13 year old legit account - Now has selling limits

SMckay · #1 08-30-2021

Hi guys, looking for advice etc...

I have an eBay account that is 13 years old, 100% legit etc...

As the account is so old, it never had any selling limits.

Literally list any amount we wanted to with no issues.

Over the last 3 years we started drop shipping from China. eBay are aware that we dropship and for that reason we can never be Top Rated Seller as we use 3rd party suppliers and don't hold the stock. (that's not a problem as we can never achieved TRS as our delivery times can never be next day)

We actively list up to around 100 new products a day (it's a full time job), sales are good, not amazing but it brings in a wage.

Went to list some new products this morning and we can not list. Check what's going on and we can see on eBay seller hub page we have limits....

512,322listed and sold / 624,400 limit on quantity of items
£36.8Mlisted and sold / £25.7M limit

So we are under the quantity with no issues, but way over on the value we can list.

Rang eBay today and they haven't got a clue what's going on and no help at all. Said they will escalate and someone will get back to us in the next 24hrs.

There is workaround but it's going to be ling and winded, we list 3 quantity of every item and a lot of our listings are multi variation. So we can remove some options and change quantity to 1 which is the short term fix, but long term we will at some point hit those limits again.

We have a high amount of listings but a low sell through rate. (the more we list, the more our sales grow)

Just never in the 13 years had any limits and just out of nowhere we have these limits and no one can explain what's going on.

We may need to step back and completely overhaul our whole business model completely, it's just a massive headache.

Has anyone else ever had limits added where previously had no limits? Anyone got any idea what to do?

Uranio · #2 08-30-2021

Yes, this happen often. You can do nothing about it. Learn to work with these limits, they will never remove them.
What suppliers do you use?

pisports · #3 08-30-2021

so usual..
If I were you I wouldnt chase them about the limit as what you are doing is not what their favourite nowdays,if you reached some axxhole higher level investgator in there they may suspend you right there.Just becareful and sell with what limit it has now then move on more accounts.

SMckay · #4 08-30-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uranio

Yes, this happen often. You can do nothing about it. Learn to work with these limits, they will never remove them.
What suppliers do you use?

Cheers for the reply. Thought as much, just took me by surprise as it's a legit eBay account over 13 years old with nothing to worry about and no limits ever on the account.

Tested a few different AliExpress products over the years and found a few suppliers that way most of which I now work directly with and reliable etc...

Also to note, we advertise our shipping location as China etc... everything is above board, just hit with these limits now.

SMckay · #5 08-30-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by pisports

so usual..
If I were you I wouldnt chase them about the limit as what you are doing is not what their favourite nowdays,if you reached some axxhole higher level investgator in there they may suspend you right there.Just becareful and sell with what limit it has now then move on more accounts.

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah my thoughts entirely too, don't want to rock the boat too much as it's always in the back of my mind that could be shut down anytime as they don't prefer drop shippers.

They are aware what we do as we got an email years back about using 3rd part suppliers etc... and that we can never gain TSR status (I think we used a 3rd party app at some point to help list directly from AliExpress, but later uninstalled and now do all listings manually)

It's not the end of the world and we can work within the limits. We have a lot of products that don't sell and trial and errors etc... A lot of high value products too etc...

We have quantity of 3 on every product too, so we are going to change to quantity 1 which will bring us well down within limits on value, but going forward might start looking at cheaper items to sell to keep us well under the limits.

Still have healthy limits of 624,000 items and £25.7 million monthly, just going to be a lot of hard work to get a workaround without affecting out monthly sales.

Thanks

**SaiJin** · #6 08-30-2021

Why would you ever call them about this??

That's a fantastic limit to have!

SlowTurtle96 · #7 08-30-2021

Some of my accounts are in the same situation as you. similar to you I also drop from china. I think the problem is due to shipping from china or posting too many products but selling rate is not much (you can end your listings once every few months and repost, don't leave listing for too long). Once my account has been downgraded to zero and i think the problem is in listing. Good luck

SMckay · #8 08-31-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlowTurtle96

Some of my accounts are in the same situation as you. similar to you I also drop from china. I think the problem is due to shipping from china or posting too many products but selling rate is not much (you can end your listings once every few months and repost, don't leave listing for too long). Once my account has been downgraded to zero and i think the problem is in listing. Good luck

Yeah that sounds about right, our sell through is so low. So it's a case if hammer up new listings and the more we get listed the more we sell but it's always going to be a low sell through rate.

I think you're right as it's not in eBay's best interest to have thousands and thousands of stagnant listings up on their site with no sales.

I've managed to get it way down to just over half of our limits by changing quantity to 1 on everything so it's doable.

What do you mean your account got put to 0?

murdered_by_ebay · #9 08-31-2021

the performance rules on MP are stricter so that drop shipping is becoming a risky business if the shipping takes place from abroad

Pandoras_box · #10 08-31-2021

I agree with Saijin. You do have a fantastic limit.
Your business model is flawed and quite spammy too - which connotes an annoyance to searching buyers and a burden to eBay servers. eBay really needs to clamp down on sellers that do this.
I'd say it is just that your limits are tapered.
Perhaps you'd consider using Terapeak to find 100 - 200 top-selling items that you may drop ship from China. It'd take at a month or so of full-time work, but at least you'd make several times more money and work considerably smarter than you do now.

rsot · #11 08-31-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlowTurtle96

Some of my accounts are in the same situation as you. similar to you I also drop from china. I think the problem is due to shipping from china or posting too many products but selling rate is not much (you can end your listings once every few months and repost, don't leave listing for too long). Once my account has been downgraded to zero and i think the problem is in listing. Good luck

Welcome to the forum - all the best as you master stealth

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newstart123 · #12 08-31-2021

yes, this happens all the time now. However it is good limits - ask for business support they will help you to increase them later

agent006140 · #13 08-31-2021

are there many sellers selling the same merchandise ?

SMckay · #14 09-01-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by murdered_by_ebay

the performance rules on MP are stricter so that drop shipping is becoming a risky business if the shipping takes place from abroad

All of our performance based metrics are spot on, we don't have anything that we can see on our end that stands out.

Our delivery times are adequate and are shown on every listing, item location is correct.

We have just 1 defect for late delivery etc...

I think it's just the case of a lot of listings and a low sell through rate.

SMckay · #15 09-01-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pandoras_box

I agree with Saijin. You do have a fantastic limit.
Your business model is flawed and quite spammy too - which connotes an annoyance to searching buyers and a burden to eBay servers. eBay really needs to clamp down on sellers that do this.
I'd say it is just that your limits are tapered.
Perhaps you'd consider using Terapeak to find 100 - 200 top-selling items that you may drop ship from China. It'd take at a month or so of full-time work, but at least you'd make several times more money and work considerably smarter than you do now.

Yes I sort of agree, although the products that we sell are quite unique and no other sellers on eBay sell the same products.

We don't spam entire categories so to speak but we do list every single product available in all designs as such, but as we drop ship and item location is China, all of our products do go to bottom of search results so it is a case of the more we list, the more we sell.

I'll have a look at TeraPeak now and I have been thinking of ways to move forward as to stay in the limits and like you say, work smarter, not harder.

We've just been used to selling premium products are premium prices that no other seller sells, so again, more we list the more we sell.

SMckay · #16 09-01-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by agent006140

are there many sellers selling the same merchandise ?

Don't want to go into what products we sell as obviously very easy to copy, but we picked a niche, picked a handful of sellers and uploaded all their inventory into our eBay store.

There is currently no other eBay sellers selling the same products that we sell for the most part.

There is a couple of product lines that we sell that a few other big sellers sell doing the exact same and drop shipping , but those products are high value between £100-£500 a piece and really good margins. Occasionally you get a new seller appear trying to copy but they don't last long as assume they hit their limits very quickly and if you don't have the quantity up then you don't get the sales in.

I may have to move into the more common products though that sell faster and with lower margins just to stay within the limits.

We have 10mil a month left to play with, so even though it was panic stations when saw the limits, we realise how fortunate we still are and have plenty of room to go forward and adapt our business model.

agent006140 · #17 09-02-2021

EBAY knows your business model,plenty of sellers are doing the same,as long as your buyers are happy,it is fine with Ebay BUT Ebay wants to give other sellers a chance to sell as well,so it places a limit on your account,like Sai said it is still very generous.
Live with it or start your own website.
or sell on other venues as well,like Spotify,etsy,amzn.
You must know plenty of Ali sellers are also active on Ebay.

SMckay · #18 09-03-2021

Quote:

Originally Posted by agent006140

EBAY knows your business model,plenty of sellers are doing the same,as long as your buyers are happy,it is fine with Ebay BUT Ebay wants to give other sellers a chance to sell as well,so it places a limit on your account,like Sai said it is still very generous.
Live with it or start your own website.
or sell on other venues as well,like Spotify,etsy,amzn.
You must know plenty of Ali sellers are also active on Ebay.

You know what we've been doing the drop shipping on eBay from China for 3 years now and we always knew it was some what dodgy and may get the rug pulled from under our feet at any time, but it still never gave me that push to get our website etc.... but funnily I'm sat up now at 3am UK time speaking to one of our main suppliers and they have provided a plug in to upload their products quickly to shoplift etc... I have a fair bit of understanding websites and running them and the amount of products uploaded wouldn't rank anywhere in google unless I do proper SEO so still a lot of hard work ahead.

Funny story - Been on eBay for 13 years, started selling phone cases whilst had a full time job as an eCommerce manager for a a company selling premium branded phone cases. Always tried to convince the owner to go down unbranded route but never happened. A failed pay rise later and I done it myself whilst still working, done a pre-order for S4 mini case and make 25k pounds profit in a week. Left my job and started my own company and sales went to nearly 0 hahah, built up to half million pound turn over a year with own offices and staff then the suppliers started selling directly on eBay like you said.... so cut me out.

Been through many different speed bumps and phases on eBay and always managed to find a way to make a full time living or a very healthy side income so I'll overcome this.

agent006140 · #19 09-04-2021

Rupert Murdock once said when ecommerce was in its infant stage,that ecommerce would hurt the retailers.
I can see it,wholesalers/distriibutors and manufacturers are all selling online,how can one compete with your own suppliers?
You can also see a kid whose family is the wholesaler or retailer,takes some items and throw them up on Ebay,happy with small profit as he has no bills to pay.