Seller Punishment by eBay - A year long sentence??

[eco-woodprojects]

So Xmas last year I cancelled 16 orders as I had been let down by a supplier, I panicked and wanted to refund my customers asap so they could purchase elsewhere before Christmas......I know wrong move! I will hold my hands up for my ignorance of the ebay policy, and should have asked the buyers first if they wanted to cancel. So my seller rating was dropped to below standard back in February and from what I am hearing from eBay is that unless I can sell 400 items in a month, the system will continually review my last 12 months and still count the poor transaction defect history against me. I have paid a heavy price for my mistake, sales are down by around 80% and not sure how I have managed to keep afloat. It would seem that ebay are only interested in high volume sellers, who could get away with anything as long as they turnover 400 items a month?

[papso22]

I am sorry this has happened but you used the right cancellation reason.  Getting the buyer to agree to cancel to avoid an out of stock defect, when you were out of stock, would have been the wrong thing to do.

Ebay want sellers that don't disappoint buyers.

[*vyolla*]

You were out of stock, so that was the correct cancellation route. Unfortunately, this does impact a selling account big time. All you can do is to try and sell as much as possible as quickly as possible. Are there any low value items you can list (the stack them high sell them low method)?

[john1297576]

As you are aware, rating is calculated on last 12 months.

Not sure if the figure is the same for business sellers, but ebay expect no more than 2 defects per 100 sales, so 16 defects would need sales of over 800 in 12 months to keep below 2%.

Once below standard it is virtually impossible to get below 2% due to restrictions on selling, so as sales decline the % gets worse, and only passage of time, when defects drop off will see you back to above standard.