An insanely infuriating issue - read my letter to eBay

[cheapestcoinsupplies]

As usual, customer service was absoluetly useless. I chatted with two different people, both unfamiliar with eBay policy. I then responded to the email they told me to respond to and of course I got a donotreply notification. Read my letter:

Hi,

I started selling on this account in early December. I initially started by selling HE Harris Coin Folders. These items don’t qualify for the eBay Standard Label, so I initially shipped 34 of them in the first two weeks I was on eBay without tracking. Each of these items was sold for $2 - $8. It has been three weeks since many of these items went out. I have 100% positive feedback and have not had a single dispute with ebay.

I have sold hundreds of items over $8 too, all of them shipped with tracking. I no longer ship any items without tracking. All orders are mailed with tracking!

Fast forward to today. CDN Exchange, an industry group in the coin collecting hobby, submitted a request to eBay attempting to add their badge to my account. Instead of approving me, I was instantly suspended without any warning or notice. 

I have never heard of anyone being suspended for shipping a few items without tracking. According to the eBay forums, it is exceedingly rare. Many coin sellers ship THOUSANDS of orders a year with zero tracking and they have NO ACTION taken against them.

It is impossible for me to upload tracking for these 34 orders dating back a month as they have already been mailed and delivered. As I said I have 100% positive feedback and am an above average seller. EVERYONE has received their items!

This is incredibly infuriating because,

1. I had over $4000 worth of active auctions. These auctions were ended without warning and I will now have to restart them from scratch.
2. I have $2300 in payouts that I can’t withdraw, even though almost every single one of these items has tracking and has been marked as Delivered!
3. I spent around $200 on Promoted listings and now that money is gone due to an unfair suspension.
4. It is unclear if I’ll be able to see my listings again or if I’ll have to recreate all of them from scratch. I spent a while optimizing those.

I should not have been suspended from ebay for 34 untracked shipments under $8 in value dating back to a month ago when larger accounts are able to send out thousands of mailpieces a year without tracking. For the 34 untracked shipments, I was prepared to instantly grant any request due to the item not being tracked.

Thank you for any help.

[inhawaii]

Ebay doesn't care how many items you send out without tracking.

They DO care how many "item not received" cases your customers have filed.  

[maxine*j]

I doubt you were suspended because you shipped some coins without tracking.   Tracking is to protect you against INR claims, not to protect eBay.

When your account was suspended, you were given some sort of reason (however vague), so what was the reason given?

You do know that new sellers have selling limits and lengthy holds on funds, right?

You do know that it sets off alarms at eBay when a new seller offers a lot of valuable items because of the incidents of eBay being used to dispose of stolen goods, right?

Anyhow, what was the reason given for the suspension?

Selling Limits:

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/selling-limits?id=4107

Holds:

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/getting-paid/getting-paid-items-youve-sold/payments-hold?id=4816

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[bonjourami]

Providing tracking is not an Ebay requirement for any seller.

[house*of*paws]

Hi @cheapestcoinsupplies 

Sorry this happened.  ALL sellers get 'dinged' for late shipping if there is no record of items being scanned 'Accepted'.

I generally advise sellers who wish to ship certain items without tracking to open a separate account just for those untracked items.  That way your main account will not be penalized because of the way you choose to ship.

The best place to contact eBay currently is on social media.  They have the most knowledgeable and helpful reps according to all who've used them.  Go here:

https://twitter.com/askebay
https://www.facebook.com/eBay/

Good luck to you!  Please let us know how things turn out.

[monroe67]

"Fast forward to today. CDN Exchange, an industry group in the coin collecting hobby, submitted a request to eBay attempting to add their badge to my account. Instead of approving me, I was instantly suspended without any warning or notice."

Did eBay give a reason you are suspended from selling?  What was it?  
Because having an industry group (in any endeavor) wanting to add their badge to your account or your listings doesn't sound like a bad thing at all.   

"I have never heard of anyone being suspended for shipping a few items without tracking."

Having read previous responses to your post, I don't think anybody has heard of that.  That is not eBay's reason to suspend you. 

"Many coin sellers ship THOUSANDS of orders a year with zero tracking and they have NO ACTION taken against them."

Again:  The lack of tracking is not the reason for your suspension.  
Shucks, if lack of tracking was even a venial sin in eBay, my selling ID would have been gone a long time ago.  

"This is incredibly infuriating because . . . .

[3.]  I spent around $200 on Promoted listings and now that money is gone due to an unfair suspension."

I think you've learned an expensive lesson about Promoted Listings.  

[josephb555]

Providing a tracking number is a good idea but not required by eBay. There must have been a different reason why you were suspended. I suggest you speak to eBay on the phone and find out.

[1786davycrockett]

@cheapestcoinsupplies 

"Fast forward to today. CDN Exchange, an industry group in the coin collecting hobby, submitted a request to eBay attempting to add their badge to my account. Instead of approving me, I was instantly suspended without any warning or notice. "

Perhaps this is the underlying reason for your suspension -- eBay might not want an outside industry group interfering with their website.  It might involve proprietary information, which I doubt eBay wishes to divulge.

Just a thought.

[glgenterprise]

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@cheapestcoinsupplies wrote:

As usual, customer service was absoluetly useless. I chatted with two different people, both unfamiliar with eBay policy. I then responded to the email they told me to respond to and of course I got a donotreply notification. Read my letter:

(clip)

Fast forward to today. CDN Exchange, an industry group in the coin collecting hobby, submitted a request to eBay attempting to add their badge to my account. Instead of approving me, I was instantly suspended without any warning or notice. 

(clip)

I should not have been suspended from ebay for 34 untracked shipments under $8 in value dating back to a month ago when larger accounts are able to send out thousands of mailpieces a year without tracking. For the 34 untracked shipments, I was prepared to instantly grant any request due to the item not being tracked.

Thank you for any help.

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You were not suspended for items without uploaded tracking. There is another reason. The annoying thing is that eBay is often very secretive about why they suspend or permanently limit accounts. It's super frustrating as a seller to not understand what tiny policy you've violated to get your hand slapped. You can inquire via the Facebook page (which is usually more successful for me to get a reasonable answer) or make another pass at CS, which is not probably going to get you anywhere.

The badge thing from CDN is confusing to me.  That being said, I don't sell in the collectibles arena. If CDN wanted to add a badge to your listings, wouldn't that be up to you as a seller? Why would eBay get involved in the process? So long as the badge was within your listing description, and met the HTML requirements, Why would eBay have to approve it?