UNFAIR BBE suspension due to 3 buyers checking out with wrong address, me cancelling and relisting
Member since 2008, 3K sales. I have a subscription, and an account manager. I am from Hungary. This is how I feed the family.
In the last 12weeks I have 0 INR, I have 0 Not as described faults, 0 negative feedback. 39 transactions.
1 of my items could not be delivered, Fedex refused to deliver a Russian made item. I refunded the buyer without him opening a case. He had no issues, was not unhappy. We both accepted the situation.
In the last 12 weeks, there were 3 instances where my buyers gave me their wrong address and asked for cancellations so they could rebuy the item with their right address. One used his old work address, the other used wrong country.
All of them I canceled with "buyer asked to cancel"
Relisted, they rebought, items got delivered. All good.
My BBE still got hit with 3 cancellation faults despite buyers asked the cancellation, plus the fedex issue, my BBE went 10%+
I got suspended. Decision final.
This is insane.
What can I do? This is soooooo unfair!!!
How to reach my account manager?
alb-deal
·8 months agoHi Europe Sellers and Worldwide Sellers.
I Have a Simple Question Simple Question.
Where was your last BBE Email Message Notification?
Is the Notification every first week of the Month? Did You Get it for Example on October On November Or December?
Also if you do not have any INR os SNAD does the notification Show on the Email or Message.
Evaluation window
ricarduzonta
OP8 months agoThis is total discrimination. Bbe is not applied in France, Germany, Austria. Why am I diffefent? This is insane. They throw me away like a used sock after 17 years. And I put my heart and soul into this.
And ending it like this, that is lt was out of my control, and basically my goodwill for my buyers **bleep**ed me.
I can't find words.
luckythewinner
·8 months agoThis is total discrimination. Bbe is not applied in France, Germany, Austria. Why am I diffefent? This is insane.
I suspect your country is treated differently because eBay has unfortunately found that other sellers in your country have proven to be unreliable.
stainlessenginecovers
·8 months agoMy guess is the 'reasons' were so abused (and the system now knows that sellers outside USA will use any of those reasons to avoid an OOS) that simply any 'cancellation/refund' is a bad thing for sellers outside the USA.
broto_64
·8 months agoFirst time I have heard that cancelling for reason "buyer asked / problem with address" resulted in a hit on the BBE metrics. I have however experienced many sellers abusing the system, and cancelling my own order for those exact reason(s) when I absolutely did not ask and there was no problem with my address.
So the only two (maybe three) options are:
* You think you cancelled for those reasons, but in reality you cancelled for "out of stock" OR
* You did cancel for reason "buyer asked" but the buyer did not actually ask in messages (yes they MUST ask) OR
* Ebay has changed the way they handle BBE metrics in this particular cancellation scenario.
Personally I am leaning towards human error, although I am finding also that (as someone else mentioned) the AI can be unfair because it was improperly programmed or its learning mechanism is flawed / has not followed the proper flowchart tree. In the latter I might be inclined to sway towards the fault being with the AI as I too have experienced insanity in that area.
lightershopdk-etsy-com
·8 months agoBrace yourself for handling the [Edited by Moderator] customer service people. Then figure out it will be better in the long run to use another platform.
ricarduzonta
OP8 months agoWhy would it affect me if a buyer simply just changed their mind and asked me to cancel and I did it for him.
The screwed up their address and asked to cancel, it is out of my control. How can that destroy my metrics?
Did cancel wirh "Buyer asked to cancel" in the past quite a few times, no issues.
Since BBE, it is a fault.
Out of stock cancellations are bad. I understand that.
I had someone who changed their mind and started the cancellation on his end.
That had no effect on my BBE.
luckythewinner
·8 months agoWhy would it affect me if a buyer simply just changed their mind and asked me to cancel
Because eBay decided it would.
How can that destroy my metrics?
Because eBay decided it would.
Since BBE, it is a fault.
Because eBay decided it was.
Out of stock cancellations are bad. I understand that.
The BBE is not based on "Out of stock" transaction defects. It is based on "Stock-out" cancellations, which are defined in the BBE policy as "a seller canceled a transaction because they no longer had the item, or the item was never shipped" (note the inclusion of the word "or"). Since the items were never shipped, the cancellations meet the criteria for "Stock-out" cancellations even though they do not meet the criteria for "Out of stock" transaction defects.
https://export.ebay.com/en/fees-regulations-policies/ebay-policies/archive/bber/
Does this stink? Yes.
Is it misleading that "Out of stock" and "Stock-out" mean different things? Yes.
Does eBay care? No.
stuff4divas
·8 months ago@ricarduzonta so sorry this happened to you, eBay's AI has a lot of imperfections that are punishing sellers unjustly and showing defects, late shipments, etc that are not true. All i can advise is to>
Contact eBay via their social media sites with a private message:
https://www.facebook.com/ebay
AND-OR
https://x.com/askebay
AND-OR
https://www.instagram.com/ebayforsellers/
Great customer service on all three
Even if u don't do social media, u can just open an account for eBay purposes only
I hope all works out for you, in the meantime, do some research on where to sell on other online platforms
and here is the ebay link for info on restrictions/suspensions>
https://www.ebay.com/help/account/account-restrictions-suspensions/account-restrictions-suspensions?id=4190&st=3&pos=1&query=Account%20restrictions%20and%20suspensions&intent=suspensions&lucenceai=lucenceai&docId=HELP1074
Unavailable member
·8 months agoWhen reading the Service Standard policy no where does it say a seller is exempt from being evaluated because the buyer asked to cancel.
inhawaii
·8 months agoJust curious...
Why would you can with "buyer asked to cancel" instead of "problem with buyers address"?
slati_2013
·8 months agoWhy would/should that make any difference? Either should not cause the seller any problems. With foreign sellers no reason given seems to make any difference.
martin2001
·8 months agoyou didn't answer the question.... 😞
jonathanbrightlight
·8 months agoThey answered the question in the comment they were quoting and responding to.
The Cross Border Trading policies, specifically the Bad Buyer Experience policy (BBE), are very strict and different than sellers who sell on an eBay site within their own country. I agree that you shouldn't be penalized for a buyer requesting to cancel, especially since it was for a change of address, but that doesn't mean the policy as it stands now doesn't treat it the same way, or that anyone at eBay can or will override that. The policy does read as though those shouldn't have been counted, but it's possible it only allows you to not be penalized if the buyer formally requests the cancellation through the eBay order details page, instead of messaging you and asking you to cancel, to prevent abuse. This is the wording I see currently (some emphasis added):
I just checked the policy: https://export.ebay.com/en/fees-regulations-policies/ebay-policies/bber-2025/ and it has different wording than I remembered it having previously. This is the part that stands out to me:
What should I do if my account has been restricted due to performance issues? Will the actions be removed if my BBE performance improves in the next evaluation cycle?
eBay will still evaluate the BBE performance of your accounts as long as there are eligible transactions. The restriction will be removed automatically once your BBE performance is lower or on par with the market average in subsequent evaluation periods.
Since you say you have an account manager, check your email or eBay messages for the confirmation that one was assigned, and it should (I believe) have the method you can use to contact them listed there. That will probably be the only avenue that might have any success in getting that changed. I wish I could offer you more hope, but we've seen many sellers say they lost their accounts under the BBE standards, but I don't recall any who got their selling privileges back.
broto_64
·8 months agoI believe those two fall under the same "category" so either way no real difference.