Defect removal requests | Selling

electro_55 · 2025-03-13T15:58:07.069000Z

Hi everyone! A batch of twelve items we sold and shipped a few weeks ago, were subsequently lost by our carrier. When we were notified of this situation a few days later, I contacted each buyer via Ebay messaging, text message, and phone to notify them of the situation and offer them a new order at a reduced price, and, in parallel, I canceled the twelve concerned orders (by now, I know that this last action was a huge mistake in the eyes of Ebay. I wish I had known at the time!) So, unaware that the reason for the cancellation was a very important matter in the eyes of eBay, I absentmindedly checked "out of stock" as the reason for these cancellations, even though these items were not out of stock, but lost. As a result, we were granted with twelve defects at once. Therefore, our seller performance level will be reduced to Above Average for a full year+, given the number of defects at issue in this case. This is an absolutely disproportionate punishment. We will now lose the advantages of the Top Rated badge. Which means less sales, more fees, etc, for more than a year.I tried to have the defects removed via https://www.ebay.com/sellerhelp/defect/action, only to receive twelve refusals, with the usual automated copy-paste out of toutch explanations many of us sellers are so used to.Then I tried to appeal the decisions via customer service and via askEbay on X (Twitter), but no matter what I say or do, I always receive the same scripted irrelevant answers, promises that some "offline team" will write back but they never do, etc etc. In short, an exasperating and infuriating experience, into which I lost hours of my time.This is extremely frustrating, as I I work very hard on a daily basis to earn and preserve our Top Rated Seller badge, always going extra lengths to give maximum satisfaction to our customers. And now I get more than a year of harsh punishment for something totally out of my control.Has anyone here been able to have a situation like this fixed by Ebay? Is it only possible to go beyond Ebay's robotic, vague and irrelevant "customer service" that feels more like a firewall than anything else, and actually get an unfair situation really addressed?

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