Below Standard Seller

[createdbyclaireltd]

I'm currently at below standard level as I sold so little at the time that 3 transaction defects pulled me under. My fault entirely, no excuses here. 

I'm trying to get my backside in gear and start back selling on Ebay after a 3 month absence. I can't see any restrictions stopping me listing anything at all but sales will be very very slow at the start so it will take a while to get back up to standard.

So my question is, is there any point in listing things? I've had the automatic warning emails every month for the past 3 months, I don't want to spend time putting a load of things on for sale only for my account to be deactivated because I haven't managed to get enough sales to improve the rating yet.

[jckl1957]

Your seller rating is not visible to potential buyers and they won't know that you are below standard.

What might put buyers off is your feedback rating - 80% is a bad rating.

All you can do is try listing a few items and see how it goes.

[createdbyclaireltd]

Yes, indeed. Will try putting a small amount on rather than spending many hours listings and see how it goes. I had a couple of sales after the bad feedback came in so there are still some trusting people it seems. It was also over 6 months ago so hopefully that will stand in my favour.

[*vyolla*]

To get back above standard, all you can do is to sell as much as possible as quichkly as possible, whilst keeping an eye on your Seller Dashboard metrics:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/selling/monitoring-improving-seller-performance?id=4785&st=3&pos...

[crg_music]

Yep, sell a lot fast and your averages will soon improve then eventually drop off just make sure not to get any more.

I found cds the easiest as they are extremely easy to list and cheap to send + in my experience very low problem catagories as long as you are accurate with versions and condition. Ive never had a single buyer try to scam or anything. Box of 100 jiffy bags will cost you about £10-12 and they can go as a large letter with zero additional packaging.

I had almost a full batch get stuck in the post and all got late deliveries and got me close to losing my top rated so I just went crazy for a bit listing cds for bottom price and sold a load, now I think I could probably afford 5 or 6 late deliveries right now because of increasing sales.

Ebays system does seem to favour sellers selling lower to medium value items consistantly well over more sporadic higher end items in riskier catagories.

[krafty-kreations]

I see you sold Personalised cards, now is as good a time as any to make up some Christmas cards.

[ile136yz]

You need to list low value items that will sell quickly to get your Seller's Ratings up (it is the quantity you need not the value at the moment). 

Answer any messages you receive & post out on time.

As I'm sure you know your Seller's funds will be on hold until your Seller's Rating is over 10, but you will be able to pay for the postage label from your  funds on hold.

[createdbyclaireltd]

Thanks very much for your advice everyone. My cards are low value so any holds on funds won't hurt too much thankfully and hopefully as they are cheap, they can build volume sales quicker.

[*vyolla*]

Good luck with your sales, hopefully you'll be able to get past this soon.

[1956glyn]

Yes your rating is currently 80% BUT saying that ......you should soon be back to 100% because its been 12 months.    From my knowledge on month 13 it should go back to 100%  🙂

[designedbyjacky]

The same thing happened to me. Selling on here for over 20 years and sales declined to the point of virtually nothing and due to 2 items being out of stock, my fault but didn't see the point of having stock that wasn't selling, thought I'd wait a couple of weeks so I could order in enough to get free delivery from supplier, it put me into a below standard slot. Trouble is, it is impossible to climb back as ebay will put all listings at the bottom and unless buyers are prepared to spend hours going through pages of goods than you have no chance of getting sales.

My advice is close the account and re open a new one and start again. I did this and have had sales coming in on a regular basis and have had 17 sales in less than a month, which is far more than I was doing with my previous account of 20+ years at the end.

[magpiecorner1]

Hi

Yvolla will keep me right on this, but I think it depends on the reasons for the 'below standard '.

We once got 21 defects for one missing parcel containing 22 items, no seller resolution.  It was in the days of PayPal, we asked the buyer to open a case, but  she opened a case with PayPal rather than eBay, and PayPal opened 21 cases and closed them all within 9 seconds, so we had no chance to even be informed, much less action.  eBay couldn't rectify it because PayPal had instigated the action, but paid us a decent amount of compensation.   We didn't sell a thing for exactly 12 months until the defects were listed.  Selling recommenced immediately.  Luckily it was an international sale so didn't affect UK sales.  Normally if you sell a sufficiently high quantity, restrictions can be removed in 3 months, but not 'without seller resolution' if it doesn't let you sell for 12 months.

This was years ago, rules might have changed, but worth looking at the reasons for 'below standard'

[its-time-to-shine]

if your cases closed by ebay is above 0.3% it sees to me that will not change for a year as i have sold 100's more items with no negative feedback.

of course if people feel your postage was slow they will also mark you down even if it wasnt slow they just thought it was, then just give you zero stars. Ultimatley this leads to higher ebay fees which progressivley get higher and higher.

ebay will continue to tell you to improve seller performance but in reality you cant, you could sell a million more items but that wont make a difference because of the cases closed by ebay while you was on holiday in the sun and marked yourself away for 2 weeks but allowed sales to continue.

well i got my final warning to improve sales and sold like mad with no complaints..... months on the seller performance level never changes and my fees are now the usual 10.9% + vat and now + an additional 6% for poor seller performance.

in reality my performance is super strong but i cant climb out of this make believe pit ebay have created. and that is the point, to charge an extra 6% for a year and allow you to carry on selling at there discretion.

good luck with the shafftt1ng...........

[mazda-mx5-mk3-parts]

I am in the same position and I only noticed this because I have had no sales in two weeks when I was selling quite a few items daily. This is the worst bit three buyers lied to ebay to return items that were fully described correctly but the buyers were using the ebay app and only looked at the title text and one photo the part numbers were even there for everyone to see but these buyers just assumed and took the chance. Then when the items were not compatible with their vehicles they told ebay the items were defective so they could get a free return at my expense. Anyway 2 hours on ebay chat basically told me because I had not accepted the returns then thats why they are now classed as three defects and three cases closed without a seller resolution which means my account is 0.04% below seller standard. The ebay reprentative basically said sellers just have to take it on the chin!! Really so yet again the ebay buyer can do what they want lie through their back teeth and the ebay seller who actually pays ebays wages has to loose out everytime. The whole system on ebay is totally backwards. My principle is if someone lies to return a item for free then I cannot accept the return. If anyone wants to return a item and they admit its their fault and they pay the return postage then no problem at all. But how many buyers would do that? I havent had many at all that will admit they are at fault they just lie all the time. Sadly this is the world we are living in it seems to be full of assuming liars !! So my account wont get re-evaluated till February 2025 🤔🤣🤣🤣

[johnwash1]

@createdbyclaireltd 

I'm guessing you're out of time to do this now, but if you ever get another negative, use the Reply to explain why the negative was given.  Be fair, don't rant.

If I saw I was about to buy from an 80% seller I'd immediately look at their feedback and try to figure out whether it was due to an irrational buyer, or an event that was a one off (e.g. appendicitis) or because you're an appalling evil scamming seller (just kidding).

[*vyolla*]

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@mazda-mx5-mk3-parts wrote:

 My principle is if someone lies to return a item for free then I cannot accept the return. 

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Principles are good but, as you've discovered, it's never worth refusing a return though -  you have absolutely nothing to gain (the buyer will get a refund anyway) and everything to lose (a defect).

[mazda-mx5-mk3-parts]

So someone lies to return a fully described item to get a free return and thats ok sorry thats not my policy at all the problem with ebay is they never treat sellers and buyers equal its always the buyer is king no matter what they do and the seller as far as they are concerned can close their account and go away I have experienced every senario with ebay and its the same everytime you can report a buyer till your blue in the face and ebay do nothing at all I had a buyer once who bought a brand new laptop off me he started a return as soon as he received it so I knew something was wrong ebay let him send the laptop back because he said it was faulty so the laptop came back to me at my expoense and the laptop was faulty but it wasnt my laptop that had been sent back because the ebuyer had switched his dead laptop for my brand new laptop it was the exact same model etc and I only noticed because I checked the laptop serial number did ebay do anything to this buyer no they didnt the buyer is still on ebay and I even reported the buyer to action fraud and guess what even they said there was no evidence of a crime 

I rest my case !

[johnwash1]

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@mazda-mx5-mk3-parts wrote:

So someone lies to return a fully described item to get a free return and thats ok sorry thats not my policy at all the problem with ebay is they never treat sellers and buyers equal its always the buyer is king no matter what they do and the seller as far as they are concerned can close their account and go away I have experienced every senario with ebay and its the same everytime you can report a buyer till your blue in the face and ebay do nothing at all I had a buyer once who bought a brand new laptop off me he started a return as soon as he received it so I knew something was wrong ebay let him send the laptop back because he said it was faulty so the laptop came back to me at my expoense and the laptop was faulty but it wasnt my laptop that had been sent back because the ebuyer had switched his dead laptop for my brand new laptop it was the exact same model etc and I only noticed because I checked the laptop serial number did ebay do anything to this buyer no they didnt the buyer is still on ebay and I even reported the buyer to action fraud and guess what even they said there was no evidence of a crime 

I rest my case !

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Small claims court.

[*vyolla*]

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@mazda-mx5-mk3-parts wrote:

So someone lies to return a fully described item to get a free return and thats ok sorry thats not my policy at all the problem with ebay is they never treat sellers and buyers equal its always the buyer is king no matter what they do and the seller as far as they are concerned can close their account and go away I have experienced every senario with ebay and its the same everytime you can report a buyer till your blue in the face and ebay do nothing at all I had a buyer once who bought a brand new laptop off me he started a return as soon as he received it so I knew something was wrong ebay let him send the laptop back because he said it was faulty so the laptop came back to me at my expoense and the laptop was faulty but it wasnt my laptop that had been sent back because the ebuyer had switched his dead laptop for my brand new laptop it was the exact same model etc and I only noticed because I checked the laptop serial number did ebay do anything to this buyer no they didnt the buyer is still on ebay and I even reported the buyer to action fraud and guess what even they said there was no evidence of a crime 

I rest my case !

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You shouldn't have lost out there, but there is a process to follow.

The usual way foreward in these situations is that the seller accepts the return and gets their item back, if it isn’t their item they then immediately file a report with Actionfraud and get a reference number.

The seller then clicks the "Report a problem" link in the case, selects "Different item returned" as the reason and provides the Actionfraud reference number and report. This stops the automated returns process that would ultimately force the seller to issue a refund.

Then, someone at eBay reviews the case. As to what happens next depends on a few factors - if the buyer has done this before, if the seller is a long standing eBay member who's had no issues like this before etc.  We've seen a good few threads recently here in which the sellers have been in a similar scenario but have not lost out.

[ellwoods-interests]

i am also now below standard due to a theft from my storeroom of some items i had listed, but before i had chance to sort out what was missing some items sold, so i had to mark them as missing, i got ebay to reove them all, but because the items sold in the days leading up to the review date i automatically went below standard, but the restirctions ebay places on below standard sellers are crippling i used to sell around £1000 a week now im am down to about £100, the listing views i had were thousands aday, and today i got 46 views, i was sending out around 10 to 15 parcels a day, now it is less than 10 a week, when i search for my listings on the search bar it is very hard to find any of my items, for example i have over 200 border fine arts items but if you search for border fine arts you possibly wont find them on the first 3 pages of the search results,  i have begged and pleaded with ebay to help because i will be out of business in a week or so but they just refuse to help in any way, it' a case of "computer says no" i have put everything into this ebay shop snd now ebay is taking it all the away, and i could be on the streets by christmas, your question "is there any point in listing things?" i dont know anymore, no one can find my listings not even me