Ebay has restricted my account visibility for dropshipping while I'm not a dropshipper

[lovebrico]

Hi Guys,

last week I got this email from the Ebay team:

"Hello,

We’ve determined that you haven’t followed our selling practices - drop shipping policy.

There is evidence on your account that you are purchasing items from an online retail or marketplace site after you sell the item on eBay and having that retailer ship the item directly to the customer. While in violation of this policy, the account will not be eligible for the Top Rated program until it is in compliance.

For more information on this and related policies, please go to:

Drop shipping:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/shipping-items/setting-shipping-options/drop-shipping?id=4176

Selling practices policy:
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy?id=4346

Seller levels and performance standards:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/seller-levels-performance-standards/seller-levels-performance-stan...

Regards,

The eBay team"

After that, I noticed a huge decrease in the number of daily impressions (from an average of 15000 to 4000) and, as a consequence, in daily sales. The point is that I'm not a drop shipper, all my products are stocked and shipped from our warehouse  and I never practiced drop shipping, even though it is allowed from wholesale suppliers. Our tracking numbers witness that we do not practice drop shipping. I called the support to handle this issue and their only answer is that I have to wait for the Ebay Security Team check (still waiting). In the meantime, I'm losing sales, money, traffic and I suppose even my Top Rated Status over the next evaluation. I think this is not legal, after years of efforts i'm selling nothing in these days. Did anyone of you have the same problem? Can you please help me? 

[rebell45]

Just keep calling, emailing, until you get results. Make enough noise and maybe you'll get noticed.

[lacemaker3]

Hi @lovebrico, I see that you are listing your items on eBay Italy, and most of them are only available to be sold and shipped to Italy.

You are asking this question on the eBay USA community, and it is possible that the rules and policies may be different on eBay Italy. However, there have been similar reports from sellers here in the USA as well.

Do you have a postal code in the listing for all of your listings? Here on eBay USA, sellers are required to have a postal code in all of their listings. It used to be allowed to just put the city and state, but that is not good enough any more. Now the sellers are required to have an actual postal code, and if the listing doesn't have a postal code, it appears that eBay is using this as an indication that the seller is drop-shipping.

If you do have a postal code in all of your listings, are you always shipping the item from the postal code that was provided? Some sellers here store their items in more than one place, so they are required to put the correct postal code for where each item is actually located. It appears that eBay is checking to make sure that the items were shipped from the same postal code that was in the listing.

[dhbookds]

You are in Italy.... and apparently do not ship to the US.......this is the US board.....and while we could give advice, it may not apply to Italy/EU rules that may be in place.  Suggest you ask on one of the European boards........ 

[lacemaker3]

Follow up to my previous reply.

I see that your listings say that your items are located in Avellino, which is Postal code 83100. However, when I search for your listings with shipping to 83100 in Italy, I see 1,336 listings, and they all say that the item is located 20 km from 83100.

Looking at a postal code map of Italy, I see that there are a number of nearby postal codes, which are located less than 5 km from 83100, so it appears that postal code covers an area of less than 5 km radius. This suggests that the problem may be that you don't have the correct postal code (83100) on your listings to match the stated location (Avellino).

I am not familiar with postal codes in Italy, but this is what I found out through google.

[lovebrico]

The products are stored in Cervinara, postal code 83012 which is in city of Avellino (here in Italy we say “provincia”). If you look at the postal code of item locations you’ll find 83012 which is correct. I can try to change the location from avellino to cervinara in order to be more precise but this is not an evidence that i would buy from an online marketplace or retailer after selling on Ebay.  All our products are shipped from our warehouse located in the cap 83012 which is clearly indicated on our shop and it does not exist any evidence for drop shipping, the email we got from Ebay is telling false accusations. We’re assessing the opportunity to act by legal ways in order to be compensated for all the sales we are losing (traffic is roughly 25% of our average over the last months). I don’t know if this is a good idea.

[lovebrico]

Just changed the location to Cervinara @lacemaker3 let's see what happens, I hope this was the issue as you suggested...

[lacemaker3]

Hi @lovebrico, I hope that helps. From experiences here in the USA, there won't be any change until after your next seller performance evaluation, which is usually on the 20th of each month.

I think there is some misunderstanding due to different languages here. I don't speak a lot of Italian, so I didn't realize it before.

I do see that your listings now show the location as the town città Cervinara, Italy, where before they showed the città Avellino, Italy. I understand that the towns communi (plural) Cervinara and Avellino are both in the province or district provincia  Avellino, but the way it was shown on your listings, they were showing that the items were in the città  Avellino, not just the provincia  Avellino.

provincia:

Administrative district of the state territory, consisting of a plurality of neighboring municipalities, the most important of which constitutes the capital.

[lovebrico]

Yes, that's why I put a more precise location following your suggestion (I agree with you on this but notice that the CAP was right, it's an Ebay limit that they don't associate the precise location to the right Cap, everywhere else when you give the Cap, the location is showed automatically). I hope it's gonna help but I don't think so. In the morning I got a call from Ebay Support asking me a few questions: they don't even know what is the problem, they just say they have an algorithm according to which they identify potential drop shippers but for sure no evidence about  "purchasing items from an online retail or marketplace site after you sell the item on eBay and having that retailer ship the item directly to the customer". This never happened and I find extremely unfair how they're handling my case. I'm gonna wait for their next answer and let you know, for sure I wouldn't recommend Ebay to other sellers, I'm selling nothing in these days.

Many thanks for your suggestion.