If an eBay user violates eBay’s policies, they can have their account suspended, which leads to an interruption of sales and the potential for more, serious ramifications. To protect yourself on eBay, RepricerExpress will explore how suspensions happen, what you can do to remedy things, and how to avoid suspension in the future.
Common Reasons for eBay Account Suspensions
Saying an eBay user can get suspended for violating eBay’s policies is pretty broad, so here are the four most common reasons users get their accounts suspended.
1. Late Shipping Orders
One of the biggest deciding factors buyers make when narrowing down choices between buyers is shipping time. And if you’re late on what you promised, you’re at risk of buyers complaining. But late shipping isn’t just about when a product arrives, it’s also about when you send it out. Once you’ve received payment, you shouldn’t be exceeding more than a couple hours to have it shipped out.
2. Late Tracking Number
Buyers get anxious about the status of their product shipment, and a tracking number helps them see where the item is during delivery. But if you’re late in uploading that, then eBay can’t validate it and share with the customer — which tells the buyer you either have a poor workflow or you didn’t ship the product with a tracked service (or both!).
3. High Transaction Defect Rate
eBay talks about what transaction defect rate requirements here, but it essentially means a fast track to account suspension. Even though buyers don’t get to see your defect rate, it’s important to keep it low to protect your reputation and sales volume.
4. Low Case Resolve Rate in the Resolution Centre
Although it might seem like Amazon is the leader in customer support, you should in no way take that to mean that eBay places customer support low on their priority list. They do no. They very much care about their buyers’ happiness, and you should, too, by writing listings, taking care of issues/complaints/questions, and resolving cases in the Resolution Centre with this in mind.
Although these tend to be the most common reasons a seller may find their account suspended for, there are other ways to get there as well, such as:
- Being negligent or consistently late in paying eBay fees.
- Advertising, selling, and shipping low-quality or counterfeit products.
- Use multiple eBay accounts to sell the same items.
- Having consistently poor metrics and not improving them.
It can be tough to get your account suspended, as eBay will issue several warnings for just about every infraction, so it’s not like you could claim ignorance. Make sure you don’t gloss over messages sent from eBay so you don’t miss a warning message.
What an eBay Suspension Looks Like
After all the warning messages, eBay will suspend your account and the process will look like this.
- You’ll get a message from them saying your account has been suspended.
- The suspension will usually be 7 days, 10 days, 30 days, or indefinite (with a total loss of privileges).
- eBay may include recommended actions you can take.
- They’ll also tell you the terms of your suspension.
- During the suspension, you won’t be able to use your account until it’s over. When it is, your privileges will be restored automatically.
The Downsides You Can Expect During an Account Suspension
The biggest disadvantage to an account suspension is a loss of sales during the term. Since you won’t be able to sell products, you won’t have money coming in. And because eBay uses PayPal, you’ll notice the lack of cash right away. Even though the two are separate companies (and have been since 2015), there is still a lot of co-mingling between them and the effects of a suspension from one can be felt with the other.
Another problem with an account suspension is the fallout on a personal and employee level. For you personally, getting hit with a suspension can lead to feeling helpless, anxious, emotionally low, and much more. Your employees, on the other hand, may be frustrated to see their boss getting an account suspension, especially if they’ve brought up these issues before and they’ve been ignored. You’ve got to work on both fixing the problem and reassuring employees things will change and be better — and then actually enacting those changes.
Final Thoughts
Getting your eBay account suspended really sucks, but think of it as a wake-up call instead of just brushing it under the carpet. Fix the issues outlined in your suspension, develop a new plan of action to avoid the problems that led to the suspension, then ride out the time until you can get back to selling. While you’ve got that time on your hands, a good use of it would be to research what your competitors are doing and then adjusting your pricing so you can hit the ground running when you’re back. But to maximise the impact, use RepricerExpress. When you sign up now and you’ll get the first 15 days free to really cement your practices.
Related: How to Become an eBay Powerseller
