Help understanding seller restrictions

[modern4sale1]

I am trying to understand eBay's seller restrictions. We are a brick-and-mortar store and have around 25 employees. What we mainly sell on eBay are old lawn and garden parts and are trying to clear out small quantities of old stock. Our in-store system is not connected to eBay. We have 98.8% positive feedback. Our transaction defect rate is 3.01%. With the number of employees, we have there is a lot of activity and a lot of different situations arise.
- Often a part listed on eBay is sold within the store before we have time to unlist it on eBay.
- There are also situations where we sell a large heavy part and we have to coordinate shipping. Costs can vary as much as $100. So we work with the customer to avoid excessive shipping cost and end up canceling orders and relisting them with a different price including shipping, sometimes doing this more than once.
- There are situations where a part is listed as new and unopened but someone in house has now opened the package. Often a technician trying to verify if a part will work for a repair project they are working on. The order now has to be canceled because I can no longer sell it as new.
- Often employees are not even aware that the item that they have sold internally or used in a repair was even listed on eBay, we are a large store with tens of thousands of parts.

All this being said I feel as a seller in these conditions, we are doing pretty well being able to fill 97% of our orders on eBay and 98.8% of our buyers seem to agree. But eBay has an arbitrary 2% defect rate. The rules and the consequences seem very confusing. Once we rose above 2% we started getting emails with vague language such as "You may be a risk" or "Or your selling limits may be reduced" They do not explain how much your limits will be restricted or for how long or at what point they will return us to good standing. When we hit 3% the draconian restrictions began. We originally had 1086 individual items having a total quantity of 2036. As of today after around 7 weeks of restrictions, we now have 433 individual items with a total quantity of 818. Originally it was stated that the restriction would continue until the first of the month but that has long since passed and the restriction continues.

None of this makes any sense to me. I feel they do a very poor job of letting you know what the penalties are. When they will be enacted. For how long. When will they stop punishing us for some arbitrary limit they have imposed? Customer support seems to be non-existent or they are unwilling or unable to help you.

[soh.maryl]

Have no idea when/if eBay will stop punishing you for some arbitrary limit they have imposed, but, to an outsider, at least, from what you have detailed here, it would seem like you need to tighten up a bid on some of your internal procedures.  

Since you're such a large business, is your inventory not computerized?  

[fern*wood]

That sounds like an almost impossible setup to stay out of trouble.  I agree that based on that number of mine fields, you have done pretty good.  Unfortunately, you need to stay below 3% to avoid the penalties.  More sales should help that percentage if you get enough, but that gets sabotaged by the limited listings.  Otherwise you may not improve that much till a defect drops off the back end.

I would also immediately change how you do some things to avoid more defects.   At a minimum, I would pull the items that get listed and protect their integrity in a storage area.

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@modern4sale1 wrote: ... eBay has an arbitrary 2% defect rate. The rules and the consequences seem very confusing. Once we rose above 2% we started getting emails with vague language such as "You may be a risk" or "Or your selling limits may be reduced" They do not explain how much your limits will be restricted or for how long or at what point they will return us to good standing. When we hit 3% the draconian restrictions began.... When will they stop punishing us for some arbitrary limit they have imposed? ...

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Evaluations are once per month; restrictions are indefinite until your performance meets eBay standards. The restrictions will be reduced or lifted when your rating improves above their "arbitrary" percentage requirement. If the threshold is 2% and you're at 3.1%, then you will remain restricted until you get down to 2% or lower.   Have you read the Help page about seller performance evaluation?

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

As noted in the other post, you need to tighten up your stock tracking.  To avoid selling items as "new" when they are not, you could try not listing them as new in the first place.  Another way you can reduce your defect points is by being more careful about the reason that you choose when canceling a transaction, such as when making adjustments to shipping costs: Choose "buyer requested" rather than "out of stock." Or list with "freight" shipping and be sure that the shipping cost is accurate the first time when you send the invoice.

[caldreamer]

Anytime you cancel order using reason "out of stock, cannot find item or seller cancelled" (you get a defect on your account).   If you cancel using reason "buyer wants to cancel or problem with shipping address" you don't get defect").   Also when you get "item not receive or not as described" cases that is counted against you.

Additional final value fees may apply on sales in the following circumstances:

• If your account doesn't meet our minimum seller performance standards for the US in the evaluation on the 20th of the month, you'll be charged an additional 6% on the final value fees applicable to sales in the following calendar month. Go to your Seller Dashboard to check your current seller level. This fee does not apply to Above Standard and eBay Top-rated Sellers
• If your rate of 'Item not as described' return requests is evaluated in your service metrics as Very High in the evaluation on the 20th of the month in one or more categories, you will be charged an additional 5% on the final value fees for sales in those categories in the following calendar month. You can view your personalized service metrics on your Service Metrics dashboard in Seller Hub.

Any additional final value fees will be calculated as a percentage of the total amount of the sale. We'll indicate which listings are subject to additional fees on your Account Summary.

Note: If your account isn't meeting our minimum seller performance standards and you're rated Very High in your rate of 'Item not as described' return requests, you'll only be charged the additional final value fee for not meeting our minimum seller performance standards.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Online marketplaces loath and detest the way you are operating and, as you already know, punish you,

Cancelled orders detract from the image and reputation of the marketplace, not just your online image.

Changes in condition while the item is listed are anathema.

If the punishment you are receiving is unacceptable to you, you need to weigh that punishment against segregating the merchandise you offer on Ebay from your B&M inventory and eliminating the conflict.

You need to decide whether Ebay sales matter to you, and whether these changes would negatively impact your B&M business.

You are not unique. These problems also exist for sellers who sell on multiple online marketplaces, often when their inventory software is unable to handle them all effectively. The punishment was devised specifically for these situations.

[andyrt]

I'm confused about the heavy item part -- eBay has a section for you to enter the weight and dimensions of the stuff you're selling.  Are you doing that?   There is a "Freight" shipping method when you list an item. Make sure you're using that if you're selling items that have to go by freight.  Make sure you're entering weight and dimensions.  Or just choose "local pickup only" for items that are causing problems.

If you are having problems with boxes being opened -- don't list anything as new.  List as "Open Box."  Yes you may get a little less when the items are actually new, but you won't run into the problem of having to cancel and order because someone at the store opened the box.  You can bulk edit your items to change the condition quickly.

The seller dashboard should tell you what the thresholds and penalties are.  I've always thought they were pretty clear but I keep a close eye on my seller dashboard.   Here's the link:

https://sellerstandards.ebay.com/dashboard?region=US  

You have to treat eBay like your brick & motar store.  If you tell a customer that an item is in stock, and they drive to your store to buy it and it's not really there... they will be upset and leave a bad review.  If they think they're buying a new item and it's not really new, they will also leave a bad review.

I hope this helps.  I'm not sure how to handle the inventory deal other than to either acquire software that automatically syncs your eBay inventory to your store inventory, or make it one of your employees' jobs at the end of every day to search and end listings that have sold in the store.  You can enter your SKU on your eBay listings, and just have them search active listings for the sku and end the listing.

[dentalsales4u]

I don't know if this will help you or not, but I sell products from our B&M store inventory.

I am the only one allowed to handle eBay sales & inventory. If you get more people doing it, you will find yourself in bad situations.

I pull all items that I have listed on eBay and store in my office or a special section in the warehouse so no one can sell it or open it.

If the need arises where we don't have more stock other than what I have listed on eBay, they come to me first.

I remove the product off eBay before they are allowed to take any stock to open or sell to someone else.

This helps prevent us being in the situation you find yourself in. 

If you don't have an office large enough to put your eBay inventory, set up a section in your warehouse with cameras as we have. This way if someone does take something, we know who did it and can take action with said person.

We've been doing it this way since 2008 and it works.

Good luck to your future selling on eBay

[ten_o_nine]

If you would add some type of identifier to items listed on eBay and instruct employees to remove from eBay prior to selling or using it.

I would not list a single item (quantity of 1) on eBay and also have it available for sale in store, take those to the backroom and put a sign on top.

[modern4sale1]

Yes we are computerized and we have implemented changes and hopefully that will improve things but digging out of this hole has been difficult and making us  revaluate whether ebay is going to work for us.  Trying to operate at the level of perfection ebay expects may be easy when you have one person with complete control over the environment but our setup is nothing like that.

[dhbookds]

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@modern4sale1 wrote:

Yes we are computerized and we have implemented changes and hopefully that will improve things but digging out of this hole has been difficult and making us  revaluate whether ebay is going to work for us.  Trying to operate at the level of perfection ebay expects may be easy when you have one person with complete control over the environment but our setup is nothing like that.

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Ebay may not work for all sellers.......

[broto_64]

Selling on ebay is like selling in a shopping mall, you have to abide by their rules or else they remove your selling privileges and yes ebay considers it a privilege to sell here. B&M's often run into trouble with ebay because they try to run their ebay side the same as they run their own store and with their own policies, however if you sell on ebay then by ebay's policies you must abide. As you have found using your own policies on ebay only works out favorably if your policy and ebay's are in alignment, and when they are not it is you who suffers.

I see several violations, no matter the reason, for example cancelling orders is never a good thing, that includes guiding the buyer into "asking" for cancellations instead of cancelling for reason "out of stock" (thou the latter will result in a defect, the former won't go over well either if ebay's algorithm catches it or a buyer reports you).  If you do not have firm inventory control on ebay this one will bite you, repeatedly. As well charging a customer more than the original price isn't a good idea, no matter if shipping suddenly costs more buyers have a term called "bait and switch" and ebay has policies that address this. Then, a 97% fulfillment rate isn't considered good on ebay, it needs to be closer to 100% like 99.8% would still be good.

These are only the policy violations I wish to address, there are quite a few more but I'm not getting into all that... Several posters have given good ideas on how to address some of the violations, I see where you are not agreeing with them... We are not here to fight with you, we are here to try and help you but if our suggestions do not appeal to you then that is your choice and we are aware of that. However with your present metrics it would appear you're paying more in fees by not conforming to TRS+ guidelines and that only hurts your selling here... 

I will conclude by telling you that just selling on ebay to increase your bottom line and appearing concerned but not enough to institute actual changes is never a good thing, you could lose your seller status although generally they will first sanction and limit your selling privileges in addition to charging you higher fees. You see it's also just a numbers game to ebay but if you wish to do "well" here then you will have to change your ways to accomodate to ebay and not the other way around because ebay will not conform to you.

I am sorry if I am too blunt.