ebay private & business account - how does it work?

Anastasia

Hi everyone,

Can you help? I have been going through all the threads today updating myself on ebay and need some advice.

I have been a private user since 2006 just selling things we no longer needed and have a 100% rating, feedback score 69. I now want to have a separate business account and heard that you could upgrade your personal account to a business account and still keep your rating. However, I also want to have the option of a private account for selling our family stuff.

Just read this on ebay: 'If you use your account for both personal and business purposes, you can create another account so that you can divide your personal and business trading in to separate accounts.'

How does work? Can you keep the rating for both or do you have to choose one?

Thank you in anticipation.

Rhymsta

I used my private account, which had a good track record, to uprade to a business one and started another account for buying and private sales. When you set up a second account you have to start from a zero feedback in that account.

Anastasia

Rhymsta wrote: »

I used my private account, which had a good track record, to uprade to a business one and started another account for buying and private sales. When you set up a second account you start from zero feedback.

Thank you. I would be looking at a name change to upgrade and apparently they put a symbol next to your name to show that the name has been changed. Does anyone know how long that stays there?

techspec

Anastasia wrote: »

Thank you. I would be looking at a name change to upgrade and apparently they put a symbol next to your name to show that the name has been changed. Does anyone know how long that stays there?

30 days.

Personally, for good record keeping, including tax records etc - i have never understood why anyone would upgrade their personal account and 'mucky the water' about which bit was personal and which bit was business.

Surely its best to start the business account from scratch - so the start date cannot be questioned? What if 6 years of account records are requested?

Anastasia

That is what I am not sure of. Is it better to upgrade or start from scratch. I think there are limits on how much you can sell if you start from scratch. No worries about tax because my business has been running for the last 2 years. This will just be a way of expanding.

chemical.galaxy

I started from scratch, my personal account had 700+ feedback but I opened a business one to keep things simple and separate - the feedback soon caught up!
I have also separate paypal accounts.

Anastasia

chemical.galaxy wrote: »

I started from scratch, my personal account had 700+ feedback but I opened a business one to keep things simple and separate - the feedback soon caught up!
I have also separate paypal accounts.

When you started from scratch did they limit your sales initially?

soolin

Anastasia wrote: »

When you started from scratch did they limit your sales initially?

Yes they will, but you can usually extend that limit by asking ebay to link your new account with a previous one. However, selling on a no or low feedback aco!!!! is going to be tough.

I changed my existing high feedback account to a business one, just made a note of the date I started trading and noted that in my books- no problem at all. It means I started off trading with a good seriously long history on ebay.

Anastasia

I think I have decided to upgrade my private account. At least it gives the business a flying start. I don't do much private selling now. Thank you.