topic New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse returns in Business Seller Board

New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse returns

tcel_uk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:43:43 GMT

"Take action now to avoid restrictions on your account"

Anyone had one of these recently? I assumed it was the usual periodic review but it looks to be a new thing. Or a new format.

My payouts are still working fine, and items still for sale. It looks to be a new 'system based' restriction.

We have satisifed all it asked for anyway as usual. However one of the requests is to "resolve all open requests and cases".

I have just rang eBay who advised this is what is now "holding me back" from getting the restriction lifted.

And worryingly the only request left open is a remorse reason return.

The buyer requested this yesterday, with the reason "found a better price". A remorse reason in other words which is usually fine. They now have until 21/03/2026 to return this item to us for a refund - 3 weeks basically.

Ebay CS unbelievably says this case has to indeed be closed before the account restriction gets lifted? How is that possibly fair or logical? We of course have to offer remorse returns, as a UK business - just like everyone else with an eBay business account.

Has anyone else encountered this? I thought the eBay CS agent must have had it wrong at first, but I rang back and a different agent said the same thing.

I cannot resolve the return request until the item is returned to us obviously. One of the agents suggested just refund the buyer - however its a £995 item!

Extraordinary - again a new for me this particular email / request / restriction. So strange and unfair.

We said other business sellers that sell much higher quantity items than us - especially lower priced items businesses sell - will have many many open return requests, remorse reason ones mostly? How on earth is it realistic to expect most business sellers to have zero remorse reason returns open?

The agents we spoke to agreed its unrealistic - they said its a new type of system restriction this? They said hopefully it gets re-thought soon....

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

sheba-knows-best — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:54:06 GMT

If you scroll back through the old threads/conversations there have been a few experienced sellers suddenly hit by restrictions. @typo_lee may have been one of them. (Sorry if I have mis-remembered).

Just to clarify, your account is still working fine, right? All except for a delay with payments until after delivery? I think that's what the others were discussing as well. Hopefully some will comment soon...

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

tcel_uk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:06:14 GMT

Thanks I will have a look - to be honest I have not been on these boards for a while. I use to like coming here when we had that PowerSeller sub category!

And yes the account seems otherwise fine - in particular payouts are still working as normal. When we have those usual (annoying) 5 day performance review things, my payouts are usually blocked during the review.

For this new 'restriction' however, payouts and selling are both still as normal.

The account is definitely 'restricted' though - review based restriction I think its called.

As mentioned the CS agents I have spoke to are also scratching their heads with this - as they agreed its unrealistic to expect all open requests to be resolved at any one time. There will always be open return requests for most business sellers on here - especially those that sell lower priced items / higher quantity items than us.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

sheba-knows-best — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:22:04 GMT

You piqued my interest. This was the other thread. I think they got into discussing why some people were targeted and not others. havent time to reread at the minute. Good luck x

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Change-of-payment-terms-being-rolled-out-to-every-buyer/td-p/7888534

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

fashionxpress2008 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:52:34 GMT

We have been hit with the same problem. In account 25 years , all metrics OK and suddenly we have been hit with a payout when item has been delivered restriction. A poorly worded/vague email from eBay recieved out the blue as follows:

Hi Robert,

Following recent reviews, we have placed a payment holds on your account. This means you will see payments for orders being placed "On Hold" until delivery is confirmed. Uploading "Tracking" will be the most efficient way for this to be seen as once your Tracking shows successful delivery, the associated funds will be released within 24 hours.

Please bear in mind, changes to shipping information after the point of the transaction being completed may result in longer hold times. So, it is best to ensure accuracy when initially processing the order.

If it is not possible to upload” Tracking”, funds will be held for a maximum 30 days and release automatically. You will be able to see all your funds on-hold via your Seller Hub and by accessing the Payments Tab. From here you will see the “On-Hold” section which will show you how much is on-hold, which orders these are and an estimated date for when the funds will be released.

We will continue to review your performance to determine the continuation of this. Should you need additional assistance on this matter, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support channels for assistance.

Best Regards,

Chris

eBay Trust & Safety

It was around 10 days of no funds from eBay and I have had to support the business personally over this period. Funds are now beginning to trickle though following delivery but we are still restricted.

Have been able to get though to Dublin eventually (of course concierge was pulled for me like hundreds of others months ago) and they confirmed there appeared nothing wrong with the account, could not explain why or how it could be resolved and to mail them which I have done (and chased) and had no response. The guy from Trust and Safety slipped that my account was on a 3 month monitoring list (we sell womens clothing for goodness sake)

If this how they treat a 25 year loyal business, with £2m sales, 200k items sold is there hope for anyone

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

sheba-knows-best — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:03:39 GMT

How weird. Two Roberts! Are they targeting accounts in order of first names?... only in ebay land...

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

typo_lee — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:09:22 GMT

We had a random email from ebay back in last july stating our funds would be held for over 31 days as everything is sent untracked. However this got lifted in November. It was tough for cashflow I can tell you. No one gave an explanation as to why they put this restriction on the account however other sellers have stated their restriction got lifted as well. So your account must have flagged for some reason but like I say we dont know what our account flagged as CS never were able to tell us.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

bravergrace — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:21:26 GMT

I believe that open remorse returns are one of the many "secret" factors that affect seller accounts - along with negative feedback and opened SNAD cases - even when these are below the theoretical thresholds. I'm not talking of conspiracy, but when the Seller Punishment Scheme was first introduced, there were no thresholds (so you could be punished for a 50% SNAD rate, or a single low star rating, even if this was 1 of 2 sales). The thresholds to avoid punishing sellers for an occasional blip were very reluctantly and inconsistently added to the system, so that the punishments were less visible (eg lowered visibility, which is harder for sellers to prove) .

It sounds as if this new thing is similar - a new way of punishing sellers for "poor performance", but with no lower thresholds (or poorly implemented thresholds). It may be poor programming, or a Decree From On High which hasn't been filtered into sanity by the people implementing it. In the past, when Pinks and even senior managers engaged with this board, enough sellers making a fuss did lead to action being taken.

They will doubtless sort out the most visible aspects of this foolishness, but it is likely that other, less visible punishments are also "accidentally" in place, and these may take years to be corrected. So you may be removed from the monitoring list, but kept on reduced visibility.

Presumably the intention was to reward sellers for making immediate full refunds without the items being returned - by punishing sellers who don't. But what may be workable for occasional £2.99 changes-of-mind for megasellers, isn't scalable to £995 items for small or medium businesses.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

jotal_6896 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:23:04 GMT

Thanks for the replies guys - selfishly the fact I’m not the only one here experience these things makes me feel (slightly!) better here.

Our sentiments are the same as you all. We are also one of the few very reputable business sellers, particular in our category of mobile phones / Apple products we sell in.

In our category it seems worse than ever on search for bogus listings from zero feedback accounts, for iPhones in particular. Honestly we pop in the search for a new iPhone 17 pro max on eBay, I would estimate 60-70% are all scam listings.

Quite a lot of the people duped by such scam listings , then end up buying from us (for more money). One of the few genuine sellers of these things basically.

And now that eBay are treating us like this with this bizarre restriction, seems madness.

The only slight difference with my circumstances to yours above is the wording of the email I guess? If you check my first message I included the screenshot. A deadline is given on this screenshot for us to “resolve” everything.

but otherwise the features are the same: still able to sell, still getting payments, but after 3 days delivery confirmation etc etc

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

insidethe93 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:36:56 GMT

I sympathise - that's outrageous.

But hopefully it'll be over soon: if I was the buyer I'd return the item promptly:

(a) it's only civil to do so

(b) to obtain the refund sooner rather than later

With (c) I'm thinking about certain eBay or its Customer Service responses as variously reported in the discussion boards which have left me with the impression that CS acts too often in an uninformed, unjust, arbitrary, contrary and inconsistent way; and for that impression eBay has only itself to blame. An example is right here in the OP's experience, with eBay unfairly imposing a condition retrospectively, without giving notice (via, say, a warning notice to all sellers and stating when the restriction applies from PLUS it should apply only to new cases not ones where cases are open). The seller/OP was left to find out about it the hard way.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

insidethe93 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:46:58 GMT

tcel_uk wrote: "There will always be open return requests for most business sellers on here..."

How long before eBay goes to the next stage and requires sellers to have no more than a certain number of open cases without being penalised in some way. If so, might that be in a way that's financially beneficial to eBay? "Kicking someone while they're down" is the expression that comes to mind.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

jotal_6896 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:52:39 GMT

The customer service agents on the phone theorised that the system / programming eBay have in place isn’t sophisticated enough to recognise remorse returns versus SNAD. Again seems bizarre if true.

They are adamant for this new ‘restriction’ of mine here to be lifted though is for ALL such requests to be closed.

I cannot fathom how this could be even possible with other sellers, perhaps you guys above? Like surely sellers that sell hundreds of items a week, never have a time where there are literally no on going returns - remorse or otherwise

I think the theory above in this thread is correct that they’re trying to push sellers to refund returns before receiving the item back. But again sorry to bash my category again but to trust a buyer to return a near £1000 phone and refund them up front would be an own goal here to say the least.

* our metrics are currently top rated , zero defects across the board. And again just have the one return request open. If we’re being targeted I respect the accounts that are not!

* also just realised I am replying on my other account (my buying account) but I am the OP here if anyone’s confused

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

c_of_e84 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 13:39:50 GMT

Sounds like they are testing ready for when you have to build up a percentage of funds on hold just in case a buyer has a problem, similar to what hammerzone do.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

typo_lee — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 14:43:48 GMT

We have no returns normally and sell 100s a week so guess we are just lucky maybe with what we sell i.e personalised stickers which dont demand many returns. However when they put us on 31 day payments after estimated delivery we had NO returns open at all. Maybe the odd case or two so I'm guessing they are doing this even if you have some cases open? Not just returns.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

tcel_uk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 14:55:42 GMT

No, nothing else outstanding at all. Literally just this one remorse return that’s open. All other metrics are perfect.

The fact our payouts are running all fine and able to sell etc I guess there’s nothing restrictive here practically. Just annoying having any sort of “restriction” hanging over the account - as I’m sure you guys feel when you’re going through similar. Especially without good reason as seems here.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

typo_lee — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:10:30 GMT

So I misread I thought youd had restrictions on payouts already put on your account. In that case I'm pleased for you as it really screwed over our business. If we hadnt have been selling on amazon as well we would have gone bust.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

bravergrace — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:45:30 GMT

@tcel_uk wrote:
No, nothing else outstanding at all. Literally just this one remorse return that’s open. All other metrics are perfect.

Let's hope the buyer does return the item and doesn't decide to keep it after all. It can seem a long time till it times out. I hope you don't offer 90 day returns or anything generous like that!

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

sheba-knows-best — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:20:18 GMT

@bravergrace wrote:
@tcel_uk wrote:
No, nothing else outstanding at all. Literally just this one remorse return that’s open. All other metrics are perfect.

I hope you don't offer 90 day returns or anything generous like that!

Very good point - this policy actually works against sellers who offer generous return policies. Ridiculous.

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

tcel_uk — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:32:15 GMT

Good news here guys (ish!)

3 day post delivery payment holds now confirmed on my account though.

I had 4 separate agents on the phone say that ALL my cases MUST be closed to lift the “restriction”.

once again by “all” in my case, this meant closing/refunding even remorse return requests. Not having the item back yet even.

I have not done this obviously - and here we are “selling privileges restored”.

* imagine if I had taken direction from CS and felt compelled to refund the £995 phone that’s hopefully going to be returned to me!

Re: New 2026 system based eBay restriction: requires you to close all returns, including remorse ret

typo_lee — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:17:32 GMT

but your payouts are still on hold?