After 15 Years, 13k Sales, 99% Feedback: How a BBE "Death Loop" Permanently Banned My Account
Summary: The discussion revolves around the challenges faced by eBay sellers, particularly focusing on issues related to account suspensions and fees. medjugorjeonlineshop shares their frustration after being suspended from eBay and moving to other platforms. grandmasjewelry123 and others comment on the difficulties of selling on eBay due to fees and reduced visibility without paid promotions. de_3761901 provides a detailed critique of eBay's seller management practices, highlighting the punitive measures against sellers despite displaying improvement and responsibility. Participants reflect on the systemic problems with eBay's algorithms and express frustration over the lack of support for long-time, committed sellers. The discussion suggests a sense of dissatisfaction and a call for reform within eBay's seller policies.
Hi everyone,
I am writing this with a really heavy heart, hoping to get some advice from the eBay Community Staff or senior mentors here. For 15 years, I have been a dedicated Top-Rated Seller on eBay, selling handmade Christian religious items. Over my entire career, I built what I thought was an good reputation: over 13,000 items sold, 959 followers, and a consistent 99%+ positive feedback score. My downfall started when strict customs rules in USA were introduced. To protect my account, I eventually had to stop selling to USA entirely, which caused my overall sales volume to drop by over 50% overnight.
As a low-volume artisan seller left with only around 30-40 sales a month, this drop put me into a brutal mathematical "death loop" where the algorithm completely broke my metrics:
- The INR Crisis: A few of my packages got stuck in Chile customs. Even though I uploaded valid tracking and eventually proved to support that the items were delivered, just those few temporary open Item Not Received (INR) cases immediately pushed my metric above 1% because my sales volume was so low.
- The SNAD Trap: Couple of months ago, two buyers opened cases saying their items arrived damaged. I resolved both immediately and the buyers closed them. But with only 40 sales a month, just 2 SNAD cases pushed my metric to nearly 2%, while the market average is 0.1%. Just one single case costs me 1% of my metrics.
- The Cancellation & Automated Loop: As my sales volume continued to plummet, things got mathematically worse with every evaluation cycle. Even though I didn't have a single new cancellation, my cancellation rate defect shot past the market average. This happened simply because my older, successful transactions were aging out of the evaluation window, leaving fewer total sales to dilute the percentages.
eBay’s automated system flagged me as Non-Compliant and throttled my visibility, which dragged my sales even lower. When the system finally moved me to "Action Taken - No Selling Privileges," all my listings were removed. I tried desperately to save the account by re-listing items at heavy discounts just to get some fast sales and fix the percentages. I briefly managed to move back to Non-Compliant, but the next automated evaluation hit, blocked my listings again, and permanently suspended me.
I just received a response from standard customer service, and it highlights exactly what is wrong with the current system. The agent was incredibly polite, acknowledged my 17 years of loyalty (system records 17 years since registration), but explicitly stated:
"The system has taken automatic action to restrict your account’s selling privileges. Unfortunately, there is no manual process for restoration of the accounts which are impacted due to Bad buying experience ratings."
This is a 17-year-old business with 13k sales being told that a robot's glitchy mathematical decision is final and that human customer service agents have zero authority to fix a logical flaw. Every single interaction feels like trying to reason with an AI or a wall of automated bots that just copy-paste generic templates.
It is truly heartbreaking that a dedicated seller can lose their livelihood to an automated bot without a single minute of human review.
Is there any path left for a long-term established business to get a manual review by the Executive Appeals or Risk Team?
caseypl
·1 month agoThis is one of the best written posts I've seen, excellent work. i wish everyone could write like this, it flowed really well and was very easy to read.
I am sorry that Ebay automation has failed a long-time seller. This is troubling for all of us to see.
youfoundithere2025
·1 month agoTheir generalized sanctions and generic responses to your dilemma shows just what automation has done to the company. We ( loyal long time sellers) are treated the same as some new sales-bot that shows up on the scene and wants to just make a quick profit. I wish I could offer a solution, but I am only a loyal seller in the same sinking lifeboat as yourself, and instead of eBay offerin to help, they just throw rocks in your boat! Bon voyage.
tobaccocardyahoo
·2 months agoEbay's BBE system is the only means of cost-effectively dealing with the very real problems associated with a significant problem associated with international sellers who ship into the USA.
Low volume, part time Ebay sellers have not taken their business seriously enough, and failed to act BEFORE an obvious problem exceeding the limits of Ebay's tolerance.
And after they have lost their ability to ship to Ebay's US buyers still don't want to accept any of the responsibility for why they were targeted.
The potential value of a seller is not enough to justify the serious damage an underperforming seller does to the site and every other seller on the site. And Ebay has many more sellers than it needs to meet the needs of the marketplace.
No seller who was blocked from selling due to BBE has returned to this forum to share their reinstatement. I suspect it has been because they were not reinstated. The failure to understand how their description of their merits can be true, and the ban is still justified is demonstrated by why their attempts at appeal falls on deaf ears.
de_3761901
·2 months agoYou would think that a mature, publicly traded company with relatively limited growth over the past decade would place greater value on retaining capable sellers who generate consistent revenue for the platform.
Good sellers are not born knowing how to operate a business perfectly. Many learn through experience, make early mistakes, correct them, and become substantially better operators. That is exactly what happened to me. I built a thriving store, completed nearly 200 transactions, encountered problems when experimenting with a new product category, refunded the affected customers, and changed my business practices accordingly.
Instead of recognizing that progression, eBay’s system appears designed to punish early mistakes for an extended period while offering almost no practical rehabilitation process. The irony is that the restrictions, payment holds, reduced visibility, and additional 6% fee make it harder for the seller to complete the successful transactions supposedly required to recover. I generated over $20,000 in revenue in 3 months, my first 3 months in business on Ebay. The last 3 months. . . . just under $5,000 because of 4 sales, that were handled instantly after the indicated dissatisfaction.
Buyer protection is obviously necessary, but protecting buyers should not mean automatically treating every complaint as proof of seller misconduct. Sellers also encounter fraudulent returns, dishonest claims, buyer’s remorse, product swapping, and customers who exploit eBay’s protections because they know the platform will usually favor them. Or in your case, just logistical problems that are neither the buyer nor the sellers fault, which is even more incompetent on the part of this platform.
A healthy marketplace needs both buyer protection and meaningful seller protection. It should distinguish between genuinely irresponsible sellers and talented, productive sellers who encounter a few problems while learning, take responsibility, refund customers, and correct their practices.
eBay earns money when sellers like me (and much more so YOU) successfully list and sell products. Driving a productive seller into the ground over a small cluster of resolved transactions is not only disproportionate—it is commercially self-defeating.
It sounds like, this problem is systemic and even affects the highest tier seller possible (which is from your metrics, what you are) and bears the signs of a dying business due to gross incompetence. It would appear that Ebay is a platform basically run off of rudimentary, disproportionately unfair (biased towards the buyer) algorithmic bots, and will continue its slow death of 1,000 cuts as a result. You are very talented. take your abilities to sell on a global scale to a platform that offers water and fertilizer to a very valuable seed that you are offering its soil. Your post has made me realize that Ebay is an awful platform and an even worse business. They cannot grow past where it is today without reform, and it has lost billions, likely hundreds of billions over decades, in revenue and future growth because nobody is doing anything about these massive systemic problems that exist for the seller community. WOW
kibble-net
·2 months agoIf you don't like it here, vote with your feet. That's all you can really do.
grandmasjewelry123
·4 months agoI don't know if this will help but a month ago, I had a buyer who returned an item. ( They were trying to steal it and almost got away with it.) I have an automatic return policy. They entered a tracking number and the tracking said the item was delivered. It was a strange delivery service that I hadn't heard of and the item was not received or delivered. Ebay refunded the customer. I was out the item and the money for the item. I checked was the service even real and chat (AI) said it was real service but it had an F rating. I wrote ebay and ebay said the tracking said it was delivered and there was nothing they could do. I wrote AI and AI gave me a letter showing that the tracking had no proof of delivery and designed it for ebay. Ebay received the letter from me, reconsidered and refunded the money to me. I never did get the item back. You might take your issue to AI and see if they can help you.
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoFighting AI with AI might actually be the only way left to get eBay to notice anything nowadays 😊!
Thanks for sharing that story, i will ask AI about my problem, maybe he gives me something.
The biggest problem with this automation is that it completely ignores context. It just looks at raw numbers, which are basically impossible for a small artisan seller to maintain. When the market average for SNAD is 0.1%, it’s just a matter of time before a couple of random issues destroy your metrics if you only have a few dozen sales a month.
My account was perfectly healthy for 15 years, but as soon as that shipping crisis hit a few months ago, the system just buried me instead of helping. And support just repeats the same 'the system did it automatically' line. It’s a brutal loop.
I'll definitely try to structure my appeal carefully, maybe even use some tools to make it look as professional as possible if I ever get a human to open it. Thanks again
grandmasjewelry123
·4 months agoI have been here for 29 years and last month was the first time I had zero sales. I am sad to say I think ebay is going to have the same fate as the malls.
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoWow, 29 years... that is incredible, but at the same time so sad to hear.
If a seller with three decades of experience is hitting zero sales, it proves that the system is completely broken.
eBay is throwing away its unique identity and unique artisan sellers just to chase the big dropshippers and copy Amazon.
But nobody wants a worse version of Amazon/Temu. They are losing the soul of the platform.
baydealz
·4 months agoI've got 27 years but it's not my job. But for years and years, I've been complaining that they want to be Amazon, but at the SELLERS RISK. Amazon accepted their own risk, having a similar policy on the backs of artisans, small or any sellers, is ludicrous and should be criminal, unless they want to eat the cost.
Costco has a ridiculuous return policy and a lot of networked sellers for cars, home units like HVAC, etc. Could you imagine buy a Crane AC, getting it set up then moaning to Costco that it didn't meet expectations, you want your money back, THEN requiring the local installer to refund? They'd never have vendors. But we suckers keep playing this game.
baydealz
·4 months agoThe malls didn't die due to vendors, they died do to buyers, who can get exact item for less, faster. But malls didn't have many of the things that eBay sellers are good at: unique, more rare, custom and hard to find or used items. But, eBay foolishly rather chase the vendor they aren't. Like if the malls addressed their competition by screwing their vendor tenants, requiring them to match prices offer same policies. eBay will be a case study, that during times of inflation and an opportunity to offer discounted goods, they opted to be Nordstrom's instead. They simply pass the risk to someone else, their 'tenants.'
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoI completely agree. I am the prime example of exactly what you are talking about. I sell unique, handmade items that can literally only be found in two places in the entire world—my eBay shop and my Etsy shop. That’s it.
I had a perfectly healthy account for 15 years, and then, due to a few external shipping issues out of my control, my metrics dropped slightly and the system automatically blocked me permanently. No way to appeal, no human interaction, and absolutely zero effort from eBay to actually look at my history, understand the context, or listen to my side of the story.
They are systematically throwing away the exact uniqueness that kept them alive, all because a blind algorithm can't tell the difference between an artisan and a mass-production warehouse. It’s incredibly sad to watch.
baydealz
·1 month agoWho do these companies hire? Your mention of "systematically throwing away the exact uniqueness that kept them alive" has been happening since well before Covid. I KEPT telling them that they are not only trying to be Amazon, but on the backs of us independent sellers - IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. I'm not Amazon. I can't buy my market. There are other platforms now and some offer zero returns, which does suck as a buyer, but they know it's like a garage sale - let the buyer beware. Not this Amazon or Costco fantasy of buy to rent, use, return, repeat.
grandmasjewelry123
·4 months agoThe malls died due to the internet, and malls taking care of the top and ignoring the sellers by tacking on extra fees making it harder and harder to make it work in the mall, and a general sense that these extra fees to sellers with reduced advertising dollars getting customers to the malls wouldn't matter.
inhawaii
·2 months agoDid you have zero sales because of ebay?
Were people trying to buy from you but ebay was somehow preventing them from doing so?
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP2 months agoThey suspended me, and deactivated all my listing.
I can't list anymore.
Im done with eBay.
Now swelling on Etsy + building my own Shopify website
grandmasjewelry123
·2 months agoI have no idea why. What I know is the summer is slow. Ebay tacks on so many fees that unless you pay them, they don't send customers to you. (This differs from a few years ago) Paying the extra fees to get customers makes it difficult to sell at a profit. ( and I am a very good buyer). I spent less time trying to get customers. There are so many people selling on line. I would imagine all of the above contributed. None the less, it was a first, and not a good sign since I have spent summers here, reduced advertising, less time focussed on ebay etc...
soh.maryl
·2 months agoWhat fees has eBay tacked on? Are you referring to promoting listings? You know that's optional, right?
grandmasjewelry123
·2 months agoIts optional but no traffic comes your way unless you use it, or promote on the back end. That is different from how it used to be.
kensgiftshop
·4 months agoSorry, haven't heard of anyone coming back after a permanent BBB suspension.
inhawaii
·4 months agoAnswer: No.
stuff4divas
·4 months ago@medjugorjeonlineshop
maybe contact eBay here>
https://www.instagram.com/ebayforsellers/
FYI - here is the eBay policy for BBE>
https://export.ebay.com/en/fees-regulations-policies/ebay-policies/bber-2025/
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoThanks for the links! I’ll definitely try reaching out to their Instagram page. I knew they shut down their support on Facebook and Twitter, so I actually didn't know Instagram was still an option. At this point, I’m willing to try anything to find a real human.
Regarding the policy, that's exactly the 'loop' I got trapped in. Once my sales volume dropped because of the customs issue, my percentages instantly shot up for the system, even though the actual number of cases was tiny.
Appreciate the help!
quadcitypickers
·4 months agoThey have reduced their hours on Instagram too.
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoThanks for the heads-up
I already sent them a message, wo lets wait and see
meme6253
·4 months agoI don't think you will find anyone here who can actually help you, Once you are banned there is no recourse, The only thing you can try is to write to headquarters & explain your situation, But that is even a long shot.
medjugorjeonlineshop
OP4 months agoThanks for the honest reply.
Writing a physical letter to headquarters in 2026 sounds crazy, but if sending snail mail is the only way to bypass the bots and get a real human to read my story, I just might have to do it lol
Regular support is definitely a dead end. I’m just hoping someone from the eBay Community Staff here sees this.
After 15 years and 13k sales making these items by hand, I think a human manager with more power should at least have the final look