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.

[dch2112011]

Vinylscott - your example prompted some questions and here is the point to the questions asked :

There is no official definition of what a ‘trader’ is and here lies the problem, without clear definition a number of different  situations could class a private seller as an 'online trader'  by HMRC

The important things to consider are whether you intend to make a profit, and your number of transactions which seem to form the common factor for assessing business accounts on ebay and also 'trading' with HMRC

Selling a few items as a one off to make space or fund a wedding is one thing - selling a large personal collection with the intention of making a profit on the initial outlay is entirely different . ( I believe trading in collectables is common place - swapping - trading )

However selling off a one off collection should  not in my opinion warrant a member to upgrade to a business account because  individual profit on pieces of a large collection may go towards the annual CGT collective allowance of £600O per individual for 2023 / 24  or may need to  be declared as profit under self assessment 

It appears to be entirely feasible  to be classed as a trader under HMRC assessment for tax purposes but this does not neccessarily meet the spirit of being a  business account holder on ebay - the two seem to be in the same muddy water with lack of true definition.

Hopefully the appeal procedure will be working soon and collectors and one off personal item sellers will become exempt but that businesses trading under personal accounts will be forced to upgrade.

My real thought is how this will be handled by ebay to achieve the right balance.

it could easily become a rigid procedure which would create collateral damage to private sellers meeting internal ebay benchmarks for business sellers 

[sml192]

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@pg_kicks wrote:

Its more that eBay will (concierge basically admitted to me) have lost sellers due to it they dont want to lose anymore, so in fear of losing those who do report to HMRC but enjoy the benefits of illegally trading they are giving them rewards (or incentives as concierge calls them) to make sure they are complying and stick around.  

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Yes, that makes sense but that's different to what you said in your previous post where you talked specifically about sellers being worried about eBay reporting their sales to HMRC.  If a seller is already reporting to HMRC then they should have no reason to worry about eBay reporting their sales. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Regardless of how you view it Ebay UK's income is going to take a big hit over the next few months.

[sml192]

The CGT allowance is now £3,000 and it isn't collective, it applies on a per sale basis. 

[kempseykate]

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@the_book_seekers wrote:

Why has eBay suddenly used this blunderbuss approach to sellers now?

Something has clearly changed otherwise ebay wouldn't be taking this action. I doubt we'll find out what's at the bottom of this unless ebay is dragged into a court somewhere.

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A few years back ebay suddenly made an increase to FVF for items in the clothing category - for business sellers only.

Within a few days there were lots of private sellers coming to the boards saying they had been told to upgrade to a business. They all had mainly clothes listed. Most of them had few listings, and it was obvious that they were just selling their own unwanted stuff and/or their kids outgrown things.

Meanwhile there were still thousands of obvious unreg business sellers on private accounts, that stayed that way even when reported.

It was just simply ebay hitting on a new way to increase their take. I'm not sure that it worked, I think most of the sellers said they would just take it to a boot sale instead.

[thebeautician]

It's not rewarding private sellers for trading illegally. It's rewarding them for staying on this platform, buying on this platform and driving traffic for business sellers too. If this goes ahead they will take the incentives and in January will be ready to move to other platforms. Vinted, for example, just introduced a new category for electronics and according to them, "this is just the beginning".

If eBay is bad now, then it will become a desert.

[vinylscot]

eBay will have worked out that they can afford it. If there is a huge increase in the numbers of items listed, and (hopefully) a resultant increase in page views and sales, then eBay will make considerably more through things like advertising and pay-per-click promotions etc. Any increase in visitors to the site should also benefit those who are already business sellers, and genuine private sellers, and eBay must reckon the sum of these (probably plus other things I haven't listed), will help offset the cost of the "incentives" being offered. 

Also, in the longer term, once these incentives are no longer in effect, eBay will be receiving higher commission and other fees from those new business accounts which decide to continue selling (and, in real life, I reckon most of them will continue). 

The challenge, I suspect, is how to attract enough buyers, new and old, to the site to keep all this going. I'm sure eBay has realised they need to do something. Maybe short term pain is worth it for long term gain.

[sweetconfection]

Yesterday evening I was passed from person to person on the phone and kept on hold for long periods before being told I was asked to upgrade in error. They said they escalate it but today i've been told there is no error and I must upgrade to a business. 

In the oast 2 years i've gone from a size 22 to a size 14 and hoped to sell some of my nicer old clothes that were unworn and too expensive to just hand over to charity but now I will be going elsewhere. I'm not going to falsely declare myself a business just because ebay says so.

Really cheesed off about this after I wasted time mucking about making the listings and filling all the stupid specifics ebay demands for clothing.

I can see ebay dying a slow death for private sellers in the near future. Diabolical customer service as well who don't have a clue what's going on and give missinformation and instead of putting you through to the right department just put you on hold and play chinese whispers.  Also impossible to locate this so called "appeals" process that evidently doesn't exist. Not even competent enough to have a proper process in place before rolling out a non working feature. 

[pg_kicks]

I dont think I made it clear, eBay via the concierge told me they have suffered a drop in sellers due to the HMRC news, these will probably have been people who misunderstood it as most dont need to be a business or report anything. This move seems to me and backed up by concierge who are saying its an incentive and not a reward that eBay are worried that they will lose more sellers now they have to actually crack down on illegal traders they are offering these to try and sweeten the illegal accounts to go legit.

ts 2 different issues but one has caused a decrease in sellers and eBay dont want a 2nd decrease within 6 months, even if the 2nd would make the site a safer place to buy, so they are rewarding them with a free ebay instead of them disappearing. 

[the_book_seekers]

This reminds me of Vatgate. ebay sends out messages, then says they are an error followed up by no they're genuine. This isn't going to have the same result as Vatgate which crippled accounts, but ebay does need to look at how these things are rolled out. Somebody needs to make sure customer services are up to speed before releasing the emails. 

[dch2112011]

Makes sense - 

[equinox-electronics]

Ebay are very aware that when they ask for national insurance numbers in the coming months they will see a mass exodus of sellers. They seem to think that getting private sellers to act like business is the fix. It really isn't 

[btr.style]

"Ebay are very aware that when they ask for national insurance numbers in the coming months"

Wrong. If you did a search you'd see this is already happening. My private account selling off junk had a request for NI number a few months ago. 

If anything it's more to do with the EU stuff mentioned in this thread. They've had the nudge about illegal traders using the private account loophole, now having to force people over to business accounts and providing with an incentive to do so. 

[equinox-electronics]

Only new accounts registered this year are getting asked. The rest will be from 1st January when an account reaches a threshold.  

The GSPR debacle is a whole different kettle of fish 

[papso22]

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@equinox-electronics wrote:

Only new accounts registered this year are getting asked. The rest will be from 1st January when an account reaches a threshold.  

The GSPR debacle is a whole different kettle of fish 

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Sorry that's wrong too.  If you are basing that on ebay's factually incorrect communication, then that's also wrong.

It's not just accounts registered this year that will be reported to HMRC, that is not an easement in the legislation.

[papso22]

Just to add,

If ebay were to leave it to the 1st January 2025 to start asking for the tax ID data from establshed accounts, they would never be able to handle the responses in time to meet the end of January 2025 deadline for the reports.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

They have already left it too late, this whole situation is an absolute mess.

[equinox-electronics]

I haven't been asked for an N.I number and alot of other people I know haven't been asked. But on Facebook groups people that have been asked are on new accounts 

[exponential_developments]

Is it just private accounts that they want NINO for or business ones aswell................sorry if this is a dumb already answered question.

[papso22]

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@equinox-electronics wrote:

I haven't been asked for an N.I number and alot of other people I know haven't been asked. But on Facebook groups people that have been asked are on new accounts 

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I suspect that business accounts are later in ebay's schedule than private accounts.  It seems FB have chosen to ask new accounts first, members on these boards, that are not new accounts, have said they have been asked already.