Defect removal requests

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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Re: Defect removal requests

The phone reps have a terrible reputation for getting you off the phone as soon as possible even if that means giving you the advice you want to hear instead of the advice you need to have.

Here are your options for contacting Ebay Customer Service. Please be aware that for social media CS, you send them a Private Message and briefly explain what your problem or issue is. Feel free to leave your Name, address, phone number and/or your email address in this message. It is private and secure and it may help to speed up the response for you.

https://www.facebook.com/ebay— Message button in upper right on landing page.
#204760888466
https://www.instagram.com/ebayforsellers/

 

 

 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/How-do-I-contact-Customer-Support/m-p/32016431#M1783851 -> Automated Assistant, type AGENT -> enter. You will then get more options.


The social media Chat accounts are covered by trained eBay employees with some authority.
And you get a transcript so you can compare what you heard with what you were told.
 

But I suspect that your error is something you will have to live with.

The most important part of TRS is the lower fees.

You might be able to support your profit margin by raising prices, or adding a handling charge to your shipping fee.

Or you could add Promoted Listings at 2%(the lowest allowed) to get a few more Views and with luck sales.

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Re: Defect removal requests

do what ever they say in the above post --- but don't hold your breath- once you go into the bad boy book with ebay your are there till they sqeeze every last cent out of you, extra fees  lesss features to use etc extra problems i have on many occations gone to the dark side through no ones fault, trying to help a customer out etc  but that does not matter -- just hold on to your  hat reduce costs best you can and wait the freaking year from the infraction to get out of jail --- even if you sell more it doesn't matter --that extra 10 % they hit you with when you drop below the best seller mark it hurts but  it does get better at some point --- good luck hope you get your items back and maybe ask those customers to put good word in for you --- it can't hurt -- and it looks good when you get back up to selling again at full strenght

 

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Re: Defect removal requests

Ouch a double hit, 20 year seller I've never used the seller cancel option except for problem with address, steer away from any feature I don't fully understand. Sounds like you did everything right except that one slip up. You can try to appeal to eBay, if that doesn't work, your account is not workable, throttled no visibility.. ide consider retiring the account, creating a new seller account, starting over.
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