eBay is the best way to ruin your business.

[classiquejewellery]

After 19 years as a business seller, I am done on ebay. Some Months ago, my home was broken into and my jewellery stock, among other things was stolen. I contacted each and every buyer who was bidding on my auction items, personally, and explained my situation. Every single buyer was sympathetic and understanding. Now, after managing to rebuild up some stock and wanting to sell again, I find my account severely restricted in terms of the number of items and values I can list. The reason? Because I failed to complete the transactions where the items were stolen. Despite over 10,000 positive reviews and no negatives over almost 20 years, my account is deemed to be 'below standard'.

Despite communicating with ebay, I am told that these defects are NOT appealable.

Of course, we ALL know as sellers that, despite us being the engine that creates the dividends for ebay's shareholders, ebay cares nothing for the seller. Only the buyer is king. And there are way more buyers than sellers.

It's just that when something likes this happens, you realise just how insignificant you are.

Good luck to you all.

[cobwebcottage]

What an awful experience. I can empathise with you and see why you are giving up. Ebay needs to protect their business sellers and should have a dedicated Customer Care team to deal with such incidents. 

Very sad that we have lost another valuable seller.

[m25jet]

The fact that you lost so much jewellery when your home was broken into was bad enough, but judging from what you have said, in my opinion the way that eBay have handled this matter is absolutely deplorable.  It seems that loyalty counts for nothing, especially towards eBay, despite the fact that it's the sellers that generate money for eBay.  Personally I think you've made the right decision not to continue being yet another cash cow for eBay.

Whatever you decide to do from now on, I hope you can find a way to put this dreadful experience behind you, whether that includes selling on another online platform or calling time on selling forever and concentrating on less stressful activities.

[fatbobfan]

Try calling AM and getting a european call centre, may be more sympathetic to your issue.

Could also reach out to the boards mods/weekly chat if that is unsuccessful, CS can be the downside of this platform, sometimes its justg trying to find the right persons/dept.

Good luck either way and sorry for such a *bleep*py thing to happen to you, not nice

[ojewellery]

What a series of tough breaks.  Sorry to hear you've been going through it.

Business can be heartless and yet heart breaking at times.

If you take a step back from the emotion and opinion on eBays decision, you have not lost the biggest asset of running your successful business YOU.

It's not the stock or the platform, it's the whole package the seller brings to the table.  Going on 20 years no negatives, contacting every customer when you were already going through such personal termoil - you've obviously got years of brilliant customer service behind you and those skills can also be ahead of you should you wish.

I'll bet with your experience you could list on eBay quickly with your eyes closed.  Is it worth listing to your limits letting eBay tick over and focusing your main energies on expanding your business horizons?  

With persistence eBay may change their decision or more likely  will allow a rapid review of account limits based on historical data once you've sold a few items again.   Your eBaying skills and your future eBay earnings needent be lost

In the meantime you could consider a bit of other platform expansion. 

I first expanded when annoyed.  All the platforms I've been on annoy/ frustrate me at times but by being multiplatform when one infuriates me I can just focus energies elsewhere and not feel the all is lost pressure.  Plus the extra income enables the ever increasing bills to be paid.

Good luck in finding your new direction.

[btr.style]

"Could also reach out to the boards mods/weekly chat"

You are surely joking right? I don't know what's worse, CS who don't have a clue and will just say what people want to hear to get them gone, or the community team who say they will pass something on, look into something or do something but either don't or rarely ever get back to anyone with an outcome. 

There is unfortunately nobody who can or will adjust or change individual seller standards levels for any reason. If it could be manually changed then people would be appealing their level and trying to argue all they could (even those who rightfully are at a lower level) to get their level put back to top rated. 

[classiquejewellery]

Thank you all for your kind comments.

[fatbobfan]

Not part of the system I have had to use/question but in light of the OP youd like to think a little common sense would prevail? CS at time in my expereience depends on the agent you get

If my intentions are completely 100% incorrect, then tell them Im wrong to just make it clear, dont want to waste their time,

[btr.style]

I completely agree, you would expect it but eBay and common sense don't go together at the best of times. Such as a lot of the feedback removal which in many cases should be removed as it breeches eBay's feedback policy and yet they often refuse to remove it. 

I can't say I know too much about European CS but overall they work to a set script with very minimal things they can do. Thus they often say what the person wants to hear to get them gone. It's often a thing here where people do a post saying CS told them this or that but never went and did what they said. 

It's hard to then know who to contact with enough clout to get something like this resolved. CS who likely don't have the power to remove the defects (management likely won't give them the power to be able to do it), or community team who just say they relay the info to the relevant department and nothing comes of it. 

If the OP has some sort of police report, it would go some way to proving the situation but the question is then who does/can it be proven to that can do something about it? Isn't there an appeal system for defects?

[padanpcparts]

Do you have a crime reference number for the incident?