Seller Performance below Standard for months.

[tommytom]

Hi folks,



i would like to ask you to excuse any language related mistakes in advance as I am from germany and english is not my native language.



This is my issue:



My girlfriend now has a 6 months seller history on her ebay accont. She has done 140 transactions and got 11 defects of which 7 were caused by buyers asking for their goods or reporting goods damaged by transportation and 4 giving low DSR on 'article as described'. No Case closed without sellers participation. 100% positive feedbacks. Stars: 4,7 - 4,8 - 4,8 - 4,9

Defect Rate: 8%



She communicated very polite and helpfully with all buyers, even with the more difficult ones. There has never been any serious bigger conflict. She never refused resending or refounding.



She said she was never worried as she felt that every buyer was happy in the end and gave great feedback, so she didn't deal with the seller performance things. Now as I look at her data I assume that she must have been under standard like all the time for the past 6 months. She received a notification email in which she was prompted to improve her performance in the january and march this year. She didnt sell anything since the beginning of february, so she is inactive atm. No restrictions yet.



What will most likely happen, if she keeps not using this account? Will she get suspended or will there be any other restriction before or will just nothing happen?



I heard, that closing the account would not help, as there is a long 'closing time' of 30 or 180 days (some people say 14 days, some say 30 and some say 180).

Is that correct?



My biggest worry is, that my own account would get suspended also in the worst case as it is connected to the same bank account and we often used to log in from the same location (ip and also same cookies). My account has a 100% feedback, 14 years seller history and is above average seller performance. Is it likely, that I would get banned also?



What can we do to avoid suspensions? Shall we immediately start a 1-Euro-Campaign to improve the seller rating?



Please don't tell us that we should have taken this more seriously earlier as we are aware of it...



Any advices, feedbacks are welcome.



Thank you in advance

 

[silvermusic]

Feedback means little nowadays, it's all based around defect percentages. If you stop selling the percentage will only rise. The quick answer is to dilute the percentages with more good sales, even possibly selling a lot of small things at break even. Doing nothing if you want to keep your account is not an option, it's the way the system works unfortunately.

 

[Chris34]

Your Ebay account is linked to

1. Your bank account
2. Your home address
3. Your telephone number
4. Your computers IP address
5. Your Paypal account
6. Your name

If somebody in your household gets banned then all accounts that are registered to that house get banned. Any of the above list that you share with the banned account will link you to that account and lead to a ban. You might be able to get your account back but it's a huge risk. You basically will get banned and then have to hope they will listen to you when explaining that you are not the person who they have banned. In short they won't believe you and it's unlikely you would get your account back.

If you try and change your address and your bank account before getting banned then they are still likely to link your account to your girlfriends account and assume that you are the same person, so you will get banned.

The best thing you can do is to keep your account separate from your girlfriends account. Out of that list above, make sure that nothing is the same as your girlfriends. Don't use the same computer, ever, and definitely don't let her use your computer, ever.

If I was you I'd stop your girlfriend using her account, don't let her touch it. Then I would use her account and sell lots of cheap items very very cheaply, sell them for less than they are worth. As soon as they are sold then you ship them and make sure that everything goes perfectly with the sale. Do this to get the sales volume high which should then dilute the defect rate.

Once the defect rate has been diluted then stop using the account for at least 6 months then close down the account. Then wait another six months and tell your girlfriend to re-open an account but to use a completely different address, bank account, computer, Paypal account, name and telephone number.

It seems extreme but it's your only chance. You are not dealing with real people at Ebay you are dealing with robots and if the computer says 'no' then that's basically it, you will not be able to change their minds.

It might seem cruel to your girlfriend but she has screwed up her account and that account is going to be closed and your girlfriend will get a permanent ban. If you take control of it then there is a chance that you could turn it around and she might be able to have an account again in the future. As it is at the moment though your girlfriends account is about to get banned and your account will get banned, not straight away. it might take a couple of months but you will get banned and it will be permanent.

Sell cheap everyday items that appeal to decent people that you know will not receive any bad feedback or returns. That's your best chance.

Ebay unfortunately are horrible to work with but for many of us it's a necessary evil. They say "jump" you have to say "how high". It's their game and so it's there rules that everyone has to play by.


Chris.

 

[tommytom]

Thank you guys. You really helped me to make the decision.

So I will immediately start the account rescue campaign.

New questions:

1.) Would you still recommend me to link both accounts to other bank accounts?

2.) If a buyer buys more than one piece of an item, this will count as 1 transaction, right? Would it make any differences if he buy x times 1 piece of the item would that count as x transactions?
Furthermore, is there a way i can have friends of me processing more than 1 transaction at the same time (and would that be safe regarding to the ebay robots?)

3.) Is it recommandable to call ebay to ask them how serious the matter with this account is and if there is any way to obtain more time to bring the account back to standard?

 

[Chris34]

1) I can't see it doing any harm to move your Ebay account to a different bank account right now. At the moment both accounts are still live so in theory nothing is wrong yet so it's not going to make the situation any worse by changing bank accounts. Do as much as you can to distance your own Ebay account from your girlfriends account now so that you have the best chance of avoiding getting linked. Have you got parents who you can use their home address for your account? If you have then use their telephone number for the registered one.

2) I wouldn't bother using friends, anything like that and you are running risks. Just sell items that normally sell like hotcakes, as cheap as you can find. It's going to cost you money but hopefully the cost should be less than £100 to get 100 or so sales which should be enough to restore the rating on the account.

3) Whatever you do don't speak to Ebay about it. Think of it this way, if you were speeding on the road in your car, well would you go and tell a policeman about it and hope that he understands your situation? Course you wouldn't, he has a job to do to uphold the law, the law is the law and he has to act in accordance to the law. You would keep quiet and hope that nobody noticed.

Well treat Ebay like you would treat the police, if you break their rules then you will get punished, it doesn't matter how you broke the rules the fact is that their rules were broken and you will get punished. It's best to work with the system and play 'their game' to restore your account. It's got nothing to do with customer satifaction or whether you or your girlfriend are law abiding citizens who go to church every Sunday and help little old ladies cross the road. The computer says 'no' so you have to get it so the computer says 'yes'.

You need to find out what the date of evaluation is for the account. In the UK it's on about the 20th of every month, if it's the same in your country then you are going to have to work very fast as you have only got about 20 days.

Don't sell anything that anybody can have much of an opinion on. Sell boring everyday items like plug leads. Find something that's selling very fast for small money and zero profit / slight loss.

It's a total pain to have to do all this but it's your only chance. You only have to type in Ebay or Amazon and account banned / suspended into Google to see what happens.


Chris.

 

[tommytom]

Thank you chris!

3) Whatever you do don't speak to Ebay about it. Think of it this way, if you were speeding on the road in your car, well would you go and tell a policeman about it and hope that he understands your situation? Course you wouldn't, he has a job to do to uphold the law, the law is the law and he has to act in accordance to the law. You would keep quiet and hope that nobody noticed.

I actually just contemplated to ask them like "Hey guys I unfortunately did some mistakes and fell below standard. I didnt use the account for 2 months, no restrictions yet and actually I didn't plant to sell anything for a while but... am I in risk of getting suspended? Shall I start selling again and better to avoid getting suspended, or can I just stop using it and nothing will happen?"
I was not going to tell anything about linked accounts.

You need to find out what the date of evaluation is for the account. In the UK it's on about the 20th of every month, if it's the same in your country then you are going to have to work very fast as you have only got about 20 days.

Yea it's the 20th of the month here, too. But I received the warning mails on Jan 7th and March 4th. I didn't receive in February, though the performance wasn't any better then.

Don't sell anything that anybody can have much of an opinion on. Sell boring everyday items like plug leads. Find something that's selling very fast for small money and zero profit / slight loss.

Good idea.

How can I avoid letting people buy multiple items at once? I.e. I place a listing of 1-Euro item which is 9 times available. I don't want anybody to buy it 9 times as I make more financial loss and only get 1 transaction (right?)

 

[tommytom]

Hmm... the account finally got restricted today. I managed it to make 50 transactions but I still need 30 more.

I have like enough listings running so I think I can make it.

I have some questions about these restrictions I got. It seems like I can not create any more new listings for this month and also I can't increase the amouts of articles on the listings, right?

I have some 1-Euro-Auctions running and most propably they will end up with no buyers. When I created that auction I used the option "relist if the item is not sold" (or silmar like that, I don't know how it is expressed exactly in english). Now, will that item really be relisted as the account is restricted now?

 

[Chris34]

Sorry to hear that the account got restricted. The listings you have will not automatically relist, they will come up as an error message saying 'listing failed'.

What does the restriction say? It used to be that you had to improve your DSR's to get the restriction lifted, but with a restriction it's near impossible to do that as you can't sell enough.

They will evaluate the whole 12 months DSR's to give you your score, if you managed to get more than 300 transactions in the last 3 months then they will evaluate the last 3 months DSR's to evaluate your score, so that might be something that you want to keep a note of for your own account in the future.


Chris.

 

[Massive_stock_sale]

Hmm... the account finally got restricted today. I managed it to make 50 transactions but I still need 30 more.

I have like enough listings running so I think I can make it.

I have some questions about these restrictions I got. It seems like I can not create any more new listings for this month and also I can't increase the amouts of articles on the listings, right?

I have some 1-Euro-Auctions running and most propably they will end up with no buyers. When I created that auction I used the option "relist if the item is not sold" (or silmar like that, I don't know how it is expressed exactly in english). Now, will that item really be relisted as the account is restricted now?

Hi,
I've been in the same situation and that has pushed me to sell my business. With the way ebay works, the restriction will never be lifted. I hope that your other seller account hasn't been restricted/limited. You could always try and open a new account and hope ebay is a bit more lenient. If not, try to contact every customer and get them to review the Detailed Seller Rating that they left or remove any negative feedback.

 

[tommytom]

Hey guys,

the DSR are not the problem... I got 4.8 / 4.8 / 4.8 / 4.9. It were rather too many ppl opening cases for not receiving items in time (yes we chose unfortunate transport service) or getting transportation damages (yes the package was bad in some cases). Yes we messed it up a little which resulted in a query (defect) in like every 15 transactions or so... but we learned from that.

Nevertheless, we managed it to make 60 of 80 required defect-free transactions and we have enough listings running so I am pretty sure that we will achieve those 80 transactions in just a few more days.

But what makes me very concerned is the fact that the defect rate was not updated since the 1th of april.

Even though I will achieve the required defect-free transaction amount (to get a rate lower than 5%) in a few days... as the defect rate is not being updated (it seems that it is only updated on the last day of the month?!) I assume that my service performance will not turn to above average on the 20th april because of this.

So does this mean that my defect rate will not be updated before 4-30 and consequently my service status will not be improved before 5-20 then?

That's a long time until then and I am really concerned that the account might get suspended before... :-( any advices or comforting words anyone?

 

[tommytom]

I just got told by a friend, that the defect rate might be updated on the 20th also, but he isn't sure. Is he right?

By the way, my main account is not affected by any restriction. Could that mean that these accounts are not linked?

 

[silvermusic]

In your position I'd look on this as turning point.. Do you really need eBay? Build your own website and be independent, Rather than concentrating on continually jumping through hoops for eBay, you forget all about it and put the time and effort into building your business and website without eBay. eBay should only ever be a stepping stone to bigger better things and be an addition to your business.