal start date I received a VERY targeted eBay message, "We've missed you - try Promoted Listings Standard again". Yep, screen shot below. Folks can draw their own conclusions but to me my BIN listings were suppressed between Campaigns in hopes I would run longer Campaigns or use a higher Ad rate. That targeted message also told me that eBay monitors how Sellers sell, period. At the time I had between 300 - 450 listings running year round. Manipulating those when you consider there were about 1.7 BILLION listings worldwide is like a very small percentage of a drop in the bucket for the venue. Even if that was being done to 1000 accounts like mine it would not amount to much in the overall scheme of things. You have drawn your own conclusions based on your selling experience and the data ... I would be the last person to disagree with you on that score
cranberry.cloud.charms
OP1 week ago · EditedYes, I see exactly what prompted you to drop the PLS. I have seen several sellers with, at
least what I consider less than desirable percentage rates, and yet they’re still able to sell. I think to myself, Gee, wonder if they are having their transactions held three days after delivery. I had a reply, this time from Christian, who very pointedly told me that now, my transaction holds will be the STANDARD moving forward. So, has everybody else had the standard put on their account since it’s standard that is. This tells me it will not matter how much I list or sell, they have decided that my account must RANDOMLY have holds as a standard from now on. I had asked if they meant that’s their standard. It’s never been any different or it’s standard now for my account and I was told it’s exactly what was stated in the reply. Wonderful seller assistance, Ebay. 👏🙄Why they have chosen to target my account is beyond me, other than my being relentless in getting them to pay attention to my emails because I emailed corporate officers instead of allowing myself to be given the runaround with some bot, trying to answer something that only a human being can and those that I’ve spoken to on the phone are about as smart as a rock so I get nowhere with them and I don’t think that they like that I was able to get their emails and email corporate. Christian went out of his way to tell me that it’s not the best way to reach assistance and that I shouldn’t be emailing the corporate office. That just makes me want to email them more. I think I may try to sell on bonanza, they carry over your listings without you having to go through the work of relisting everything on their site all over again and they don’t charge anything to do it. Can’t hurt. It’s incredible that ebay has went to the dark side and chosen to vilify specific sellers. I honestly feel as though I have fallen through the looking glass. I truly do. Please see the attached email from Christian.
mr_lincoln
Mentor1 week ago@cranberry.cloud.charms
I am not sure if the 3 day (72 hour hold) will become a standard for all accounts or not. It was a new hold period they added I believe earlier this year and applies to certain situations. So I don't even know if that rep knows the full details of the hold policy but you can watch your payouts and cashflow and see if indeed your account now has a permanent 72 hold after delivery on your funds. Are you on Daily payouts? I am on weekly Payouts with a long established account and since Managed payments was rolled out in 2019 - 2020 I have not experienced any holds even for the occasion sale over $ 1,000.00.
It would be a real shame if eBay put every account on that new Payout schedule ... gone are the days of PayPal being the Payment processor and fronting your sales dollars prior to the payment being completed.