ALL sellers payouts to go on hold

[qualityrandomitems]

Ebay apparently implemented a new policy that they will not release your funds until 48-72 hours after they receive delivery confirmation?  This has been done under a guise of a “safe marketplace” after 30 years running.  I say this is just eBay making money on overnight lending of the money they are holding…  Based on customer support feeback, apparently they are going to do this to ALL sellers?1

I went from getting my money within 2 days to 7-14 days. International will take 30-60 days. I am stopping ALL international shipping options accordingly. On top of that, any refunds will not be taken from the amount sitting in hold and will hit your backup payment immediately!  

This is OUTRAGOUS!!

[valueaddedresource]

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@beach.gold wrote:

I agree with you about the risk factors and certain sellers being targeted.  However, this is not how eBay is communicating it, and that is what I am trying to understand so that I can better plan for my future with eBay.  Right or wrong, and as I have stated, eBay is currently integral to my business and it seems prudent to understand and curate the relationship.

Also, the OP was definitely not the only person told by CS @ eBay that this is changing for everyone - this was told to me too, likely to just get me off the phone.

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@beach.gold  understood - I agree the communication on this from eBay has been horrible and I've said that multiple times in this thread and even tagged some of the actual employees here to try to get that corrected.

It's a shame that eBay customer service is often not just unhelpful but actively makes problems worse with incorrect information, but unfortunately there's not much any of us non-eBay employees here in the community can do about that.

However, what we can do is try to fill in the gap left by bad customer service by referring to official policy pages and sharing knowledge we have from our own experiences on eBay. That's 99.9999% of what this forum exists for and most of the long time members here do their best to provide helpful and accurate information, which several of us have done in this thread.

I understand that the information we have shared here isn't what some people want to hear and that's fine, but then they'll need to contact eBay directly to deal with their account specific issues or proceed with legal arbitration if they think they have a claim - in which case I wish them well, but there's simply nothing else any of us here can provide to them beyond what the actual policy says, what the one eBay employee post in this thread has said, and how that likely applies to their account based on the information they've either shared in this discussion or that is publicly viewable about their account.

[glorybells]

I’m coming late to the party, but I wanted to share a few thoughts:

1) with all the stuff we hear about csr’s giving bad information, it seems eBay would be better served by nuking the present set up and restarting their help through Limitless (I realize there’s only a few out there who will know what that is).

2) I could probably be considered an infrequent seller.  I will sometimes go months without a sale (and I don’t care, this isn’t my main gig anymore, just something in the background).  But I receive my payout very quickly, sometimes before I even ship.

3). It’s not that hard to avoid having problems that will lead to payment holds and other issues.  I’m a first class screwup.  Seriously.  If there’s a way to turn something into a problem, I’ll probably end up doing it.  But  after 26 years on eBay, I’ve had 3 negative feedback and two returns (one legit, one definitely not legit.  That me, who could screw up a free lunch, could have this record after this length of time indicates strongly that this isn’t rocket science.

And, to set the record straight, eBay doesn’t read, monitor, or anything else with th3se boards.  They come here only when a Mentor contacts them.

[babyers88]

From what I able to ascertain so far a majority of the unexplained holds have been related to accounts selling things like coins, collectibles, playing cards, etc.

that factor alone has inherent risk of fraud (same applies to jewelry, paper money, paintings, etc) and there "could" be internal changes in ebay that reflect this and would not be anything that would be publicly announced nor possibly even applied to all.

there are just so many variables, including "glitches" until there is a profound answer, then really no telling what is going on.

If someone does go the arbitration route maybe then there will be a more definite answer

[reallynicestamps]

ZOMBIE POST FROM NOVEMBER 2024

The problem with zombie posts is that the information and advice provided by posters may be out of date and no longer useful.

[valueaddedresource]

@reallynicestamps I wouldn't classify this as a "zombie" thread as it's an ongoing and active discussion about an issue that will likely continue to come up as sellers who trip certain risk factors learn about this policy when it applies to their accounts, resulting in their payments being delayed until after delivery confirmation.

That being said, it would appear that no further official information on this topic is going to be forthcoming from eBay any time soon.

Personally I think it would be better to leave this thread open since the information here is not out of date and it is still useful - that way other sellers who are having this policy applied to their accounts can keep the discussion here instead of starting new, individual threads.

[thesaddletree]

This is not true. I've been on eay for 23+ years, have absolutely no issues, 100% feedback, fast shipments, great reviews, etc. They are holding the money on ALL sellers.

I just got off the phone with a rep and he said ALL sellers, it is their new policy. If they do have issues with what they would call "higher risk", then hold the funds on poor performing sellers. But what they have done is to financially cripple and manipulate the very high performance sellers, who have made ebay and kept it a safer selling, trusting platform. Without good sellers ebay would fall. But they have chosen to make us pay high fees and hold onto our money for their greedy investment profits. USPS is notorious for late shipments. Therefore I am at the mercy of hoping USPS does their job so I can get paid? This is utter **bleep**. By the way I now only use UPS. I can count on them.

[thesaddletree]

This is not true. I've been on eay for 23+ years, have absolutely no issues, 100% feedback, fast shipments, great reviews, etc. They are holding the money on ALL sellers.

I just got off the phone with a rep and he said ALL sellers, it is their new policy. If they do have issues with what they would call "higher risk", then hold the funds on poor performing sellers. But what they have done is to financially cripple and manipulate the very high performance sellers, who have made ebay and kept it a safer selling, trusting platform. Without good sellers ebay would fall. But they have chosen to make us pay high fees and hold onto our money for their greedy investment profits. USPS is notorious for late shipments. Therefore I am at the mercy of hoping USPS does their job so I can get paid? This is utter **bleep**. By the way I now only use UPS. I can count on them.

[thesaddletree]

Yes you are correct, they are doing it with all sellers. I just got off the phone with the representitive It will be for ALL sellers.

[valueaddedresource]

@thesaddletree  I understand that the way support is communicating about this is confusing but it's simply not true that all sellers are having their funds held until after delivery confirmation, as can be confirmed by the many, many sellers in this community who will tell you their funds are not being held.

From looking at your history, it appears that while you have been on eBay for 23+ years, there may have been some time between your previous sales and the most recent ones made within the last couple months.

If that is the case, you may fall under the new or infrequent seller designation, which is one of the risk factors which has been identified here for this policy.

[bonjourami]

Looks like you had one sale in Feb,one in April, and one in May,before that,your last sale was six months ago. That makes you an occasional seller, and Ebay treats occasional sellers like new sellers, and will hold their funds.Dont believe what a telephone csr tells you, they will say anything to get you off the phone and on to the next call.

[thesaddletree]

Then fact that sales dropped is not my doing. I had to pay extra with boosting the items to get sales done.  The algorithms certainly changed. So again I paying ebay more. You can't force customers to purchase when financially they may not be able to afford a more luxury item in todays economic instability.  There are many items watched and some in carts, but the custromer purchase follow though, even with a discount does not always happen. They might want the item and hold it in in a watch, but are not always able to purchase at that time. 

Regardles, the performance record of all good sellers with happy customers and repeat customers should be more paramount rather than mass sales.

[valueaddedresource]

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@thesaddletree wrote:

Then fact that sales dropped is not my doing. I had to pay extra with boosting the items to get sales done.  The algorithms certainly changed. So again I paying ebay more. You can't force customers to purchase when financially they may not be able to afford a more luxury item in todays economic instability.  There are many items watched and some in carts, but the custromer purchase follow though, even with a discount does not always happen. They might want the item and hold it in in a watch, but are not always able to purchase at that time. 

Regardles, the performance record of all good sellers with happy customers and repeat customers should be more paramount rather than mass sales.

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@thesaddletree  as I've said in other posts in this thread, no one is saying sellers who have this policy applied to their accounts have necessarily done something "wrong" or are "to blame."

We're also not saying you need to have "mass" sales (however one might define that) but eBay's policies are very clear that consistently having at least some amount of sales activity on the site is one of the factors that they look at when making risk assessments.

If it's been 6 months or more since your last sales, many things could have potentially changed either about your account/selling activity or eBay's policies - not to mention that accounts which are dormant for some time can sometimes be taken over by bad actors and used for fraud - so eBay may apply certain policies to infrequent/occasional sellers for the same reasons they apply them to new accounts, to make sure there are no issues and that buyers have a positive experience.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons a positive performance record from years ago doesn't always mean a seller will perform well now if they begin selling again after some extended period of no sales, so those accounts are subject to the same policies as new sellers until a more recent positive record is achieved.

And as others in this thread have pointed out, this new policy which releases funds after confirmed delivery may actually be a positive change for sellers in your situation.

Previously, eBay would have likely put your payouts on a straight 15 or 30 day hold - with this policy there is at least the chance the payout may be released earlier than that, depending on your handling time and shipping carrier/service speed.

[babyers88]

you do not meet the minimum requirements to not have your funds held, If I was only selling 1 item per month I would not be surprised at all. The length of your stewardship (23+) has nothing to do with it. While amount of sales should have nothing to do with it, it unfortunately does and that alone is all it takes but there is much more that can also cause it. 

[thesaddletree]

You can justify all you want but I stand to my opinion that this is it is just a terrible thing they have done to honest, good people who are sellers.  They can monitor better but they choose to go across the board and scalp all sellers, all for their profit, not ours, and certainly not to help us cover our expenses. It is a lowdown scammy thing to do. I don't want to have to rely on the performnce of a delivery/shipping company so I can get paid. I did my job and did it well. If that's not good enough for them having sellers with a great track record of consistancy and integrity and instead apply their policy of shaving their sellers without soap, I'm aftaid I need to exit.  

[valueaddedresource]

@thesaddletree  not justifying, but explaining what the policy says/how it applies and that once again, eBay is not "scalping" all sellers as the vast majority of sellers will likely never have this policy applied against their accounts based on the information eBay has provided in both their written policy pages and the one answer in this thread from an actual eBay employee.

You certainly have every right to have your own opinions about eBay policies. If you don't agree with them or don't want to abide by them, that is absolutely your right as well - and in that case your decision to exit is probably the right one to make.