anyone else placed in below standard with no cases or complaints? why does this happen?

[costumeparts]

I make custom costumes. I need custom measurements to make most of my items. Sometimes the buyer does not send the info right away. Sometimes not ever and I eventually cancel and refund.

I found out this month that these activities may have been putting me in a below standard category and costing me in fees 6% of the total sale

Example:

In August I sold 10 different transactions of the same hat to one buyer who wanted all different colors and bought them separately, hours apart. I actually got him to cancel a few and pare it down to what he thought he needed. We agreed that I would make 2 of the hats in different sizes and he would pick the best one and I'd make the rest of the hats that size. This took like 3 weeks before I got the info to complete the orders and mail them off.

Around Oct 14 I noticed an extremely high fee charge in the order details of one of my transactions as I was printing the page (I only noticed because it was a Denmark registered buyer and DID YOU KNOW ebay will charge you like $2 for that? I DIDN'T and I guess just $2 on top of 6% gets your attention) and that started me down a path of realization that they were charging me an additional 6% for being below standard for those late shipments. 

But I got the email stating I was slipping back in Sept and I went to see what was going and phoned and wrote and supposedly had the defects removed after explaining all that about the hats. Yet my account still fell into below standard and the charge ensued (me unwitting until Oct 15th).

Even though my business model is highly incompatible Ebay's marketplace the way they micromanage it. Mismanage it? I still tried to make it work. 

 I would love to change the system somehow. Make them aware of sellers like myself and that there is a missed demographic they are hurting instead of growing

I would like a refund for the 6% they stole from me over this last month, the busiest month of my year no less (as I stated I make costumes and it's freakin halloween time)

I feel so wronged. I'm extremely customer focused. I'm being penalized for what?

I literally bring people to this website who find my items in searches. Ebay should be paying ME to sell here

If you look at my "feedback left",  I put "FIRST!" on all the users that are registered ebay users due to wanting to purchase MY item. Go look, I did it just for this RANT

So the kicker:

when I found out about the 21% being charged for every sale I quickly cancelled all the transactions that were in my hub and closed my shop. I was SO MAD. I did make it up to all those buyers who I just did the deal on my other ebay account for 15%.

And can we talk about THAT?

 I'm thinking I'm probably done here now due to that high commission and all this complaining is moot because Ima need to leave anyway. It's just too high.

Stupid me was thinking it was still 12% or something. 12% was Barely acceptable so you know 15% is bugging me out

You may have guessed I don't pay much attention to the policies changing around me.

Well cancelling all those items put me in below standard again. I feel like there is no way out. The guy on the phone says I have to wait it out and they will never refund. I don't find that is a good compromise. I want it all back, plus an apology, and a policy change.

Defects should only be due to customer complaint. and THEN I want all the sellers who DO get complaints NARU'd.

I'm Sick of this site. As a seller AND a buyer

I just want a venue on which I can sell my costumes. Why does it have to be so gut wrenching?

Yes, I am already at Bonanza and Etsy. But this is where I started in 99 and it makes me really sad to leave it behind. Will I ever be able to delete all these years of data?

[wastingtime101]

I agree that's a different scenario chapeau, and perhaps it's what glorygifts was referring to. If the seller needs info from the buyer to complete a custom order and the buyer is not responding, then yes, cancel. Give the buyer a deadline by which you need the info and if the buyer does not respond by that deadline then cancel as buyer requested (not for non-payment).

[chapeau-noir]

eBay used to have a much larger handmade/bespoke presence, but that was a long dang time ago, in the days of web rings and more flexible buyer/seller options. eBay along with the etailing world was much much smaller then and eBay was much less complex. Etsy took up the handmade market after about ? 2005. So there really isn't much in the way of infrastructure to support hand crafted/bespoke anymore.

[gloryglorygifts]

This is from yesterday...

[wastingtime101]

As I mentioned above @gloryglorygifts - if you need info from the buyer to complete a custom order and the buyer does not respond to messages then that would be a valid reason to cancel with the reason "buyer requested".

Hey kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay - could one of you make sure the CS rep from gloryglorygifts screenshot gets proper coaching? Two issues with the advice they gave out.

1. Handling time can be up to 40 biz days - it's not limited to 30 days since eBay extended it last year. This is not mentioned in the handling time policy (link) but it is clearly defined on the presale policy (link).

2. The CS rep said if the buyer pays a seller can cancel an order using the reason buyer did not pay. That's just flat out wrong. The option to cancel for non-payment will not appear if the buyer paid.

[kyle@ebay]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

As I mentioned above @gloryglorygifts - if you need info from the buyer to complete a custom order and the buyer does not respond to messages then that would be a valid reason to cancel with the reason "buyer requested".

Hey kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay - could one of you make sure the CS rep from gloryglorygifts screenshot gets proper coaching? Two issues with the advice they gave out.

1. Handling time can be up to 40 biz days - it's not limited to 30 days since eBay extended it last year. This is not mentioned in the handling time policy (link) but it is clearly defined on the presale policy (link).

2. The CS rep said if the buyer pays a seller can cancel an order using the reason buyer did not pay. That's just flat out wrong. The option to cancel for non-payment will not appear if the buyer paid.

---

Hey @wastingtime101 these are great callouts!  Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  We'll be glad to get the proper coaching passed on!

[luckythewinner]

When I found out about the 21% being charged for every sale I quickly cancelled all the transactions that were in my hub and closed my shop. I was SO MAD.

{snip}

Well cancelling all those items put me in below standard again. I feel like there is no way out.

You missed the "way out". The way out was to complete the transactions that you were obligated to complete, and not cancel them because you got "so mad".

You may have guessed I don't pay much attention to the policies

{snip}

Make them aware of sellers like myself and that there is a missed demographic

eBay is not interested in the demographic of sellers who fail to complete transactions because they get mad and who are not interested in knowing eBay policy.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Do not be surprised that those last cancellations lead Ebay to close your other account.

[valueaddedresource]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

As I mentioned above @gloryglorygifts - if you need info from the buyer to complete a custom order and the buyer does not respond to messages then that would be a valid reason to cancel with the reason "buyer requested".

Hey kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay - could one of you make sure the CS rep from gloryglorygifts screenshot gets proper coaching? Two issues with the advice they gave out.

1. Handling time can be up to 40 biz days - it's not limited to 30 days since eBay extended it last year. This is not mentioned in the handling time policy (link) but it is clearly defined on the presale policy (link).

2. The CS rep said if the buyer pays a seller can cancel an order using the reason buyer did not pay. That's just flat out wrong. The option to cancel for non-payment will not appear if the buyer paid.

---

Great points @wastingtime101 ! Sadly support is sometimes not the best source of information for some of these issues.

@gloryglorygifts - you can confirm the handling time info easily by opening up a new draft listing and seeing what options are available.

[gloryglorygifts]

WTH?? You already addressed this in a prior comment.  

[wastingtime101]

Unfortunately that's true about CS @valueaddedresource . You and I are both very familiar with the 40 biz day handling time because it was the 2 of us that pushed eBay to update the help page after the policy was changed. Only took a year or so. 😂

Not surprised you found this discussion as we both always have an eye out for when that 40 biz days comes in to play. 🙂

[valueaddedresource]

@costumeparts unfortunately I don't have anything helpful to advise as far as the below standard issues, as others have said if you want to continue selling on eBay you'll just have to try to work your way out of it.

However, if you do decide to keep trying to make eBay work for you, I'd suggest looking into eBay's personalization settings.

https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/listings/item-specifics#personalize-with-ebay

I'll start by saying the personalization setting is very basic and it's disappointing eBay hasn't done more with it, but even the basic setting may help with your situation.

If you use the Personalize item specific, you could enter instructions to the buyer to provide the measurements you need. That creates a text box on the listing itself for the buyer to enter the info which is then sent as a message to the seller.

Not every buyer will use it of course and you may have to play around with it a bit, but it may at least make it more obvious to buyers that you will need this custom information and if it cuts down on even some percentage of you having to chase them down for the info not get responses leading to cancellation, maybe it would help?

[valueaddedresource]

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@gloryglorygifts wrote:

WTH?? You already addressed this in a prior comment.  

---

@gloryglorygifts if this was directed at me, color me confused...that was my first comment in this thread? 🤷‍

[valueaddedresource]

---

@wastingtime101 wrote:

Unfortunately that's true about CS @valueaddedresource . You and I are both very familiar with the 40 biz day handling time because it was the 2 of us that pushed eBay to update the help page after the policy was changed. Only took a year or so. 😂

Not surprised you found this discussion as we both always have an eye out for when that 40 biz days comes in to play. 🙂

---

@wastingtime101  exactly...I'd suggest they should add it to the handling time help page too but that would probably take another year. 😂

[gloryglorygifts]

LOL oops. I'm having a bad day and thought I was responding to wasting my time. Apologies. 

[costumeparts]

@luckythewinner 

You're an **bleep**

I'm just here to delete my listings.

The only good advice was the personalization suggestion which I received in my email just now and came to read it and saw the above comment. Won't miss this place reMOTEly

full of trolls hoping to ruin someone's day