Tech support says :messages to upgrade from a private to business account have been sent by mistake

[notstopbuying]

I had a message yesterday on my private selling account and an email, to say that I needed to upgrade from a private seller to a business account, I called eBay this morning to ask about various things with regards to upgrading to a business account and the tech support person said....No need to, the emails have all been sent out by mistake.

I asked will I receive an email to confirm it was a mistake, they said no, but they are currently working on the issue.

The tech support person did say, if I received a 2nd email to say I needed to upgrade to a business account, then it would be best to call back and confirm if I do need to upgrade, but the 1st email as been sent out to many, many private sellers and they have no need to upgrade to a business account.

[cspurchasing]

What really isn’t rocket science, is why this particular seller (amongst innumerous others with larger £££turnover), who has been reported many times, by many people, is still trading on eBay with a ‘private’ account…

[howmuchtobid]

I don't want or expect a magic wand however I expect a business worth billions and billions to have systems in place that stop a business trading on a private account with 1800 listings. 

[pg_kicks]

They could use AI, reports and actual humans. Have some code that highlights accounts that are put on a  'watch' list if you are following patterns like business accounts, be that selling x amount of listings or money, if you are listing every 2 weeks and having hundreds listed it should be flagged. If an account is getting reported numerous times a human should be looking at it not AI determining that an account selling over a thousand pairs of brand new sneakers all different sizes is not a business. If accounts are flagging from AI, reports and a human then you shadow ban or send a message saying we think you are a business and you have 2 weeks to upgrade unless you can prove you are not to an actual human.

In short is really easy but it will cost eBay money and may result in accounts that are breaking the law to leave so the figures for active accounts may drop but overall sales wont drop by much. Prior to this action they have buried their head in the sand and asked us to report every single time we mention it yet the reports are ignored as the AI they use is not fit for purpose. 

[vintagewatchpart]

When I pointed out the private businesses on Ebay on various weekly chats and in other threads I got told that ebay takes reports like this very seriously, the go to line, but nothing seems to get done. This seller has sold over £7000 worth of goods in the past month and looking at the last 90 days has probably hit the VAT threshold for the year, not bad at all for a "private seller" who obviously just made some business cards with a website address on to help them clear through their extensive "personal" collection!?

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I don't disagree that there are things that they can/need to do.

However, all I'm actually saying is that it's not as simple as some people seem to think it actually is.

As to Ebay losing money over it, I really don't believe that for a minute.

When you look at all these accounts that are basically getting away with murder, with the free listing and discounted fee and so on, it actually makes no business sense for Ebay to support them at all.

Yes, it makes sense for the actual private sellers to be discounted etc, as they are the actual buyers on the site as well.

Certain parts of it may appear to be easy on the face of it, but it really isn't.  I guarantee, that for whatever circumstance you come up with, there will be a counter to it, in that it's a private and not a business.  

And because of that, you can't just make sweeping changes, or you risk annoying/losing all those who are using the site properly.

I actually think it could be quite simple at the end of the day.

No issue to actually signing up, but once a threshold is hit, then some sort of human intervention needs to investigate the account.  If they do that sort of thing, then there will still be misses, but the majority of accounts should end up trading properly.

[pg_kicks]

What counters could there be for AI (set to look for accounts mirroring business), if an account is reported multiple times (actually have a reporting feature for business on private account), or they are listing over a generic number say 150 a month (brand new listings). Then they are flagged and checked by a human (in the EU or uk), they'd need to tick 2 of the 3 boxes for a human to look into it that way you couldn't just mass report and waste time.

Those are pretty simple, yes it will cost eBay money to have a team looking into it but theyy'd earn that back with sale fee's/subscriptions. 

Tomorrow will be itneresting to see if anyone is actually shadow banned or made to change.

[the_book_seekers]

Nobody who has received  the email will be made to change. ebay has given them a choice of sorts - upgrade or stop selling. I'd be surprised if many will be successful with the appeals process - if there turns out to be one. It could be that our new regulations fee is going towards paying for the team to look at these accounts.  

Over the last 10 days or so these boards have been busier than they have been for a long time, but tomorrow could be even busier.

[howmuchtobid]

What a load of nonsense.

As has been said there should be a mixture of automated and human input to tackle this, the fact that sellers with nearly 2000 listings and sales of thousands each month are able to abuse the system only points to one thing..... Ebay's processes are nowhere near good enough, it cannot be dressed up any other way. I don't understand why you cannot see that.

Also you totally contradict yourself, one minute you say it is nowhere near as easy as people think to stop it and then you say it's pretty simple to deal with, make your mind up.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I suggest you reread what was written.  Two entirely different things.

Dealing with how it is and how it could be done in the future.

And to correct your first statement.  I did not say or intimate in any way, that Ebays' processes where good enough.  As I have now 3 times to you, I am not a supporter of way they do this.

It can be improved.  But what you seem to be unable to grasp, is that it's not something that can just happen!

And again, I'll say it.  Just because you have a human being looking at something and it "appears" that a seller is actually a trader, does not necessarily mean that they actually are a trader and that the person looking, is able to differentiate.  It is NOT as simple as you think it is.  There are literally loads of examples where it is not so easy to say one way or the other.

Yes, there will be clear cut cases, but that is most definately not all cases at all.

[kempseykate]

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@howmuchtobid wrote:

In theory that sellers listings should be invisible from Monday onwards, I will believe it when I see it (or not!).

It's disgraceful.

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Not only are their listings still visible, but they have listed a new item today.

On the list that I saw of restrictions, they were very mild, if anyone does have restrictions I think it will take a long time before they lose the ability to list. (That's assuming they even had the message in the first place)

[bojangled]

I thought the first step in the restrictions was a payout freeze.

If that's the case then the boards would be full of "Where's my payout?" posts.

Who knows what's going on behind the scenes....

[pg_kicks]

Sorry but you keep saying it isnt easy, this isnt a court of law where eBay need to be 100% certain, if my ideas were put into practise then eBay could easily say sorry account holder of musicshoponebay but your account pattern mirrors those of similar accounts on our platform that are listed as businesses, you have been flagged by numerous other members and our safety and security team have looked into this and we believe you may well be a business, due to wanting to keep our site as safe as possible for all of the ebay buying community we are allowing you to keep this account with the feedback but you need to change to a business account and comply with the laws of a business. If you have proof that these items were a hobby or a dead relatives items please send over all proof and we shall look into this, some accounts which are 100% private may be caught up with this as they have 50k records to sell or star wars figures which I would rather they were not caught up but its either people being denied their true rights or a few accounts need to offer more than they would like but they could also buy elsewhere.

The final step should always be a human looking over it, many cases its 100% a business so any appeal can be rejected instantly but bottom line eBay should be looking out for the buyers on the site and with the current system there are too many not giving buyers the rights they deserve.

[howmuchtobid]

Below is another seller I have reported many, many times, the seller purchases items from auctions to resell on Ebay, they have sold over 2000 items and have just relisted nearly 200 items all at strong retail prices, they remain on a private account. The whole situation is a disgrace.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I really don't disagree with you.

What I was trying to get over, is that it is simply not as easy as some seem to believe to code for this kind of thing.

No, they don't need to be 100% certain, but by the same token, they don't want to be annoying many perfectly good private sellers.  So there has to be a half way house.  But even when it appears to be 100% a business seller, it's not necessarily the case that they are.

And honestly, how do you prove to Ebay, that you are not?  

You have been a collector for years and are now selling off your collection.  How do you prove this?

Your not required to keep receipts etc.  In fact there could be many situations such as the this.

At the end of the day, these needs to be stopped before they get a chance to start with the business side of things.  Not once they have been doing it for years.

Reducing the benefits to much more reasonable levels (for private sellers), would be a good start.

[myriad*seller]

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@bojangled wrote:

I thought the first step in the restrictions was a payout freeze.

If that's the case then the boards would be full of "Where's my payout?" posts.

Who knows what's going on behind the scenes....

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I think it will be hiding listings so buyers cannot see them

I am sure that was what they said would be the penalty 

[burlingtonsw1]

Sir / Madam,

This is spot on. Some seem to think that having 300 collectable items listed somehow constitutes being a 'business'. This is way, way off the mark and almost laughable to the thousands of collectors out there of various items purchased over many, many decades ! It would not be unusual for say record/stamp/ postcard collectors to have amounts that run into the 20 - 30,000 items ! That's without the multitude of virtually every other conceivable item you can think of that is collected as well - clothing [vintage/ designer], antiques, glasswear, ceramics, watches, fabric, toys - the list goes on forever ! As you say it is not as clear cut as some suggest !

300 brand new identical items is a completely different kettle of fish though and can fully understand why some would be aggrieved at 'private' status.

[cobwebcottage]

Substitute the word at the end ( after numbers) to antiques and see what you get.

[dwtrading2015]

EU's GPSRs

Overseas sales have virtually dried up to nothing over this year.  I won't be forking out fees for a 'buddy in the EU' to allow me to register for any scheme like they are inventing.  Frankly, the details of the contents of free trade is none of there business.  I'll be taking all EU countries off the international list.  They can whistle for their widgets from elsewhere.

[kempseykate]

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@cobwebcottage wrote:

Substitute the word at the end ( after numbers) to antiques and see what you get.

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I get - confused!

I am not sure what you are referring to .

[pg_kicks]

We shall agree to disagree with how easy it is, I believe most things are easy if you are willing to spend money on it.

It would be hard to prove you are not a business, but thats the sellers issue it shouldnt be a reason for eBay not to act, the choice is you either mark it hard to prove you are not a business or allow people to break the law on your site, and before people jump (not you) I'm not saying all private account holders are breaking the law here but there are a lot who are.

I agree they shouldnt be throwing offers around so freely, but unless they make all accounts follow business law then you'd still be (from a purely financial side) be better off on a private account as you dont need to accept returns, imagine the backlash if they made all private accounts accept returns and shoe contact details.

Whatever they come up with you will have some people negatively effected by it, from my side I'd rather some private sellers who have large collections need to upgrade over many buyers not getting their rights which currently happens.