My seller rating is below standard due to 5 canceled sales. It put my defect rating at 2.02 %. How

Question

How can I possibly improve my defect rate after eBay suspended my account? I cancelled 5 sales due to out of stock issues. I did not know that canceling a sale was a bad thing and I did not know what else to do.

I have been an eBay seller for 29 years with 100% positive feedback and I was a top rated seller.

Now I cannot post new items, nor revise my current items. My sales have plummeted drastically. How can I possibly improve my defect rate if eBay is making it nearly impossible to sell without promotions and revisions?

wooden_flower · Answer

@topshelfcoins

Unfortunately, you have probably waited too long to be able to improve enough to be regain your higher selling limits. eBay does not limit your account right away when you go below standard - there are a few months where you are expected to take action to improve your performance. When you don’t, eBay starts restricting your account little by little.

You do have a store, so you should still be able to put items on sale. Use the buy one get one x% off to encourage multiple item sales - what you need to increase is the number of items sold.

I don’t know if you can make enough of a change with the number of items you have listed. You need to look at the monthly details on your dashboard to determine when the defects will roll out of your 12 month total, and how many items you would need to sell to get your defects below 2%. https://sellerstandards.ebay.com/dashboard?region=US

The 4/20 review will be for sales and defects April 2025 - March 2026, so there’s not a lot you can do to change that with only 3 days left in March, but you should try.

You took the only action you could in cancelling the transactions, but eBay expects you to control your inventory so that these cancellations do not occur. They also expect you to monitor your performance and service metrics monthly.

Good luck.