Another one bites the dust

May 30, 2008

This post was written in May 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Stuart had three PowerSeller accounts; he was on target to meet his goal for 2008 of £250,000 in turnover, and was paying eBay the equivalent of £30,000 a year in fees. He had no warning at all of a possible problem, until one day, in the middle of listing, his account suddenly stopped working.

At first, he thought it was a glitch, but then the email arrived: his account had been linked with another which was NARU, and so was itself suspended from trading for 12 months. The account, it turned out, was one that Stuart had not touched for two years and was not in fact registered to him at all. It belonged to a former business partner, who had closed down the business after Stu had left, and owed eBay £120 in fees.

£120 seemed a small amount to pay to be allowed to carry on trading, so Stuart paid off that bill. He then contacted Trust and Safety, informing them what he’d done and asking them to reinstate his own account. He told me, “their responses were robotic, it’s really frustrating that you can’t speak to anyone to get it sorted,” and as for PowerSeller Support,”they talk to you like you’re a scam artist.” Despite the fact that the account that wasn’t his didn’t owe any money anymore, no one would reinstate his account.

In April, Stu attended Channel Advisor Catalyst and managed to speak to an eBay employee face to face. He felt a glimmer of hope that someone would see that his suspension was ridiculous, someone would take pity on him, someone would make a business decision that his £30k a year fees were worth having.

Four weeks passed by. Stu chased up eBay. And chased them again. And then he had a letter, telling him that eBay “cannot make exceptions on a case by case basis on a marketplace of this size”, and his account would stay suspended for the full 12 months. Computer says no.

His two employees have unfortunately had to be let go, but Stu remains positive. He’s making a go of his websites and trading on Amazon. His gardening website has done more business in the last two months than in the previous two years, but things are nowhere near the level they were on eBay. He’s building things up again from the bottom, and that takes time.

I really admire Stu’s guts. Plenty of people would have thrown in the towel and gone and got a job, but he still sounds cheerful. “What will you do next March,” I ask him. “Will you apply to have the suspension lifted, when you can?”

He laughs. “I feel like never going back. But it’s easy to say that now. I probably will ask them to reinstate the account, but I won’t be selling on eBay at the same level, I’ll never rely on eBay again.” Stu was, he says, always one of the people who promoted eBay, to his friends, family and work colleagues, but not any more: “they don’t appreciate how what they do affects peoples’ lives,” he says.

Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at what you can do to protect your business against a bolt-from-the-blue eBay suspension.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Selling Tips | 27 Comments