Numerous eBay sellers from other countries are reporting that eBay restricted their selling privileges in the US and Canada this month and is holding their funds, even prior to a new shipping performance policy set to go into effect on July 24th. On one eBay discussion board thread, international sellers pasted the following message their received from eBay, relating to “BBE” – Bad Buyer Experience:
eBay regularly conducts evaluation of seller’s account. In relation to your aforesaid seller account, we have noticed that a significant number of eBay buyers have had extremely bad buying experience when transacting with you.
A bad buyer experience (“BBE”) will occur but is not limited to the following scenarios:
(a) Buyer filed for a dispute under “Item Not as Described”;
(b) Buyer returned the item and gave a return reason that indicates “Item Not as Described”;
(c) Seller canceled the transaction because you no longer had the item, or the item was never shipped, and the buyer’s money was returned;
(d) Buyer left a Detailed Seller Rating score of 1, 2, or 3 for “Item as Described”; or
(e) Buyer left Neutral or Negative feedback for you.
To protect the eBay community from BBE and pursuant to the eBay User Agreement and eBay Policies, we regret to inform you that your eBay account has been restricted. This restriction means that:
(a) Your selling privileges are restricted. Consequently, you will not be able to create new listings or revise any listings that are live on eBay sites; and
(b) Your payouts have been placed on hold.
The safety of our community is a top priority for us. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.
Regards,
eBay
A seller replied: “You both appear to be sellers from outside the USA & Canada who have fallen afoul of the new shipping policy implemented by eBay on July 24th.” The poster pointed to a new policy called, “Shipping Performance Policy – Item Not Received Rate.”
In another thread on the eBay boards, international sellers reported similar issues but relating to Item Not Received complaints, with one international seller pasting the following message they received from eBay:
Upon evaluation of your recent transactions, it comes to our attention that the INR% (item not received rate) of your eBay account is high compared to other eBay sellers.
Pursuant to our User Agreement, we regret to inform you that your selling permission of the United States corridor(delivery country) will be blocked.You cannot list items on eBay.com or select United States as your shipping location.
The safety of our community is a top priority for us. We appreciate your understanding in this regard.
Regards,
eBay
An eBay moderator responded to questions on the forum with the following post:
“For this particular type of restriction, it is focused on an international sellers INR history over a set period of time. If an international seller were to show a high percentage of INR’s once a minimum of 10 is hit, then we will evaluate the account as a whole looking at several criterias. To prevent abuse, we are not able to share all of the things our system uses to determine is an account would receive certain restrictions such as this one preventing international sellers from selling into the US and Canada.”
One of the sellers who received the second email related to INR (Item Not Received) said it was unrelated to the new shipping performance policy going into effect on July 24th.
The eBay moderator would not provide many details about the reports from sellers because it “involves account specific details and internal policies.” While only eBay knows the number of international sellers it suspended or restricted and by how much that number has changed this month over previous months, the anecdotal reports along with the new stricter policy taking effect on July 24th point to eBay cracking down on international sellers selling into the US.
Reactions from US sellers varied, with some seeing a crackdown as good for the marketplace, and others wondering if eBay was justified in suspending sellers who said they broke no rules.
for once I’ll say good job walmart dope
The safety of our community is a top priority for us. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.
AHAHAHHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
Leas competition for US based sellers from foreign based sellers may be a good thing for those of us in the US, and holding sellers accountable is also good for everyone. But the lack of transparency in suddenly imposing this new policy is troubling – unless the sellers in question were previously warned.
Now, if we could only get Ebay to crack down more on bad buyers…. “Your buyer account has been suspended for repeated BSE (bad seller experience)…”
My gut feeling this has more to do with forcing sellers over to ebay’s new international shipping. Yep, this is impacting out of country sellers who sell within ebay USA but it can impact local sellers just as well who opt out and there are good and valid reasons to opt out.
After all you are not shipping international but local and it is up to ebay to get it to customer. No INR’s unless your item does not make it to ebay.
eBay Cracks Down on Sellers in July …..