Below Standard Drop Resulted in 99% Cut in my Listing and Selling limits - Is this Normal?

[salon-1-audio]

I've been selling on ebay since 1986, with thousands of positives, currently at 100%, sales over $1M and last month my limits were 11,000 items and near $150K.  We had a guy return an empty box filled with paper so no refund.  He fought it and ebay refunded him and nicked our rating.  Then had a return go to a neighbors store, by the time we found it ebay had refunded.  Another nick.  And a couple items went out a day late (my fault).  Still no emails or unhappy customers.  We just fell under standard and ebay dropped our selling limits to 140 items and $18K!  After a number of calls to find out if this was a glitch, its apparently not.  How does cutting off 99% of a sellers ability to sell help anyone here?    Every couple hours I'm getting emails when items try to auto-relist that we're over our limit.   Its like getting kicked in the crotch and spit in the face everyday.  For years I used to have a personal ebay representative I could call and now seems like I'm just another number.  No wonder they are losing business. 

[salon-1-audio]

Thanks.  I did file and include in my appeal the Internet Fraud IC3 paperwork as well as the original tracking showing 70 lbs and the return tracking showing 20 lbs as well as details pics.  I used to get this resolved with a phone call, now this isn't enough. Seems buyers always get the benefit of the doubt despite a long history of good sales.

Yes I'm venting, but it's just very frustrating you can't even reason with ebay anymore.  It's all call centers and people reading rules to you on screens.

I guess I felt a valued part of the ebay community for so long... it's tough when they treat you like you're the bad guy when you run into a tough spot.  

[dtexley3]

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@tri-countypowersports wrote:

My boss started our ebay store many years ago, and I have been in charge of it for the last 10. We recently got a listing program that messed up our handling times, and we had a ton of late packages due to use being closed due to the Christmas and New Years holidays. We were out for 3 months waiting for our rating to go up. Ebay doesn't include handling times when you are on vacation mode, which is total **bleep**. We have almost 100,000 listings and we cannot manually change the times for every single item. It would take us 2 months to do that. Late shipping and returns all count as strikes toward us. Cancelled orders are another one that bit us due to the company we were using not having the correct information provided towards us. It was a huge lesson and we learned and bounced right back, but it did take some time and hurt me financially due to this being my full time job. Sales were down and so were the paychecks. There are rules on here, so just make sure to follow them correctly and you should be fine.

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Hi, FileExchange is your friend, so learn it and love it.  You can easily change the handling times on 100,000 listings in just a few minutes.  With that many listings I would be considering one of the 3rd party listing managers as well.

[upgradedendmills]

What size store do you have? 

[goodluckselling]

@salon-1-audio  -  Yes the things you mentioned are all part of the seller standard policy.  Here is a link to review

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy?id=4347

Also they might link your other accounts for possible restrictions on those accounts and possibly change your store subscription down to a basic store?

Good Luck Selling!

[luckythewinner]

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

On this account we're only doing $60K-$100K annually right now.   All time sales are well over $1M (all accounts).  I watch my selling manager daily.

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Two unresolved cases will not put a $60k seller below standard either. Nor will a couple late shipments.

There must be more to the story of why you are below standard.

What does your dashboard say are the reasons you are not Above Standard?

[luckythewinner]

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@luckythewinner wrote:

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

On this account we're only doing $60K-$100K annually right now.   All time sales are well over $1M (all accounts).  I watch my selling manager daily.

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Two unresolved cases will not put a $60k seller below standard either. Nor will a couple late shipments.

There must be more to the story of why you are below standard.

What does your dashboard say are the reasons you are not Above Standard?

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Whoops, I just re-read the requirements. Apparently two unresolved cases will send you below standard!

All the more reason to pay attention to more than just your selling manager every day!

[dflkj-70]

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

You are correct.  It was 1996.  It was the wild west back then and nowhere near the rules they have today.  We could actually leave appropriate feedback for bad buyers... imagine that!  It was also a lot more fun and you felt like part of something special.  Today it's just business for ebay and us.  

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Things have changed...

It is no longer up to sellers to decide who the good and bad buyers are.

For the most part ebay now decides these things based on a number of things that may not make a whole lot of sense but it does involve jumping through various hoops in order not to trip a wire... I don't believe this to be the perfect method, but it's the way it is.

It is also nothing new, these changes have been transpiring for a very long time now, at least a decade but probably closer to 15-20 years... It wasn't always like this but one change at a time it has become that way.

And I can't tell you whether a 99% drop is normal but I can tell you that bad metrics will affect your sales.

You talk about a nick, those were for "case unresolved by seller," you're only allowed three and I'm not sure if three means the boot or if the fourth one gets you banned but ebay actually does troubled sellers a favor by slowing down sales for them so they have the opportunity to make corrections.

Sellers can no longer decide whether the buyer is right or wrong.

Accept the return, and refund the full amount upon package delivery (read that carefully, nowhere does it say the package must contain the original merchandise), the refund is due as per the MBG once the label tracking shows the item has been delivered.

A lot of that is automated, so many days and it just happens, cases are opened, closed and decided mostly by software functions.

Not sure whether that helps, it's a lot to wrap one's head around...

[dflkj-70]

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@luckythewinner wrote:

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@luckythewinner wrote:

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

On this account we're only doing $60K-$100K annually right now.   All time sales are well over $1M (all accounts).  I watch my selling manager daily.

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Two unresolved cases will not put a $60k seller below standard either. Nor will a couple late shipments.

There must be more to the story of why you are below standard.

What does your dashboard say are the reasons you are not Above Standard?

---

Whoops, I just re-read the requirements. Apparently two unresolved cases will send you below standard!

All the more reason to pay attention to more than just your selling manager every day!

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@luckythewinner wrote:

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

On this account we're only doing $60K-$100K annually right now.   All time sales are well over $1M (all accounts).  I watch my selling manager daily.

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Two unresolved cases will not put a $60k seller below standard either. Nor will a couple late shipments.

There must be more to the story of why you are below standard.

What does your dashboard say are the reasons you are not Above Standard?

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Yes the unresolved cases will do you in, crazy as it might sound but unresolved strikes work against sellers regardless of volume.  Most strikes depend on volume so a high volume seller can 'afford' more bad things happening to them, but not the unresolved case strike.

Three of those and it's bad news, whether it's a $1000 a year seller or $10m a year, doesn't matter.

[membersinceaug2001]

They're walking a fine line between us being employees or not.  We're supposed to be independent sellers but they are harsh with all the silly rules.  Buyers need to be held accountable for their own actions, not have nanny ebay watch over them.

[salon-1-audio]

Tracking uploaded on time and late shipment rate are both above standard.  Looks like the transaction defect rate is 2.83 and needs to be 2% or better.  I did learn NOT to cancel a sale a buyer backs out of by showing it out of stock.  This penalizes your account.  

Here's one I just love too.  We sell tested TV circuit boards.  We get buyers (Homeowners, not TV repair techs) using them to 'test' their broken TV.  If the boards doesn't fix it , they claim its defective and return it and buy a different board until they find a fix.  We always let them return them, but we've refunded just the item and had buyer complain, only to have ebay step in an refund the shipping too.  We can't sell without a return policy so we're paying no matter what we do.

[luckythewinner]

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

Tracking uploaded on time and late shipment rate are both above standard.  Looks like the transaction defect rate is 2.83 and needs to be 2% or better.  I did learn NOT to cancel a sale a buyer backs out of by showing it out of stock.  This penalizes your account.  

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That's your answer then. Both types of defect ("out of stock" cancellations and "unresolved cases") are entirely avoidable, and yet your rate is closing in on 3%.

Just curious - when a buyer backed out of a sale, why in the world did you choose "out of stock" rather than "buyer requested"? 

[salon-1-audio]

I knew why I was being punished, but why not cut my selling ability by 70% or heck even 90%, but 99%?  They've already taken away all of the discounts.  ebay is saying, "Step up your selling ratio ...and Oh, we're also going to take away 99% of your ability to actually make sales. Fortunately I only had 420 listings running and it's now cut to 140 max.  Just seems a bit excessive.  Next they'll throw in a couple negative feedbacks for good measure.

[rograc-37]

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

I knew why I was being punished, but why not cut my selling ability by 70% or heck even 90%, but 99%?  They've already taken away all of the discounts.  ebay is saying, "Step up your selling ratio ...and Oh, we're also going to take away 99% of your ability to actually make sales. Fortunately I only had 420 listings running and it's now cut to 140 max.  Just seems a bit excessive.  Next they'll throw in a couple negative feedback for good measure.

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This is the kind of torturous, maleficent behavior that should have eBay's CEO and his dweebs standing in front of a judge. 

No credit given for years of service. Absolutely no management with any sort of backbone. It literally makes me sick. 😖

[luckythewinner]

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@rograc-37 wrote:
No credit given for years of service. 

One could argue the "credit given for years of service" was the initial selling limits of 11,000 items and $150,000. 

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[goodluckselling]

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@salon-1-audio wrote:

I knew why I was being punished, but why not cut my selling ability by 70% or heck even 90%, but 99%?  They've already taken away all of the discounts.  ebay is saying, "Step up your selling ratio ...and Oh, we're also going to take away 99% of your ability to actually make sales. Fortunately I only had 420 listings running and it's now cut to 140 max.  Just seems a bit excessive.  Next they'll throw in a couple negative feedbacks for good measure.

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Well the below standard can change to above standard it just takes time and transaction to factor against your current numbers.  You will have a new ratings on the 20th of each month. 

I get it that the lower selling limits has an effect on creating more transaction.  Hopefully the rating will go up on your next rating?

Good Luck Selling!