# eBay unfairly restricted my selling account



## Morrikeiro (Dec 4, 2015)

Hi there

Ive been using eBay now for little over a year. During this time i have been selling printed garments that we have designed ourselves.

Just recently eBay have restricted my account and i will not be allowed to sell through this account anymore. I am very disappointed as i have just got my business of the ground and was my sales was doing well. 

Ebay restricted me due to my seller rating being below standards, my feedback score was 97.4% 
Item has described 4.9 out of 5
Communication 5 out of 5
Dispatch time 4.9 out of 5
postage and packing charges 4.9 out of 5

1 negative in the past month - 2 neutral - 21 positive 
3 negative in the past 6 months -3 neutral - 105 positive
4 negative in the past 12 months - 4 neutral - 154 positive 

i have never had any major problem with any buyer, a few cases have been open but i have always sorted and closed cases with the buyer.

I am a fair and honest seller. My customer always come first, i pay my eBay fees on time and never miss a payment.

i feel i am being treat very unfairly by eBay as they have took my biggest selling platform away from me?

Can anyone shed any light on my situation and does anybody know any alternative.

thank you


----------



## roadrunner197069 (Nov 22, 2015)

Every stat you posted looks just fine, I suspect you made some shirt with a copyrighted image and got reported more then once.


----------



## proworlded (Oct 3, 2006)

Have you contacted them?


----------



## Ripcord (Sep 2, 2006)

That does seem like a lot of negatives. I don't have any in 12 years. How many total sales have you made?


----------



## Mtnview (Nov 5, 2009)

Morrikeiro said:


> i feel i am being treat very unfairly by eBay as they have took my biggest selling platform away from me?
> 
> Can anyone shed any light on my situation and does anybody know any alternative.


What is Ebay's side of the story?


----------



## 2020 PrintWorks (Apr 22, 2011)

The same thing happened to me last Christmas. I'd been selling on there for 3 years. Had near perfect ratings and feedback but got quite a few negatives due to not getting stuff out fast enough. We were in the middle of moving during the Christmas rush and it really screwed us. Your most likely banned for life. You can't open a new account. They have very sophisticated ways of finding out if its you opening the account, and I've even read that they will ban people who are associated with you if you try too many times. I sincerely hope you get re-instated but from what I've read that decision is usually final.


----------



## SusanB23 (Dec 6, 2015)

Morrikeiro said:


> Hi there
> 
> Ive been using eBay now for little over a year. During this time i have been selling printed garments that we have designed ourselves.
> 
> ...


Honestly, when it comes to eBay, there is no such thing as unfairly.

Sad to say, but it is there rules you play by no matter how ridiculous they may be or how they are enforced.

Considering you suspended indefinitely, you have 3 options:

1) Call eBay up and attempt to get it reinstated.
2) Open a new account not directly related to your suspended account.
3) Find another place to sell.

If you plan to reinstate...good luck. You will get the runaround with them a lot.

Opening an account is an alternative, but if you use the same details, your just back in the whole. Best to go variations of name or a different address you have access to. You can try a guide written by Auction Essistance entitled "eBay Incognito." Pretty much sums up what is stated above and then some.

Finding another place to sell shouldn't be hard. Go where your target market is and sell the hell out of your product.


----------



## Ripcord (Sep 2, 2006)

2020 PrintWorks said:


> Had near perfect ratings and feedback but got quite a few negatives due to not getting stuff out fast enough.


In printing you can fall behind- we all do. For Ebay orders it's a good idea to keep in touch with the customer, apologize for the wait, and explore options to get it to him faster (ie. Priority Mail shipping vs UPS.) Then include a small gift or two (can cooler, pen, etc.) and if it's really late, refund part of his payment. This can avoid a lot of the negative feedback.


----------



## 2020 PrintWorks (Apr 22, 2011)

Ripcord said:


> In printing you can fall behind- we all do. For Ebay orders it's a good idea to keep in touch with the customer, apologize for the wait, and explore options to get it to him faster (ie. Priority Mail shipping vs UPS.) Then include a small gift or two (can cooler, pen, etc.) and if it's really late, refund part of his payment. This can avoid a lot of the negative feedback.


I tried that but around the holidays people are especially hard to please. It was completely my fault and I'm honestly glad it happened. Ebay was taking up too much time with not enough profit. Their fees are just insane also. I don't sell anywhere near as much on Etsy but I do get a lot more bulk orders and they only take 3%. It only costs 20 cents to list something for 4 months. If you do the math you can list 1000 designs for the price of an Ebay store. If Ebay suddenly said I could start selling again I would have to say no.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

Good luck.... you will not get reinstated.
My situation. I had 11 "bad" things happen to me over a 12 month period. Late shipment, neg FB, etc. Well within reason and account is above average standing. Customer orders 20 units of something I no longer made and forgot to take down. One order, one buy, qty 20. I cancelled. Customer understood. ebay whacked me as having "31" Bad things, which pushed my account to have a rating below 98%. Suspended. 

Asking a rep to look it over and treat it as one bad transaction and not 20 was not honored.

I made a decision years ago to switch from ebay being 90% to being less than 10% of my sales. I built a site, grew the brand, and brought ebay down to less than 5% of my revenue. When this happened, this hit was not a hurt at all.

Moral of the story...don't invest your time and effort into anything where someone else can pull the cart from underneath you.


----------



## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

buffettnh said:


> Good luck.... you will not get reinstated.
> My situation. I had 11 "bad" things happen to me over a 12 month period. Late shipment, neg FB, etc. Well within reason and account is above average standing. Customer orders 20 units of something I no longer made and forgot to take down. One order, one buy, qty 20. I cancelled. Customer understood. ebay whacked me as having "31" Bad things, which pushed my account to have a rating below 98%. Suspended.
> 
> Asking a rep to look it over and treat it as one bad transaction and not 20 was not honored.
> ...


Not to jack this thread, but I would be interested to hear more, sometime, about how you made that transition. I'm just getting launched and have an Etsy store as well as my own site. I've experimented with FB ads and to a lesser extent AdWords for my own site, but the Etsy store does better, and without spending money on advertising.


To TS. Give Etsy a look. It is pretty easy to setup, and is probably geared more to this sort of sales than Ebay.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

NoXid said:


> Not to jack this thread, but I would be interested to hear more, sometime, about how you made that transition. I'm just getting launched and have an Etsy store as well as my own site. I've experimented with FB ads and to a lesser extent AdWords for my own site, but the Etsy store does better, and without spending money on advertising.
> 
> 
> To TS. Give Etsy a look. It is pretty easy to setup, and is probably geared more to this sort of sales than Ebay.


Tough to answer as it is industry/brand specific. But I found what works and promote it. 95% of my ads are FB, but that will drop and I will move some toward adwords in 2016.

I also have 20 years history of web development and product sales, which helps me setup just about anything I want to do. Honestly, experience just makes it easier.

ebay is my slowest platform. ETSY probably brings in about a grad month for me. Not killer, but not a make or break.


----------



## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

buffettnh said:


> Tough to answer as it is industry/brand specific. But I found what works and promote it. 95% of my ads are FB, but that will drop and I will move some toward adwords in 2016.
> 
> I also have 20 years history of web development and product sales, which helps me setup just about anything I want to do. Honestly, experience just makes it easier.
> 
> ebay is my slowest platform. ETSY probably brings in about a grad month for me. Not killer, but not a make or break.


Hey, thanks 

So I take it that you have more than one type of enterprise/brand running on Etsy, ebay, etc? I plan to start a completely different type of business this winter ... spread those eggs out a bit.


----------



## rawbert (Dec 7, 2015)

I don't think ebay is well suited for the custom printing business.
We're better off building our own site, it's really easy nowadays with free tools like Wordpress + the Woocommerce plugin.
Build up client base via social media. Youtube, Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, etc.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

NoXid said:


> Hey, thanks
> 
> So I take it that you have more than one type of enterprise/brand running on Etsy, ebay, etc? I plan to start a completely different type of business this winter ... spread those eggs out a bit.


I have tried multiple business before but frankly just not worth it and I could not do it efficiently. I concentrate on my brand at this time.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

rawbert said:


> I don't think ebay is well suited for the custom printing business.
> We're better off building our own site, it's really easy nowadays with free tools like Wordpress + the Woocommerce plugin.
> Build up client base via social media. Youtube, Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, etc.


Bingo...ebay is NOT the place to grow a new brand. It is a yard sale.
Etsy, Amazon, and your own site with the right knowledge to reach followers via ads on FB and Adwords.

Also, I dislike woocommerce. Just my 2 cents. If you want ecommerce, go with a solid platform and use their blog tools... if you are an ecommerce company with a blog. If you are a blog selling a few things, maybe woocommerce...still not sold on them as I left them for a reason.


----------



## tfalk (Apr 3, 2008)

Morrikeiro said:


> i feel i am being treat very unfairly by eBay as they have took my biggest selling platform away from me?
> 
> Can anyone shed any light on my situation and does anybody know any alternative.




The last time I checked, Ebay does not have any rules or regulations on how to treat someone unfairly. 

They do however have rules on how to sell things using their platform. The only people who can answer any questions regarding your account or shed any light on your situation is Ebay. Have you asked them why your account was restricted? 

As for alternatives, the search button is your friend, Craigslist and Etsy come to mind...


----------



## rawbert (Dec 7, 2015)

buffettnh said:


> Also, I dislike woocommerce. Just my 2 cents. If you want ecommerce, go with a solid platform and use their blog tools... if you are an ecommerce company with a blog. If you are a blog selling a few things, maybe woocommerce...still not sold on them as I left them for a reason.


Woocommerce IS a solid platform for small and medium size stores. It's free and it's easy to set it up and it's easy to use.
It's constantly updated and improved and there's a large community behind it. Lots of plugins including a few custom t-shirt designers too.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

rawbert said:


> Woocommerce IS a solid platform for small and medium size stores. It's free and it's easy to set it up and it's easy to use.
> It's constantly updated and improved and there's a large community behind it. Lots of plugins including a few custom t-shirt designers too.


It is far from free. Unless things have changed, plugins are $50+/ea per year. Many much more. + you need a good hosting plan like VPS, which could run Easily $50-$200 a month + you have to know how to manage it. Shared hosting sucks and is slow. Slow + ecommerce do not mix.

Wordpress is awesome. Woocommerce was engineered to be an addition to wordpress, a system not specifically designed for ecommerce. To me this is like buying the body of a porsche and putting it on a honda accord. Sure it will get you around and it may look good, but in the end the two will not work well when performance is needed. As you said small and medium. Why not large? Because they jump ship when they realize their accord is really not a porsche.

Plus the woocommerce support system is email based. If I have a problem I need answers now, not 2 business days from now.

May work for some. Like I said, if you have a big blog and want to add ecommerce.... go for it. But I think many who try to scale it up when business picks up will realize they need to get a VPS server, manage it, or rethink things. If you are starting from scratch and are going to be mostly ecommerce with a small blog, get with a ecommerce platform that works, is supported 24/7, and established. 3D Cart, Volusion, come to mind.

Just my 2 cents. If it works for you, it works for you. Glad I left when I did.


----------



## drdeath19134 (Mar 23, 2009)

If you open another account you will need another paypal account with another bank account thats how they tie it together.


----------



## jennGO (Mar 11, 2014)

buffettnh said:


> It is far from free. Unless things have changed, plugins are $50+/ea per year. Many much more. + you need a good hosting plan like VPS, which could run Easily $50-$200 a month + you have to know how to manage it. Shared hosting sucks and is slow. Slow + ecommerce do not mix.
> 
> Wordpress is awesome. Woocommerce was engineered to be an addition to wordpress, a system not specifically designed for ecommerce. To me this is like buying the body of a porsche and putting it on a honda accord. Sure it will get you around and it may look good, but in the end the two will not work well when performance is needed. As you said small and medium. Why not large? Because they jump ship when they realize their accord is really not a porsche.
> 
> ...


I haven't had the need to pay the yearly license fee for the plugins that I use because I don't need the updates or support right now. You get support for the first year and after that I don't really need any major tweaks. I think that WooCommerce can definitely be a good option for a smaller small business like me. I have inexpensive hosting and it's been working out fine so far. Worth considering if someone needs to start small and work their way up if necessary as sales increase.


----------



## buffettnh (Mar 11, 2013)

jennGO said:


> I haven't had the need to pay the yearly license fee for the plugins that I use because I don't need the updates or support right now. You get support for the first year and after that I don't really need any major tweaks. I think that WooCommerce can definitely be a good option for a smaller small business like me. I have inexpensive hosting and it's been working out fine so far. Worth considering if someone needs to start small and work their way up if necessary as sales increase.


For that, I would agree. If it works, it works! I scaled up and it failed for me. Had to move on.

Good luck!


----------



## tfalk (Apr 3, 2008)

Woocommerce has nothing to do with Ebay restricting the OP's account. Maybe you guys who want to discuss the merits or non-merits of Woocommerce can take it to another thread?


----------



## tcrowder (Apr 27, 2006)

tfalk said:


> Woocommerce has nothing to do with Ebay restricting the OP's account. Maybe you guys who want to discuss the merits or non-merits of Woocommerce can take it to another thread?


I would agree with starting a new thread.... but is very apparent that the OP joined just to blast out one *****y post about EBay and will never be back.


----------

