Public storefront lists me in Gabon, Africa — I'm in Georgia, USA — 1,097 domestic orders surcharged, Unable to update payment methods | Report eBay Technical Issues | eBay Community
Public storefront lists me in Gabon, Africa — I'm in Georgia, USA — 1,097 domestic orders surcharged, Unable to update payment methods
Summary: e-findsllc is facing an issue where their eBay storefront incorrectly lists their location as the Gabonese Republic instead of Georgia, USA. This error has resulted in being charged international fees on nearly all domestic orders since 2021. They've taken various steps to resolve the issue, including contacting customer service and trying to adjust account settings through Payoneer (used due to the location error), but without success. Other participants suggest alternative solutions like reaching out to eBay's Account Safety team or attempting to reset the store subscription, but e-findsllc notes these haven't worked. Concerns about account security and misclassification remain unresolved, and more drastic measures like opening a new account are considered undesirable.
Here's the post. Different beast from the email: the audience is volunteer mentors, not eBay, and they respond to homework-done, specific, and not-whiny. It also has to pre-empt the four replies you'd otherwise get ("check your address page," "contact CS," "just edit it," "make a new account").
Title:
Public storefront says "Location: Gabonese Republic." I'm in Georgia. 1,097 domestic orders surcharged as international since 2021.
Body:
Hoping a mentor can point me at the right internal team. I'm out of doors to knock on.
The problem
My public storefront says Location: Gabonese Republic. I'm in Carrollton, Georgia. Every item I've ever sold shipped from Georgia. Member since Oct 2017, 1.8K sold, 100% positive.
eBay's own records contradict each other:
Personal info page: Carrollton, GA. Nationality: United States. Correct.
Public storefront: Gabonese Republic.
Same account, same day.
What it's cost
Since June 2021 I've been billed the 1.65% cross-border international fee on 1,097 of 1,098 orders shipped to US addresses. I pulled the transaction reports and ran it myself.
Example: 2021-07-13, shipped to Wichita, Kansas. Gross $20.10. International fee $0.33.
Eight of those orders went to Puerto Rico and were also surcharged. eBay's own fee page uses Puerto Rico as its worked example of a destination that does not incur an international fee.
Of 1,152 orders in that window, 32 were genuinely international. That's 2.8%. I've been billed as though nearly all of them were. Documented total: $928.44, still accruing.
Why this isn't user error
I still have my pre-Managed-Payments PayPal history. Through July 16, 2020, PayPal charged me the domestic rate (2.9% + $0.30) on 305 consecutive sales to US buyers. If I'd been registered in Gabon, every one of those would have been billed cross-border. None were.
So: US as of July 2020. Gabon by June 2021, since my earliest order on record already carries the fee. That brackets it to the Managed Payments migration.
eBay's help pages also state that users can't change the country on a registration address. So I didn't do this, and I couldn't have.
The part I think is the actual tell
I'm a US seller with a US bank account, and eBay pays me through Payoneer. eBay pays US sellers direct to checking. Payoneer is the rail for countries eBay can't pay directly, and Payoneer's eBay partnership is limited to specific countries.
My Payoneer record is correct: Carrollton, GA, US nationality. So Payoneer isn't the cause. Something upstream classified me as foreign and provisioned the payout rail to match.
As a bonus, I recently got an unsolicited email from eBay's Southeast Asia seller growth team assigning me an account manager. That's presumably the same error downstream.
What I've already tried
Personal info page: read-only. Banner says changes must be made at Payoneer. Payoneer's data is already correct.
Phone and chat, several times over ~2 years: told to delete the account and register a new one. Nine years of feedback. Not doing that to fix an error I didn't make.
What I'm asking
I found the old thread from the seller whose registration country flipped to Macau. A mentor there said their eBay contact indicated these odd country changes need to go to the Account Safety team, since it can indicate a compromised account.
That's what I'm after. Not a CS callback. The team that can actually write to the field, plus an answer on whether this was a migration bug or someone in my account.
Two questions for anyone who knows:
Is there still a route to Account Safety since the support restructuring, or did that path close with the social channels?
Does a Gabon location tag drop me out of buyers' "US Only" item location filter? If so the fee is the least of it.
Happy to share the transaction reports or the PayPal export, if needed, thanks!
After you have registered for managed payments, you can't change the country in your registered address. That country determines what country you have tax liability to, and which version of managed payments will process your payments. In your case, that is Payoneer, because you are registered in Gabon, not in the US.
Before managed payments, when PayPal managed eBay payments, it didn't make any difference what your eBay registered address was. PayPal only cared about what information was on your PayPal account, which was presumably your address in Georgia, US.
Because you are actually in the US, you should not have had to use Payoneer with managed payments at all. Sellers with registered addresses in the US always get managed payments payouts by direct deposit to their US bank accounts. No exceptions.
The only way you would have had to use Payoneer to sign up with managed payments was because your registered address at the time was not in the US.
Were you in Gabon at some time, before you registered for managed payments, or started selling on eBay? If so, then you should have changed your registered address to the US before you started to sign up for managed payments. That would have avoided this whole situation.
If not, then your account must have been hacked at some time and they changed your address. That must have been more than 5 years ago (before July 2021) so presumably they didn't manage to do any other damage.
The Account Safety team might be able to help you with that, although after 5 years or more, I don't know what they could actually accomplish that would benefit you at all. I don't think they can help you change the country because you have already registered as a seller in Gabon.
Unfortunately, as far as I know there isn't any way to change the country where an eBay account is located once you have registered as a seller with managed payments.
The only way to start selling in a different country is by starting a new account. This is also the only way to avoid paying the international selling fees on sales to the US.
Sorry for the bad news.
Another problem here may be your tax liability to the IRS. As long as you are voluntarily reporting your income to the IRS and paying income and self-employment taxes on it, (if required), then they are probably not going to care if they don't get any 1099-K reports (again, if required).
albertabrightalberta
·3 weeks ago · Edited
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.104View listings
eBay pays me through Payoneer.
@e-findsllc
I've never known any US-based seller to use Payoneer.
I'm guessing that ebay doesn't believe that you (personally) are located in Georgia and they don't believe that you (personally) are packing and shipping your items from Georgia.
I believe (and I think ebay believes) that you (like so many international sellers) are dropshipping and using US cities/states as the purported locations of the items.
@albertabrightalberta , OP has to use Payoneer because his registered address on eBay is in Gabon. See my earlier post.
I don't see any reason to suspect that OP is not located in Georgia, US, as they said. All eBay cares about when a seller registers for managed payments, is which country their registered address is in.
Yes, I signed up before they switched to managing their own payments without realizing what it was. I assumed they had switched from Paypal to something else. But that doesn't change the confusing part that at one point, my account was registered as in the US and was changed to Gabon, I assume at that Payoneer point.
If Payoneer is involved in any way, I doubt your problem will be solved.
They do not have a good reputation. Not for responsiveness, customer service or technical prowess.
Without any specific information to base my opinion on, I immediately jump to the conclusion that your problem flows from your error in invoking Payoneer.
I wish you a lot of luck, because I suspect you are going to need it.
lacemaker3
·3 weeks ago · Edited@e-findsllc
This is all happening because the registered address on your eBay account is in Gabon. This is shown on your feedback profile page:
https://feedback.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/e-findsllc?ssPageName=STRK:ME:UFS
After you have registered for managed payments, you can't change the country in your registered address. That country determines what country you have tax liability to, and which version of managed payments will process your payments. In your case, that is Payoneer, because you are registered in Gabon, not in the US.
Before managed payments, when PayPal managed eBay payments, it didn't make any difference what your eBay registered address was. PayPal only cared about what information was on your PayPal account, which was presumably your address in Georgia, US.
Because you are actually in the US, you should not have had to use Payoneer with managed payments at all. Sellers with registered addresses in the US always get managed payments payouts by direct deposit to their US bank accounts. No exceptions.
The only way you would have had to use Payoneer to sign up with managed payments was because your registered address at the time was not in the US.
Were you in Gabon at some time, before you registered for managed payments, or started selling on eBay? If so, then you should have changed your registered address to the US before you started to sign up for managed payments. That would have avoided this whole situation.
If not, then your account must have been hacked at some time and they changed your address. That must have been more than 5 years ago (before July 2021) so presumably they didn't manage to do any other damage.
The Account Safety team might be able to help you with that, although after 5 years or more, I don't know what they could actually accomplish that would benefit you at all. I don't think they can help you change the country because you have already registered as a seller in Gabon.
Unfortunately, as far as I know there isn't any way to change the country where an eBay account is located once you have registered as a seller with managed payments.
The only way to start selling in a different country is by starting a new account. This is also the only way to avoid paying the international selling fees on sales to the US.
Sorry for the bad news.
Another problem here may be your tax liability to the IRS. As long as you are voluntarily reporting your income to the IRS and paying income and self-employment taxes on it, (if required), then they are probably not going to care if they don't get any 1099-K reports (again, if required).
albertabrightalberta
·3 weeks ago · Edited@e-findsllc
I've never known any US-based seller to use Payoneer.
I'm guessing that ebay doesn't believe that you (personally) are located in Georgia and they don't believe that you (personally) are packing and shipping your items from Georgia.
I believe (and I think ebay believes) that you (like so many international sellers) are dropshipping and using US cities/states as the purported locations of the items.
lacemaker3
·3 weeks ago · Edited@albertabrightalberta , OP has to use Payoneer because his registered address on eBay is in Gabon. See my earlier post.
I don't see any reason to suspect that OP is not located in Georgia, US, as they said. All eBay cares about when a seller registers for managed payments, is which country their registered address is in.
eburtonlab
·3 weeks ago@yeswayrecords
Does a Gabon location tag drop me out of buyers' "US Only" item location filter?
No, that is determined by the item location in each listing, not the seller's registration location.
Is there still a route to Account Safety since the support restructuring, or did that path close with the social channels?
You can try reaching out to eBay via the "hacked account" page:
https://www.ebay.com/help/account/protecting-account/get-help-hacked-account?id=4196
That should put you in touch with someone from Account Safety, I believe.
Or you can try sending a direct message to eBay via Instagram.
yeswayrecords
·3 weeks agoDo you think it might fix this if you stop and restart your store subscription? Have you done this or condsidered trying this yet?
Not sure if this would do the trick, but maybe it might reset to your correct location through ebay stores...
e-findsllc
OP3 weeks agoTried before, no luck
roccotacodad54
·3 weeks agoMember since: Oct-06-17 in Gabon
eBay pays me through Payoneer.
Color me confused, doesn't one have to sign up for Payoneer?
e-findsllc
OP3 weeks agoYes, I signed up before they switched to managing their own payments without realizing what it was. I assumed they had switched from Paypal to something else. But that doesn't change the confusing part that at one point, my account was registered as in the US and was changed to Gabon, I assume at that Payoneer point.
tobaccocardyahoo
·3 weeks agoIf Payoneer is involved in any way, I doubt your problem will be solved.
They do not have a good reputation. Not for responsiveness, customer service or technical prowess.
Without any specific information to base my opinion on, I immediately jump to the conclusion that your problem flows from your error in invoking Payoneer.
I wish you a lot of luck, because I suspect you are going to need it.