Hello.
I've been on ebay 8 years. I've mostly just sold items I don't need anymore, and a few years ago, started selling gold and silver. Things have been great.
I started a gourmet mushroom business. I am a sober, church on Sunday kinda guy. I service local restaurants, individuals, and often cook my mushrooms for my pastor or members of my church.
Back in April, I noticed a lag between the time I listed items and the time they appeared in search. Then it started happening to all my listings. I reached out to ebay and they said sometimes they need to ensure items fall within policy. I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal, so sure, take all the time you need.
Then the warnings came for my oyster mushrooms and chicken of the woods mushrooms. It took 7 reps to finally sort everything out. Then they told me my warnings were removed and listings were restored. They only removed 1 warning and restored 1 item.
A few days later, my listings got removed again and I was banned for seven days. I was threatened with a permanent ban.
I spoke to a rep who seemed to care, but there was nothing she could do. I asked to speak to a supervisor and she laughed and said they're not gonna care.
Meanwhile, there are regularly listings for dried magic mushrooms, and the spores and cultures necessary to manufacture scheduled substances. If you report them, nothing ever seems to happen.
Is there any way to return to selling food on this platform? Or get all these warnings off my account? Watching ebay mishandle this has been a real eye-opener for me. I get the impression they're fine with people selling actual drugs, but wild foraged food and organic/vegan/kosher food is just a risk they're not willing to take.
I even linked to a Wikipedia page about one of the species and the response I got was, "it is drug".
I reached out to some veteran sellers and their advice was to leave the platform when ebay gets you in their crosshairs like this, and to be honest, it sounds like really good advice.
Is there a path forward here?
