I've been a seller for a couple of years off and on recently, I had an older account that was more heavily used, but closed it when I started working full time, I have since opened a my current account (a couple years old) that I use once and while to sell and make purchases with so I guess you could call it kinda new. I started to post things for sell recently, sold some high dollar items (most of my items are high dollar). After a dozen or so sells with no issues, they still hold funds for 30 days. This is a hobby for me really, I don't relay on the income at all, I just figured it was a good way to get rid of things that hold value for someone else that for me are just taking up space that I have no interest in. I recently sold an item, over $900, and while I can get over the high fee's they charge, I cannot see the justification of ebay's "holding" of money that has been paid to them, put in their account, meant for me. I ship the item in good faith at this point, because at ANY given time, a buyer can claim the item caused emotional distress and open a case where ebay holds everything up and drags out a "case" for as long as possible, again, building interest off of what is properly mine, now, I have not had this happen to me, but I know MANY people who have gone through that situation. As for me, instead, I've had the old switcheroo; a person (usually a shop owner) buys an item, says the one I sent was damaged or wrong, then returns a box that contains a totally different item, in these cases, ebay (with the slowest of movements of course) refunds us both which just enables the crooked people to keep on doing things like, I suggest you video any unboxing of returns if your gonna sell on ebay, you might even want to video you packing items as well.. maybe ink the item in a black light activated ink or something.. the crooks are crazy on ebay. Back to my current situation with ebay holding of funds, I sold my item, all is well, so I took a chance and called ebay to get some real people info on this "hold" situation, the rep during the first call was a liar according to the last rep., she said all i had to do, was call back after the shipping info showed "received" and speak with an "account specialist", and request the hold removed since the item was received. So like a fool, I called, explained my situation, the lady right away starts talking in circles about the hold policy's and I explained that I didn't give my self the idea of calling in and making this request, it was something the initial calls rep said could be done, she basically called the last rep a liar and declined to help. This "hold policy" is the reason why I removed all my listings and will no longer sell on ebay. Its a TOTALLY one sided policy that gives no real reasons for the "hold". I asked the Rep I spoke with " so what are the exact criteria to ensure I do not get no holds going forward ?" she had no answer, which tells me, they will hold all the money they get off of sellers as long as they can, I even asked, if I sell more items with positive reviews, will you release sooner, she said she could not say since they are considered high dollar, the fact that there is no actual guideline or min. number of sells or reviews counter or any timeframe to speak of leads me to believe their goal is to hold sellers funds at their discretion and I believe this action would really hurt a seller if they did this as a full time gig hoping to sell quality high dollar items. I hope this helps anyone thinking of selling on this platform, I'm sure if you sell small / low dollar items, and get good reviews all day and can afford to let ebay build up all the interest on money owed to you, you would be fine selling on ebay. Long ago, when I first started selling items on ebay as a part time thing, it took a few (less than a dozen) sells to get them to release funds with a few positive reviews, I even remember getting into MANY high dollar sells and NEVER having the funds held since I had some positive history with them; I sold some electronics for over 5k and the funds were released same day once back in the day, not anymore i guess... as they say in the ebay payments department "better in my bank than theirs".
Good Luck to all.
