eBay charing 50% extra for Below Standard due to "out of stock" when nothing was out of stock ever

[bn880]

I am writing as I was caught off guard by a return feature on eBay which is now costing me 50% extra in Final Value Fees.  Maybe a fair warining to someone as busy as myself.

I list mostly services and nearly every client of mine/ours is quite pleased.  0 negative feedback.

As it is a service that requires MAILING IN things for repair which takes time, and things that on occasion can not be serviced or repaired, there are invariably refunds and cancellations as well as long waits to SHIP BACK a serviced item.

January 2022 I got some notice about not sticking to shipping standards, I contacted support to explain I'm just waiting for clients things, ok... they said not to worry about it.  I contacted support one more time to clarify another email a month later, still thinking it was about shipping late.  Same story....  2-3 Months later my account is listed as "Below Standard",  I am also busy with the war in Ukraine at this time and not checking every sub page on eBay.

Turns out, after yet another support call that its due to "Out of stock" sales.  When I had NONE (NEVER did I sell anything out of stock on eBay in 20+ years).   I was basically occasionally selecting "out of stock" when canceling an order for a client (as agreed mutually) and I had no idea this had any kind of chance to cost 50% in fees. There was no warning about it on the selection screen, no double confirmation... just... as if it was fine to select either option listed.

Long story short, support now refuses to remove ANY of the out of stock "defects" because they say it's now over 90 days since the last one (even though I have proof of all the comms with each of the clients that nothing was out of stock), but this leaves me paying 50% more in fees for 6+ months.  I simply didn't catch what the problem was due to poor communication by the eBay site, the emails, eBay support and due to never having dealt with it and not having time to dig through every eBay meny for fun.

Defects support REFUSES to put me through to a supervisor to solve this, and I have delisted many items as it's just not worth doing business at 20% plus fees.

Super frustrated... any tips to resolve this appreciated.

[reallynicestamps]

You are selling a repair service online ?

Perhaps you should rethink your business plan.

As it is a service that requires MAILING IN things for repair which takes time, and things that on occasion can not be serviced or repaired, there are invariably refunds and cancellations as well as long waits to SHIP BACK a serviced item.

When heavy bulky and delicate items have to be shipped, by people who already have decided they don't know how to fix them, there are two immediate problems.

Bad packing and expensive shipping.

Then after you have repaired the item, you have to pay high shipping costs for a delicate item and hope it is accepted as working when it arrives.

I find it difficult to see how you can avoid those defects.

The only answer I have is to raise your prices to cover those higher fees (and a bit more for Cookie Jar Insurance) and live with them.

I am also busy with the war in Ukraine at this time and not checking every sub page on eBay.

I'm not clear about how these line up, but even if this is your side gig you still have to pay attention to it.

[ricarmic]

@reallynicestamps It is a long time since I had my last coffee so I may be missing something but to me it looks like the main problem is that "out of stock" was being selected which causes an automagic defect. One is only allowed a VERY small number of those defects, 0.03% or something like 1 in 300 so that quickly can cause a problem.

From what I see, if the customer agreed "customer asked to cancel" would be the appropriate one to select and that does NOT cause a defect. (hmm on review I'm not sure "customer asked to cancel" is one of the "return" options, I've had almost zero of them so I don't know which options are "harmless")

For certain to avoid it happening again, make sure to pick the one(s) that do not cause automatic defects.

In terms of resolving the below standard problem, I'm a phone support kind of guy, @reallynicestamps generally has the links to the facebook, twitter etc folks. 

I've seen folks report here that they phoned in a couple of/few times and eventually got someone who can help them. For sure if you're using the phone, call during normal business hours so you have a better chance of getting North American support folks (if they exist anymore, I don't know because I'm paying for the expensive but very effective special Anchor store support folks).

PS Check OPs feedback this appears to be a very successful repair business, it's the "paperwork" that's caused the problem here!

[reallynicestamps]


https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/How-do-I-contact-Customer-Support/m-p/32016431#M1783851


https://www.facebook.com/eBayForBusiness/ — Message button in upper right on landing page.
https://twitter.com/askebay?lang=en



[bn880]

Yes exactly that is the issue, selecting the wrong option, didn't know it mattered.  I need to resolve the already existing issue, and yes I've tried calling but so far nothing as that department DOES NOT accept phone calls (defects department).  Will try again when I find the time.

[bn880]

I don't need your disrespectful response, I am talking about the issue with reversing the selection of how orders were canceled, there is no issue with the business.

[bn880]

Not cool, stop trolling me.

[ricarmic]

@bn880  I'm not sure how many times you've called in already, but here's an "angle" to maybe try?

Call in and advise that your account was downgraded because you picked out of stock by accident, unaware that that caused a defect in a buyer agreed cancellation (I probably wouldn't mention the past frustrations or non-escalation, sort of treat it like the first call you've made to support after you figured it out yourself). You might also ask at that point which option would be the appropriate one to select in your kind of situation in the future that doesn't cause a defect for a mutually agreed return of an unrepairable item (again re-reading this, it does look like "customer asked to cancel" would be the appropriate one to use if it is cancellation of the original purchase, if that is the case there's no need to ask that).

You do mention that they won't cancel any, I don't know how many "too many" you have but really all you need is to have enough cancelled to get you back within the limits because you now know how to avoid having this happen again in the future.

It certainly is an expensive lesson, hopefully you can find a support path what will cut you a break on this....let us know what happens!

PS you certainly have a number of very happy customers, I think you've got the most long HAPPY stories in anyone's feedback I've looked at in some time!

[bn880]

Cheers, yes I actually have explained this twice over the phone, and about 4 times over email to defect support.  I would need in the short term to have just 1 removed, ideally 2 to prevent it kicking back in if sales drop (it's summer).    I will try again, and yes it's extremely frustrating as I have very satisfied clients and work hard to do a top job (along with others here), frustrating to be downgraded instead of rewarded. 🙂

[ricarmic]

Hopefully you'll have some good luck on the next attempt.

As a note the 2nd note from reallynicestamps had the links to the facebook and twitter ebay support folks that I referenced earlier, she's always got them at hand. Might be useful if you haven't tried them before. 

I've never used them so I can't say myself.

[bn880]

Oh I see, I thought I was being trolled in that post with links.  Thank you again. 

(I think this is much harder to resolve simply because it's a department that doesn't answer phone calls, all the agents I spoke to on the phone previously understood the situation, just had to hand off to Defects email)

[reallynicestamps]

The phone reps work for a sub-contractor and their main interests in life seem to be to get callers happy enough to end the call  so they finally get that pee break.

The social media accounts are covered by employees , well-trained and with some authority.

[bn880]

So it was impossible to solve this with all the methods exhausted.  eBay agents keep saying they have no method to remove defects after 90 days and that's that.  Sending logs of the communications is not helping.

[bn880]

So eBay support, including US has been completely useless.  They state things like that they understand I didn't do something wrong, but they still won't help. (so they clearly don't see the forest for the trees).

Now I got a 3 day account suspension for violating the cancellation policies (same issue as above really), because I have many transactions cancelled from my and, as "Buyer asked to cancel"  (which was the advice provided in this thread as well).  Clients understood why this was selected, but apparently now this is a violantion.  YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR CLIENT TO USE THE CANCELATION MENU AND NOT JUST AGREE WITH YOU.   These eBay systems are seriously depraved, and the customer support agents are not qualified to make proper judgements.  Now I'm paying on 2 fronts, and so is eBay, due to things I DID NOT DO WRONG.   It's just their crazy behind the scenes non obvious paperwork issues.

[reallynicestamps]

Is it possible that eBay, which is designed to work as a buy/sell site originally using auctions, just is not an appropriate venue for running what seems to be basically a repair business?

As it is a service that requires MAILING IN things for repair which takes time, and things that on occasion can not be serviced or repaired, there are invariably refunds and cancellations as well as long waits to SHIP BACK a serviced item.

EBay does allow the sale of services in a limited way, although this is not where I would go if I needed something fixed.

EBay has strict  and enforced limits on the time a transaction can take, including on pre-sale orders, delivery, and refunds.

I can't think of a mail-in repair service that runs online, most are attached to a manufacturer or use a B&M retailer as a middleman.

I may be lacking imagintion of course.

[flipistics]

Have you considered having a YouTube channel where you record or live stream the repairs? Many of the similar channels get decent viewership, and your clients could watch you actually repairing their item if they so wished. It might be quite popular and provide you with great marketing opportunities. Many similar channels buy items off eBay to repair, then sell the fixed items on eBay after as well. Something to potentially think about.

[pjcdn2005]

Unfortunately, I don't think that eBay is set up well for a service related business.  They have set up specific rules for sellers to follow and it can be very difficult to get them to make an exception even if the policy doesn't fit that particular  situation.  Basically the cs reps are limited as to what they can change.  

I'm not sure if anyone has posted a link to the seller performance policies but if not, you might want to review them.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/selling/selling/seller-levels-performance-standards?id=4080&st=3&pos=1&quer...

[ricarmic]

Yes I think OPs situation makes it a challenge to live within the ruleset.

My morning coffee may have worn off already, but I think in a rather long and painful way the OP's discovered that to live within the ruleset they need to get the buyer to initiate the cancellation request soas not to offend any of the automagic rules  noticing that the seller is doing this a lot*.

Having said this, one would worry next that if one has too many customers requesting cancellations directly some other form of rule would be offended and restrictions etc applied in that case as well. The difficulty will be in finding someone who can reliably answer this before OP finds out again it doesn't work, which in some cases is taking a year to resolve once the limitations have been exceeded. devon@ebay do you have a mechanism to find someone who can provide reliable advice for this kind of selling situation?

Assuming the "get the customer to request the cancellation directly" route is viable, at least in my world I have a portion of only partially computer literate buyers so I'd have to write up very detailed descriptions of the exact steps they'd need to take to do the cancellation themselves.

*This "rule" limitation was news to me, I get about one a month where customers are asking me to cancel, which I do with the "buyer asked to cancel" reason. It would be good to have an idea of what ratio causes a problem for the seller.

[devon@ebay]

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@ricarmic wrote:

Yes I think OPs situation makes it a challenge to live within the ruleset.

My morning coffee may have worn off already, but I think in a rather long and painful way the OP's discovered that to live within the ruleset they need to get the buyer to initiate the cancellation request soas not to offend any of the automagic rules  noticing that the seller is doing this a lot*.

Having said this, one would worry next that if one has too many customers requesting cancellations directly some other form of rule would be offended and restrictions etc applied in that case as well. The difficulty will be in finding someone who can reliably answer this before OP finds out again it doesn't work, which in some cases is taking a year to resolve once the limitations have been exceeded. devon@ebay do you have a mechanism to find someone who can provide reliable advice for this kind of selling situation?

Assuming the "get the customer to request the cancellation directly" route is viable, at least in my world I have a portion of only partially computer literate buyers so I'd have to write up very detailed descriptions of the exact steps they'd need to take to do the cancellation themselves.

*This "rule" limitation was news to me, I get about one a month where customers are asking me to cancel, which I do with the "buyer asked to cancel" reason. It would be good to have an idea of what ratio causes a problem for the seller.

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Hi @ricarmic! For the situation that @bn880 is having with defects we always recommend that if a buyer reaches out to a seller in regards to wanting to cancel the transaction to have the buyer submit for the cancellation request. When a seller cancels on behalf of the buyer using the 'out of stock' option they would have a defect placed on their account for that transaction. If there are enough of these defects this would cause the seller to fall into below standard causing higher final value fees. You can find more details on this in our help pages here. We do look into buyers that ask for cancellations on a frequent basis and take the appropiate action on those accounts. 

[ricarmic]

Hi devon@ebay sorry I was confusing, the out of stock was the early problem.

Subsequently the seller used "buyer asked to cancel" when the buyers had requested this via messaging and this caused the subsequent 2nd problem because some sort of maximum was reached for that too.

Apparently there is some sort of "maximum" ratio of "buyer asked to cancel"  cancellations picked by the seller as well before it causes problems.

This is what I was asking about.....

1. What kind of ratio is ok for Seller to use "buyer asked to cancel" before it becomes a problem (it is an option and doesn't cause seller problems if rarely used after a buyer sends a message to the seller)

2. What kind of ratio is ok for Buyers to cancel before it becomes a problem for the seller  (ie if a seller has a number of cancellation requests coming through what ratio becomes a problem for the seller)

The problem the seller has is there are situations where the repair is not possible and this happens after the "purchase" has been made, so there needs to be some way to painlessly cancel the purchase in a mutually agreed process by buyer and seller.

Does this help?