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eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

How the hell do they expect anyone to make sales when they hold payments / flag your account the moment you start actually making a decent amount of sales.....

TLDR: 15 year old buyer account, started selling on it a few months ago. 1st month like a few hundred dollars in sales, 2nd month like 500, now this month 1-2k and BOOM got hit with the "payouts on hold while we check over your account". I know how this goes. They're going to ask for invoices, EVEN THOUGH 90% OF MY ITEMS ARE MY PERSONAL ITEMS like sports card collection. I will explain to them that these are my personal items, they will not care and will limit my account i think MC1011 it is, can't remember. Tell me to send in my ID and bank statements, say i'm a risk to ebay, suspend my account and hold my payments for 45 days. Crap is not even worth it anymore man.

Edit: The exact thing I said in my last sentence happened. MC011, this is now my 3rd account gone, very frustrating. I had $1 million selling limits, warmed the account up for months, yet as soon as I hit $2k sales in a month, BOOM, flagged.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

indeed that sucks :( personal items and such - can only wait now and see what they want

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

I've had a few accounts in the past and I always like to warm them up by selling things around my house. But now the past two accounts this has happened and i don't have invoices for them obviously. I guess next account I get i'm going to have to like buy a liquidation bundle or something and just try to sell that to warm up the account. Ridiculous , but thats how ebay is now a days.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Thy will accept auction invoices for the item sold, its weird but they would rather accept them than take your word for it that your items are your own.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Hmm, seems like I need to find a wholesale or auction site where I can buy bulk sports cards and/or clothes lol. Cause yeah me explaining to them on my last account they we're personal items did not get the job done.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

This is ridiculous , yep, just got the MC011 of death wow. Happens every single account once it starts doing good...

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Honestly limiting yourself to source from wholesale or auction just to get an invoice is ridiculous.

I know you're angry and so would I. We should look at it from a different angle and try to guess what actually triggered these suspensions on your account.

The point is to avoid triggering them asking for all these nonsense docs

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

how many items did you sell in total?

sport cards,comics are considered by both PAypal and Ebay as high risk items.
you should send them a photo with you holding your SSN/passport with photo and Ebay ID infront of a pile of cards.
Plenty of people sell things around the house,Ebay should know better.

did you take your own photos ?Once I sold some Precolumbian artifacts (consigned) and Ebay wants me to take photo of myself and these items.
Did you see if there are other sites ,some may just sell sport cards.

Did someone report you?

OP first talked about his card collection from way back,then he starts to talk about all his new merchandise?

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

it has to be connected to items , those reviews for 5 days are very frequent and a majority does not lead to any consequences

the other option is too much turnover within a short period of time

and finally the last option , that is bad metrics but that one is usually associated with one or both of the above two

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

@ the comments above idk if you missed it, but I got the "kiss of death", aka MC011.

I have to wait until all my items are delivered, then they will officially ban my account and then i'll get my funds 45 days after.

No stock photos, all real photos. I'm pretty sure it was the items that got me. Have to get a new EIN and IP and start over. I just don't know what to do next time when I make my account, I think I just try to scale too quick, but i'd think after 3 months of warming an account up it'd be fine. I have $1 million selling limits, so why they heck is ebay flagging me for selling 2k of that.

It just really sucks because I had this one product that is HOT right now, but it will not make many sales after this month. Even when I make a new account or buy a stealth, I will not be able to make many sales (as I would be flagged AGAIN). This is my 3rd account getting flagged for the same thing.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

I think the selling limit is determined by their internal metrics and ai, and does not guarantee the account is therefore beyond suspicion.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

They are looking for unusual trends of increase in turnover and high risk items.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

it is likely brand new items in quantity appearing on a new seller account , it is high risk so the account gets shut down

you want to stay alive you list a little bit and increase every month by 20%-30% , if you want to list a lot it should be a selection of used low risk items

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

What degsey said I believe is right on - it is the overall trends and activity changes which seem to trigger these limitations. Many people mistakenly believe if limits are high then the account is bulletproof, this is not the case. I am even more careful in amounts of items sold when I see large limits, it means there is more room for triggers.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

@ m*rder , yes it did have a good amount of brand new and qty listed on a couple of the lsitings. I had about $15k worth listed. Some of the personal clothes I we're selling we're popular brands like nike so maybe that too, as unsure whats high risk and whats not now a days. "VERO"

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Weird thread, we've gone from the scenario of confused private seller of their personal card collection to what seems to be a business seller of mostly new goods with one 'hot' item and some branded clothing thrown in for good measure.

Can't help think this thread would have been easier for folk to advise on if you'd told the truth from the start.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Get auction invoices the only thing that can help atm

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

90% of it was personal stuff, the 10% was me trying to dropship and work my way up to more dropshipping.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

MC011 is the kiss of death, invoices won't help, it's over, been down this road a few times now.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Not to forget mention of "selling nike"...kind of shady additional info

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

All I wear is branded stuff, nike is a lot of my personal closest I was trying to sell as well. Literally low cost stuff around my house to try to build up feedback and sales. Was doing fine until uptick in sales.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Guess you can't sell anything branded when account newer even if its used clothes and cards. Going to stick to I guess selling cheap phone cases or chargers next time? Or sell stuff where I lose money, just to build up sales. But even then, every single time my problem is the big sales uptick > account review > then I get MC011 and/or they ask for invoices. So guess will just have to buy a wholesale pallet or something similar with an invoice next time around.

I've already used both my EIN's though, so would have to try to get another one. I would buy a stealth, but i'm 99% sure thats fr*ud since all USA accounts need a SSN. Then there is the ones that all say "oh just change the info after $600 in sales". Makes zero sense as even with business accounts, ebay wants shareholders SSN. I now have a few suspended accounts attached to my ssn, doubt i'm able to slip by a third time...

If I just plan on 100% dropshipping though, I guess maybe just buy a non USA account with payoneer attached?

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

you need to change the strategy , MC011 because of overselling is not enough to get your SSN blacklisted

just make sure to limit turnover to $200 in first month and increase by 30% every month , at the same time open listings must not have a large inventory but only enough to make the mentioned turnover

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

Right on - the problem is the branded name which can be immediately flagged

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

I had this happen around the same time. Although I sold up to $3000 per month on the 3rd month which was stupid of me. I have waited since July to make a new account, just focused on building other marketplaces along with my website. I think the best approach for us to really stay under the radar for the first 3 months, can't have over $1,000 sales per month. $1,000 is like nothing to me, but for some that is a lot of money.

It was different times but if I think back to the accounts I had which turned into amazing accounts long term, they all truly were built under an organic process. I did not go from $500 the first month to $3,000 by month 3. Rather it took me over 6 months to get $2,000. And the sales slowly increased, went sideways, then increased. By two years in I finally got real money coming. Talking $20,000+ a month.

I have learned I don't need eBay to survive so moving forward I will go slow, and although temptation will be there because sales come so fast on eBay for me, I will refrain. Focus on building outside of eBay. It used to be my only source of income, now I have over 5 different markets to draw from not including eBay.

Re: eBay is beyond ridiculous
 

I know this comment is old, but just now seeing it. I think this is probably the one of the most simple yet best comments i've ever read since it hits home. I'm a hustler at heart and once I see something working I want to push full forward with it. The times where i've done this is times where i've also been low on money, so it makes sense.

It's what got both my Etsy accounts banned as well. I was doing solid for like 2 years, but then I hit a breakthrough my last month on a few products and went full force on upping my ad spend like 2-3x the normal amount. Went from 3-5k sales a month to 10k in the first two weeks, which obviously flagged my account. Then obviously then could see i was dropshipping and they banned me. If I wouldn't have been so money hungry, I would still be making the easiest money still every month. I am turning my attention to starting a business that is not on an online marketplace as obviously they can take your business away from you in an instant. When I am good money wise, then I might try to get back to selling on marketplaces.