This is essential reading for any seller who has had an item not received, been rated below standard, appealed a defect, or received a refund from ebay. EBAY made a number of critical errors in handling an issue with my account that has my ebay business - my livelihood - on life support.
On november 4, a buyer opened an item not received claim. We exchanged messages and agreed to a solution. Then on Nov 10, he escalated the case and I was hit with my third case closed without seller resolution, which would take my seller performance rating to below standard. I contacted him and he explained it had been escalated by accident and he wanted to complete the transaction. I contacted ebay via phone and chat, and forwarded that email conversation to them. I figured it was settled but on nov. 20, that defect was still on my account and I was issued a below standard rating. i contacted the buyer and ebay again and successfully appealed the defect and it was removed from my account on Nov 22. So even though we had been effectively cleared of wrongdoing, the change would not be reflected on my account until the evaluation on Dec 20. They did promise to waive the 5% penalty fee triggered by a below standard rating (spoiler alert: they didn't) but that would not scratch the surface of the damages. For 28 days of the busiest online shopping month of the year, we were inaccurately labeled as Below Standard for a defect that hadn't been our fault. Our listings plunged dozens of places down in the search results. The bidders who weren't scared off by our rating almost always attempted to exploit our situation with lowball offers. We were forced to accept more than we turned down to manage.
It gets exponentially worse. In the first week of December, I downloaded the transaction report from the payouts page and saw that every sale had been hit with a 5% penalty for below standard seller performance (this is column AD in the report FYI). I called ebay yet again and the rep agreed to refund all the penalty fees up to that point. Broken into pieces, the refund showed up on our account on Dec 10 as as a $59.95 invoice credit and a $59.95 late payment fee credit. The rep apologized and again reassured me that we wouldnt be charged the 5% fee going forward. We did receive the refunds as promised but the 5% penalty fees continued. We called again and were told to wait til the beginning of the next month when all of the charges could be refunded in one single transaction. so we did.
Since the beginning of the year, i have spent over 17 hours on the phone and spoken with that many agents. we still haven't received the refund. On January 3 or 4, the representative calculated that we were owed $372 in penalty fee refunds and predicted that it would be in our bank account within 5 business days. When that didn't happen, i endured a 3.5 hour marathon call on January 9 where another rep and I went over every transaction for the entire month of november and december and identified the penalty fees to refund. This time, we concluded that we were owed another $118.5 and she swore that the refund would be processed within 24-48 hours. She would call back to revise this, explaining that the system would not let the refund go through until we had paid our outstanding fees of $27.99. We had a positive balance of $26.79 on our account and she planned to apply that balance to the outstanding fees but needed supervisor approval to do so. This would, she swore, add at most one more day to our wait. we were optimistic.
A few days pass and nothing has happened. Then, on January 15, we receive an email that we have a past due outstanding balance of $63.32 and threatening suspensions or restrictions. It didn't make sense. We are on managed payments. Our final value fees are taken off the top before funds are transferred to our bank account. Outside of that, a monthly store subscription of $27.99 was automatically deducted from our paypal account on the 30th of each month and we had made all our payments. In fact, we were better than current on our bill. As I mentioned, we had a positive balance of $26.79 at the start of the billing cycle covered by the January invoice. I called ebay again and expressed my disgust that they would hit me up with threats for money I had already paid them even as they continued to blow off my refunds. I demanded to know how we could go from positive $26.79 to owing $63.32 in a single billing period when our only expense was the store subscription. They couldn't do it but said someone would call within 24 hours. They did not.
The next morning our account was suspended and blocked for non-payment of past due fees. Our hundred or so active listings were removed and deleted. Our store is gone. Our subscribers and followers are gone. Our payouts were put on hold. All of our sales would now be subject to holds and penalties. Any body we had recently sold to or bought from received an email that we were a suspect trading partner.
I went ballistic. Made a few phone calls and then I realized what had happened. The first rep had made a mistake. She combined several of the penalty fees and issued a partial refund for them in the form of $59.99 "Invoice Credits." Technically she refunded the last three payments we had made to eBAY. Big problem. With those payments refunded back, the ebay system now only sees that no payments have been made for our store subscription in the past three months. So in an instance, we went from ahead on our bill with an established business (2800+ transactions / $70K +) to seriously delinquent and blocked, forced to start over and redo all those listings. It will cost us a full week of productivity to get back to where we were before all this started. We still have not been refunded for those fees. I am pleased though to say that momentum swung ever so slightly in our direction recently. The last guy with spoke to in billing seemed to understand my point and moved me to the top of the priority list. If everything goes as it should, he told me to expect an answer within 24-48 hours.
In addition to the refunds that we are owed, I personally think that I am entitled to some sort of additional compensation for the significant disruption to my life and business caused by the improper suspension of my store and my account. Thoughts? ,
