eBay nightmare

[Access]

Like many stores, we have both a retail and online presence, and also like most stores part of that online presence includes eBay.

My business sells professional music equipment, instruments, etc. Over the past year we have done over 120k in business on eBay, but a couple days ago they pulled every one of the hundreds of inventory listings down and "Indefinitely suspended" our selling account due to "below average" standards. After over an hour on the phone with multiple people at eBay it came out that 6 people had rated us as either 1 or 2 stars when it came to "Item as described", as these 6 people represented 1.4% of the total we have had our account essentially killed!

In reviewing the 6 people that had complaints however, they noted that all 6 had had their concerns addressed and so on, but regardless because they gave that rating it constituted the death of our eBay store (and over $100k+ a year in sales!)

Some of the concerns were due to shipping damage, and things we have no control over, some were people simply trying to extort a discount after the sale, etc.

I feel this is beyond wrong. We have 99.9% positive feedback, nearly 2000 positives, and have been a customer with them for a decade, and six people (who had been compensated, placated, etc) cause the death of our online eBay business?

In a quick search this has happened to many others, (Some of the stories are heartbreaking!) but why would they want to kill off revenue creating businesses like mine?

Sorry to vent, but thought you may like to know what is happening behind the scenes.

[EMCE Hammer]

And yet the China bootleggers with the 96% rating and a dozen bad feedbacks in a month go unchecked.

[Gorn Captain]

Ebay has become a seller's worst nightmare.
It takes over an hour to fill out a whole phonebook of pages with all sorts of info before you can offer one lousy figure.
Maybe it's a local thing, but I was totally fed up after one item, and will sell the rest somewhere else...

[Access]

While on the phone with them, out of frustration I said, "All you are doing is forcing me to start over with zero feedback!" to which the guy replied "Actually no, if you try and open a new account and relist your inventory, we'll see it and take it down as well. We feel you should do business elsewhere"

Can you believe that?! I couldnt believe what I was hearing! I am not a dishonest business, I sell what I advertise, but there will always be that 'nervous' buyer, who immediately clicks the 'item not as described' button when the package shows up crunched, or something like that.

I was always taught that you rate a business on how it deals with customer concerns, not whether or not they get them! I dealt with every issue in a positive and quick matter, and was penalized for it.

[johnnystorm]

Had a similar situation with them last year, 3 complaints including one "accidental" neg and another obvious scammer, they capped my listing limit at 25 items a month "until I improved my standards" . My current feedback was over 14,000 positives & 3 negatives...and only 6 negs total in a 13 year period of selling! After complaining to someone at Ebay over the phone, they decided to expand my listing capacity... To 40 items a month!
The final result? No listings per month... My decision! eBay was getting a couple hundred bucks a month in fees, so I moved everything into a booth in an antique mall nearby, doing ok there... Not making a fortune, but getting by, and now I have lots of free time off the computer.
I'll still list the occasional odd item I come across if I know I can sell it, but the days of being a full time seller are over for me. I'm sorry they did this to you. I still find it hard to believe another site hadn't emerged as strong as Ebay.

[Brazoo]

I wonder what eBay's approval rating would be if they were held to those standards?

Seriously man, that is horrible.

[Mongoose1983]

That sounds terrible. I understand eBay is trying to ensure their online business for the buyers, but the last couple of years I believe they took it all a little bit over the fringe with their selling policies and such. Not to mention what they charge for selling, for nowadays they get a cut out of your money with eBay AND paypal at the same time. It's incredible.

[huedell]

Not that it's a solid rational solution, but I believe that if you want to sell on EBay, and you want to avoid this kinda stuff as much as possible, then you have to BLANKET your "auction descriptions", "about me pages", "feedback replies" and "package notes"/"invoices" with an: "IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED IN ANY WAY PLEASE RECTIFY THRU US FIRST BEFORE LEAVING NEGATIVE FEEDBACK" message... I think that's the best option at this point.

[Vinny0026]

First off let me say this - That is just terrible. I just hope that the income was on the side and not the main source of income in your household. It is truly sad.

If I were you I would reopen another store, with a different name. - especially if it a main source of income for your house.

At the same time I would do a few things different
I'm guessing some of these items are large and heavy, so i would box them in a box, and than in another box. Odds are even if the item is not damaged - but the box gets there crushed they will blame you not the post office. So try and pack them up a little better - this will help some of the headaches.

Also I do not know how much you sell this stuff for - but try to sell more of the less expensive if you can, and less of the higher dollar.

Once people start paying over a certain price -they tend to start being more unhappy when they get the item, and nit pick a lot more.
odds are some people are buying this stuff for kids to try out - if the kids are no good at it ot don't like it than mom and dad flip out that they wasted the money and you get the brunt of it.

and believe it or not e bay just does not care - they don't care how much money they make off our fees, they don't care that they double dip and get more fees from us for taking paypal
they just do not care. They get paid every day if items sell or do not sell. no matter how much you pay them in fees they will still not care. Most of the phone calls to them go to over seas. They sit there listen to you vent and pretty much look like the phone call made in transformers.

I hope you can rebuild. if you do under a different name you should be fine.
how will they know its you? just take some extra steps to avoid them doing it again. (by the way I'm not saying you did anything wrong - just trying to give you a few tips as to avoid them doing it again)

good luck - i hope it works out for you

[FETT1]

I have realllly rethought buying from EBUTT ...why ..the shipping and handling to CANADA ..NOT FROM ..but to!Many US of eh sellers will not sell across the border anymore as EBUTT has forced them into crazy s/h rules!
Its really to bad as a once very cool site was a great place to buy items,but alas those days are long gone !!!
I had a letter from a fellow I had purchased from a while back ,his story is very close to what is happening in this post ...he has GREAT FEEDBACK,has paid EBUTT numerous amounts of moola and they punted him with no notice at all!

ACCESS GOOD LUCK ,but big brother(ebutt) really doesn't care ....

jas

[Access]

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. I'm not 100% sure what I will do yet, but what eBay was for our business was a place to sell the larger rarer more expensive items. Our retail store does fine with the smaller things, but the used vintage and expensive stuff is what many go to the net for.

I did have plenty of info about how we handle things which is why we probably only had a couple over the past year, no matter how much prep you do, there is always that one guy who does it anyways and ruins things.

Again thanks for the responses

[RobTMego]

I have been selling my old Hardcore punk record collection on Ebay, It has been very tough with some people you can not ever make them happy and will knit pick you to death. I use Discog.com for figuring out what pressing or version, I own and use that info to sell the items, In one case "7 Seconds - The Crew "dark brown virgin vinyl" BYO 005 (looks black)
Label:Better Youth Organization – BYO 005 Format: Vinyl, LP album Country: US Released:1984 Genre:Rock Style:Punk
This record with Royal blue lettered front-cover on very dark brown virgin vinyl (looks black). The guy Knit picked so much about it not being "brown" even though I could prove, what it was made of and said it (looked black, twice in the post). I finally had to give a full refund,upon return, just to protect my account from negative feed back, even though the record was in NM condition with absolutly no problems. It was very frustrating and time consuming and held up 30 dollar in paypal founds while he ships it back, the slowest way possible.

On the other hand I have sold about 100 of them so far, with no problems, even a Metallica - Kill Them All on Megaforce record silver label for $185, but I must say those few bad apples do make me think about spoiling the whole bunch and quiting the project.

The biggest point here is ebay says they have Buyer and seller protection, but all I have ever seen is Buyer protection!!

[luclin999]

I have realllly rethought buying from EBUTT ...why ..the shipping and handling to CANADA ..NOT FROM ..but to!

jas

No offense.. But blame Canada.

As someone who has to ship product regularly to Canada from the US the problem with the additional expense is due almost entirely to the Canadian customs side of the process. Every package and its paperwork has the be checked and processed by hand by someone as it enters your country. This means that every shipping company which brings packages into Canada has to have a considerable number of special people dedicated to doing nothing but working with the Canadian customs department exclusively and in turn that cost is passed on to every single package which is sent across the border.

Example: A 15 pound Fedex ground package going to a US location just south of the border might run me about $18 to ship while if it is going just 15 miles further north across the border that same package now costs $47. A similar upcharge is added by every single carrier (UPS, Postal Service, Etc.).

Conversely, the US doesn't force the same degree of scrutiny to packages inbound from Canada or Mexico and thus the shipping companies do not have charge Canadian shippers an added, hidden fee for US deliveries.

[starsky]

have you tried selling on amazon as well?

[Access]

The nature of what I sell (primarily used guitars, amplifiers, sound equipment etc) does not lend itself well to sell on Amazon. If I was selling used books, cd's, dvd's etc It's an excellent idea, or even stuff that is small, new and electronic, but their search function is not as specific as eBay, etc.

I also have run into the guy who nit picks every little thing, and what they are really doing is trying to extort extra money after the deal because they realize that they hold all the cards. I also have a "Toy seller" account on eBay, and my only negative was from some asian american customer who bought a new in box transformer from me, then wanted 20% of the purchase price back because they said that there were slight flaws in the package that would not allow them to get it 'graded'. I shipped the item FREE and offered them a full refund, (which would have lost me the freight costs) but then they complained that I wouldnt pay their return shipping!

They gave me negative, even after I offered the refund, etc.

I like how eBay protects those who try to extort money, but not those who generate the business in the first place.