I have been selling on eBay since 1999. I've received several emails from eBay suggesting that I "upgrade" to a business account. I've also received emails about how I could apply for a business loan directly from eBay and I did other research that made it seem like it could be a good idea to "upgrade" my account. I was having a lot of success selling and just received another $300K consignment, so I decided to take the plunge and make this side hobby a business. All that was required was that I change my tax ID from my SSN to an EIN and add a business name and voila! I am a business. Everything else stayed the same (eBay selling name, address, phone, email, contact info, they still wanted my personal SSN, etc.). I also pre-paid for a year for a store subscription since I was getting ready to start bulk-listing again and there were financial benefits to paying for a virtual storefront. Two days ago I received an alert saying that I had reached my selling/listing limit of $25K for the month. I only had 46 items listed. This made NO SENSE to me since my selling/listing limits were nearly $1M and it took me YEARS to achieve such high levels, so I assumed it was a bug. I contacted eBay to see what was happening and learned that by changing my SSN to a business EIN and "upgrading" to a business account, I had to start over at a $25K selling/listing limit per month. I can request a selling limit increase once a month going forward, but it isn't guaranteed that it will be granted. I wasn't told this would happen or I wouldn't have done it. I asked if I could switch back to a personal account and they said that "any switch re-sets the selling limits, so the outcome would be the same." I could understand if I sold my account to someone else and the contact name, email, address, personal SSN, etc., all changed, but it didn't. It is all still me. So, this "upgrade" has destroyed my business entirely. Funny enough, they reset my selling limits, but they're allowing me to keep the feedback I received under my personal selling account. Oh yeah, I also cannot get a pro-rationed refund on the store subscription either (of course)...
I am writing this to hopefully save someone else from making the mistake of reading the eBay marketing emails and believing like me that "upgrading" your account will be a good thing for your burgeoning business.
