A few days ago, I received a message from eBay. They restricted my account citing risk to the community. As a result, my account has been restricted approximately five times within a year, all for the same reason. Each time, it took between one week and one month to resolve, during which I lost thousands of pounds in sales.
Firstly, I must emphasize that there are no disputes to resolve and no complaints from my customers. None of my shipments have been delayed; they have all been delivered within the specified time frame and continue to be delivered.
However, each time, my account is likely automatically restricted by the system, and when I appeal, I'm told that all orders in my account must be delivered. This is where the problem arises.
I mostly sell outside the UK, so the fastest shipment takes up to five days. With customers using the global shipping program, this period can extend to 30 days. To lift eBay's restriction, I have to wait for the item sent to China, worth £10, to be marked as delivered. Also, shipments sent through the global shipping program often take a very long time to arrive.
Every time this restriction is placed on my account, every customer representative I speak to suddenly becomes like a robot: they all say that all sales must be delivered to lift the restriction. Let's assume we agree to this. However, according to this loop, I should only be able to accept one order at a time! Because I'm within the order cycle, this restriction occurs. I cannot make my second sale until my first sale is delivered. Yes, it might sound like an exaggeration, but I've faced this restriction five times within a year! When I'm making an average of £1000 in sales per day, suddenly all my listings are removed, and it takes 3-4 weeks for all orders on my account at that moment to be delivered.
Once, during this ridiculous restriction, we had to wait for a customer to return from vacation because they had postponed receiving the package by a week, and we had to wait for them to return along with all the workers on the production line! It's like a joke!
Trading standards, ombudsman, and court. Whatever it takes, I will now initiate all legal proceedings because despite politely bringing this issue to the attention of various departments dozens of times, no solution has been reached. I simply requested that my active listings not be removed, but nobody cared. I had also paid to list each of them, but nobody cares about the disappearance of this money when these listings disappear!
