 eBay Closed My Account After 40 Days For Defect rate Above 5%
On October 26, 2014 my friend/helper left nine packages in her car for eight days due to an oversight causing them to arrive late. These packages were mailed on November 5, 2014 and all of the domestic packages arrived by November 10. This brought my defect rate from below 2%, where it has historically been since I started selling on eBay in August 2004, to 6.32%, or 27 out of 427.
These nine defects all occurring on October 26 caused PayPal to freeze my funds until packages arrived plus three days and caused eBay to lower my selling limits from 2530 items and/or $109,000 to 540 items and/or $9300 minus sales (about $2000 during January with only a single defect for a returned package that the customer changed her mind about). I previously had 2530 listings valued at over $66,000.
On January 5 I spoke with Supervisor Patti and was told that if I continued selling that the restrictions would be lifted after about 114 more transactions. I had 81 transactions during January, but on February 2, eBay ended all of my listings and closed my account in spite of my maintaining a good selling record with only a single defect in January and three during December.
Also to be noted is that on January 30, 2015 eBay stopped counting defects over the past three months due to my transactions for the months of November, December and January falling below 400, which lowered my defect rate to 4.14% placing me in the Above Standard category again; however, it was again lowered to the three-month threshold on February 2, causing my defect rate to rise to 6.32%, in spite of not having 400 transactions.
I have been a Top Rated Silver Star Power Seller on eBay since August 2004 with over $100,000 in sales from 6523 transactions so I was surprised that they would close my account without giving me time to improve my defect rate. I had 27 defects, 18 of which were "Items Did Not Arrive" although all 18 were shown to have arrived within nine days to around 13 days; eight items "Not As Described", but several of these were customers having changed their mind and taking advantage of my 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed policy allowing any customer to return any item for any reason, although some did not understand they could not list the item as "Not As Described or Damaged" to take advantage of this policy.
I also had six negative and two neutral feedbacks out of 890 total over the previous 12 months, but only the last two Neutrals were still being counted a defects, which is why my feedback rating remained at 99% for the year.
Here's the email that eBay sent me on February 2 letting me know why all of my listings were ended and my account closed.
Hi Lee,
We want to let you know that you haven’t met the minimum requirements to sell on eBay and your seller level is Below Standard in the US program. As such, you won't be able to list and sell items on eBay anymore.
Selling standards are in place to ensure that sellers deliver a great customer experience to their buyers. They measure whether buyers were satisfied with your items and your customer service.
When you don’t meet the minimum requirements for selling, you are creating experiences that erode confidence and drive buyers away.
If you had any active listings, they've now been ended, and any selling fees paid for those items will be credited to you.
If you've recently sold items that you still need to fulfill or ship, do so promptly. You'll still be able to see any recently sold items in My eBay, send and receive messages, and of course, buy items on eBay.
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