Ebay's unfair lifetime bans - who regulates ebay?

noisla

My boyfriend has just received a lifetime ebay ban, after receiving 4/5 stars for dispatch time on a few items. It may also be relevant that some time ago (1-2 years I think), he got a single piece of negative feedback for an items the buyer claimed was not in the condition stated, my friend disagreed but anyway offered a full refund, the buyer refused but left negative feedback anyway. He leads a busy life with a full-time job and various other commitments, which means he can't post items out as quickly as Amazon, and this is always clearly stated on his listings. However, he relies on ebay both for extra income and to get rid of the huge amount of clutter he needs rid of from his garage!

I've now read a lot about ebay, on this site an others. We realise that he should definitely not try to set up a second account, and his only hope is a lengthy barrage of begging letters to head office.

However, more widely, it seems that ebay is going through a systematic process of booting off all small-scale sellers, for any minor misdemeanour, leaving only large companies on the site. Many people rely on ebay as a source of income. Ebay has a monopoly for online auctions - Amazon Marketplace is not suitable for many types of items. In other consumer areas, monopolies are watched over by regulators to protect public interest. Is there a higher power (Office of Fair Trading?) to which we could report ebay for its unfair practices? It is just downright unfair that ebay can effectively ruin someone's livelihood, for life, with very little reason.

Goldblend_2

Hi Noisla .. has he ever tried Gumtree ..? if there is one that covers your area. I 'm pretty sure it's free to post ?

mildred1978

noisla wrote: »

My boyfriend has just received a lifetime ebay ban, after receiving 4/5 stars for dispatch time on a few items. It may also be relevant that some time ago (1-2 years I think), he got a single piece of negative feedback for an items the buyer claimed was not in the condition stated, my friend disagreed but anyway offered a full refund, the buyer refused but left negative feedback anyway. He leads a busy life with a full-time job and various other commitments, which means he can't post items out as quickly as Amazon, and this is always clearly stated on his listings. However, he relies on ebay both for extra income and to get rid of the huge amount of clutter he needs rid of from his garage!

I've now read a lot about ebay, on this site an others. We realise that he should definitely not try to set up a second account, and his only hope is a lengthy barrage of begging letters to head office.

However, more widely, it seems that ebay is going through a systematic process of booting off all small-scale sellers, for any minor misdemeanour, leaving only large companies on the site. Many people rely on ebay as a source of income. Ebay has a monopoly for online auctions - Amazon Marketplace is not suitable for many types of items. In other consumer areas, monopolies are watched over by regulators to protect public interest. Is there a higher power (Office of Fair Trading?) to which we could report ebay for its unfair practices? It is just downright unfair that ebay can effectively ruin someone's livelihood, for life, with very little reason.

It's nothing compared with the grief he'll get if he's been selling for profit and hasn't registered as self employed and paid the relevant taxes.

kbh4031

emalou123 Spamming not gonna get you new members.....just puts people off :cool:
:spam:

soolin

Unfortunately banning users is something any site can do almost at will. Amazon are even stricter as are many other sites, on the vent board at the moment there is someone who has been banned from buying at Boots.com for instance.At least ebay do give warnings by email and by use of the expanded dashboard so that it is sometimes possible to turn selling patterns around before any restriction or ban. I assume he had a restriction first as it is rare to go straight to a ban unless it is a serious issue.

As per your post, all you can do is try and see if any of the low stars can be removed to get the account back to standard again, and the only way to do that is to phone and hope to get Ireland. The ban will only be based on the last year of the expanded dashboard, so before phoning have a good rummage and see if there is anything else there you can appeal.

The ban will be on stars ,cases opened and closed by ebay, policy strikes and feedback. It is almost unheard of to be banned on just 4 or 5 low stars especially as a business and there must have been something else happening which si worth looking closely at the expanded dashboard for.

oldone_2

It is unlikely he would have received a" life time ban after receiving 4/5 stars for dispatch time on a few items." One neg two years ago would certainly not result in account termination.

He would certainly have had warning e-mails and messages from e-bay before the ban; and like many people who are "too busy to take any notice", ignoring will result in a ban.

Your boyfriend needs to lok at his DSR, when almost certainly he will find quite a few low stars in one or more categories.

It is e-bay's site, and they write the rules, which we all agree to when signing up.

Rightly or wrongly, e-bay now demand the highest levels of professionalism from all sellers, including private ones. Which is good for buyers who no longer have to put up with sellers who are too busy to post in a timely manner.

Crowqueen

eBay is not a public body, it's a private company and as such can choose who can sell on their site and who can't.

Any other private offline venue, such as a shopping centre, car boot sale or a market would probably have some sort of rules for sellers/shops there to abide by, whether it is paying rent or contributing towards admin costs for the centre or, as in the case of a lot of car boot sales, rules on what can be sold by whom (e.g. the restrictions placed on food, new items etc and patrolling by Trading Standards inspectors).

There is no guaranteed human right to sell on eBay - you have to live up to their standards. If you have been banned it's because you ignored warnings and other evaluations, and did not concentrate on your service being offered to customers. If you got banned because of a single blip, then it might be possible to appeal, but without being able to see the account in question we can't determine exactly what is going on, and as above I think you are underestimating the severity of the problems with the account.

soolin

I have just been thinking about this again. In one of my voluntary jobs I get a lot of ebay related questions and as a consequence get to see a few expanded dashboards. I have seen more than a handful of very small sellers, mainly private with 5 low stars who are merely on 'below standard' or maybe with some restrictions. OP I owuld urge you to really go through the expanded dashboard carefully, there must be other issues on there, also check what restrictions were in place and whether any warnings (ie keyword spamming, shill bidding etc) were ignored.

Some things are worth appealing or sending agrovelling apology, but you need to identify exactly what is the issue , as a general apology will almost certainly not do. You need to see what it is that caused the problem and phone regarding that, maybe promising never to do it again- sort of thing. This is unlikely to be a star issue unless you sell virtually nothing (and your OP suggests this is a business) or there are more lows than you think in to short a time frame.

noisla

Ok he's on 98.1% positive feedback, but no negative feedback in the last 6+ months. It was 2 pieces of 4/5 star on dispatch time which triggered the ban. I understand that slow dispatch time is a lot more important than negative feedback, but even so, it amazes me that this can happen, and I've read many similar accounts on the internet now. Even people with fully-fledged ebay businesses, piles of stock at home, banned for a couple of slow deliveries. For example, one of the 4/5 stars my boyfriend had was a 10 day delivery to Switzerland. This was over 2 weekends and a bank holiday, so in fact 5 working days, which I think is pretty quick for European parcel delivery. But it takes ages to improve your rating when you're a small-time ebayer selling just a couple of items a week.

But anyway, you've all answered my queries - ebay is perfectly within its rights to do this. Makes you realise that there's now a gap in the market for an auction/small-ads site for everyday people to use. If only I had the technical know-how...

@mildred1978 - your comment not ignored, he keeps minutely detailed spreadsheets of everything should there ever be a need to prove that clearing out a garage is a profitable endeavour. Sure, he makes money now, but when you consider the cost of stuff in the first place, true postage & packaging costs (ebay limits what you can pass on to the buyer), his garage storage, petrol delivering to parcelforce, the amount of stuff that has been chucked out having been eaten by mice, flooded in the roof leak of the garage, or gone mouldy... I personally would just take everything to a charity shop or a skip, but then I'm not in such need of every penny as he is.

oldone_2

This does puzzle me. 4/5 stars for two sales will not trigger a ban; there must be other issues which have caused this. He needs to look at his detailed seller reports and find out what the cause is. It may well be not the stars, but the number of disputes buyers have opened.

If you are absolutely sure that the two 4/5 stars are the only reason a ban was put in force, then you need to appeal to e-bay. Also European sales stars are not usually included.

How many negatives has he had in the last year. Each of these may have been made with appropriate low stars, leading to a ban.

soolin

I agree with oldone, 2 lots of low stars will not trigger a ban and this is another issue entirely.

However, if OP accepts the ban then I suppose there is no more help we can give.