Hi all! I have been reading here for about a week or two, preparing for the inevitable. I have been an eBay seller for 6 years, TRS from as soon as I had the sales requirements to become one, and I have kept TRS up until a few months ago. Selling on eBay is my full time job and I really love doing it. I *was* doing around 4k-5k a month on a 10 year old account with no limits. 9000 sales, 99.9% FB with 4.9 - 5.0 on all DSRS (1 neg, 4 neutrals in the last year)
The last few months have been really hard for me and my family. We had 2 tragic deaths. After the 1st death I had to go out of town for a few days to help care for the spouse of my deceased relative. Since I was only going to be gone Thurs-Sun I did not shut down my store- I just changed my handling time to 3 days and planned on shipping everything Monday. I also ran a huge sale on my BIN items and sent a ton of stuff to auction at low starting prices to end Sun night, trying to get a boost in cash to pay for the air fare and other travel expenses I was incurring.
Well, my aunt that was supposed to be flying in the Sunday I was supposed to be flying out had an emergency with her child and had to stay on the other side of the country- I was stuck- for 5 days until I could get a cousin to fly in and take over caring for my relative. I didn't even have my laptop with me, but I messaged all my buyers from my phone, explained the situation, and begged for mercy. Several said they had deadlines for when they needed the items so I canceled the transactions and refunded them. A lot of them apparently did not read their messages or simply did not care because over the next few weeks I had *16* Item Not Received cases opened. It was a disaster. I got everything shipped as soon as I got home but I ended up with all the cases (all with seller resolution), the defects for the canceled transactions, a bunch of low DSRs and a negative feedback from the whole ordeal.
When the Sept 20th evaluation came around I was above standard, but my projected standing for October 20th was below standard- so on Sept 30th I got an email stating that because i was going to be below standard I now could only list 400 items / $8000 a month. I had to end 3/4th of my listings and because of the drop in search rank my sales came to a screeching halt. I worked my butt off over the last weeks trying to make as much as I could because I have a stupid Kabbage loan i use for inventory purchasing when i find a great deal- and my monthly payment this month is $1800. That was due today. I have only done a pitiful $1300 in sales this month and all that went to my ebay fees, power bill, cell phone bill, car insurance, and food. I ran things at 50% off, tons of auctions, I tried it all. Nothing would bring in the buyers.
So now every single item I sell, as soon as the money goes into my paypal account it is immediately withdrawn by kabbage. I tried to reason with them, saying that if they don't leave me money to ship and pay my ebay fees then I will never be able to pay them off because I won't be able to sell on ebay! They don't care though. I WANT to pay the bill, but I am basically stuck! I saved up a few hundred dollars in cash by selling off a few things to friends so that I can pay to ship some items, but once that runs out or my ebay fees come due, I will be screwed.
And of course, even though I am projected to be Above Standard on my Nov 20th evaluation, there is a good chance eBay will suspend my account at the end of October since I am below standard. It seems like I am out of options- I don't have good credit due to a divorce a few years ago and all the many things I cosigned for my crappy ex, so taking a loan to pay off kabbage isn't an option. I don't have any credit cards.
I'd love to be able to make enough money on some stealth accounts to pay my ebay fees on Nov 15th and then start slowly paying off kabbage. maybe one day I could get my account going again, that is if I don't get kicked off forever at the end of the month. The last thing I want is bad debt, as I have been trying to rebuild my credit since my divorce!
Anyways, I bought the
stealth guide and I am hoping I can make this work. I live in an area with a really horrible job market, and I have been out looking for days- most available work pays around $8 an hour- I can't even pay my living expenses on that, let alone pay off debt :(
It's so crazy how everything can come crashing down so quickly.
New & about to be suspended seller 
Re: New & about to be suspended seller 
