Little background information.
I am a cell phone refurbishing business that purchases devices from eBay, fixes them, and sells them. I have been constantly reinvesting the funds to purchase more/larger lots. Near the end of this restriction, I had reached $10k in sales in 90 days with months before of $1-3k. This growth was fairly consistent over time.
Anyways.
May 23, 2023:
A selling/Payout restriction was put onto the account, they wanted proof of purchase of the devices I was selling/recently sold. I provided this information easily as I had purchased 95% of the devices through eBay. This restriction was then closed and all was clear.
Jul 31, 2023
Another restriction was placed on my account. This was for identity verification. Driver's license, utility bill, etc. This information was provided and they removed the restriction.
Aug 6th, 2023
The account was restricted for recent credit card statements and proof of purchase of my devices. Again, the devices I was selling were bought from eBay.
Aug 7th, 2023
They denied the appeal because they could not validate where I purchased the devices. Even though I sent eBay transactions with transaction numbers, they could not validate them.
I called on August 7th, and they told me that they were going to redo their inspection and it should be closed.
Later that day, they responded with an email stating that once my recent sales were delivered they would continue with the appeal. This appeal was closed but right on Aug 24th, they put another restriction on it.
Aug 24, 2023
Another restriction was placed asking for the government ID and utility bill. These were provided and denied. The same exact ID (with a recent utility bill) was sent in and they denied it.
Aug 27th, 2023
They said I needed to close one open return so they could continue with the appeal. I rushed to the mail on a Sunday night so I could finally be done with this. After closing it and sending a follow-up email, they responded in 20 minutes by permanently restricting me from selling.
Aug 28th, 2023
Called asking what happened. They told me that I was putting the eBay community at risk and that their risk assessment team deemed that my account should be closed without appeal. They did not give a reason for this as "It may put [eBay] at risk."
TLDR: Really confusing restrictions. At the end of all this, I have a permanently restricted top-rated seller account.
The only negative aspect of my account was a batch of phones that had poor inspection practices. My return rate is at 14% where 8% is industry standard. I've worked on my practices to have much better processes in place. Aside from this issue, my account has 250+ transactions with 95% feedback. I know this is relatively low but I have had one run-in with feedback extortion and one negative feedback that will be falling off here soon as they did not ship their return.
Fairly confident my future with eBay is over as, from what I hear, they do not reinstate this. Really wish this would have turned out better as I have been trying to make some honest money.
Hope this helps someone out there.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
