It’s not often that a second chance comes around in ecommerce — often, if you crash and burn hard enough that your account is suspended, that can be hard to recover from. At the very least, you will have to start over from scratch on a new e-commerce site. However, eBay has recently begun the process of reviewing suspended accounts with the intention of reinstating some.
New Partnership
eBay has partnered with Kyozou, a third-party vendor, to begin reviewing accounts that have been restricted or suspended in the past. This may not be a good sign as regards to eBay’s current seller status, that the company is going to these lengths to regain sellers, but it does show a renewed effort on the company’s part to enliven its sales, which would be positive for both current sellers and those who have a checkered past with the site. Sellers began being contacted as early as late May with offers to negotiate a return to selling on the site.
Why Look Back?
If you have sold with eBay in the past, and especially if you have had an account restricted or suspended there, you may be familiar with the old Seller Performance Standards. The old standards seemed to many to be highly subjective, and a seller’s reputation could easily be dragged down by a few scamming customers. This resulted in quite a few sellers being, they felt, unfairly suspended or restricted due to the site’s metrics and what types of feedback counted against the sellers.
In February of 2016, eBay showed they had been listening to the complaints, and implemented a major overhaul of their Seller Performance Standards. Now only fully-verifiable items such as cases being closed without seller resolution, seller-cancelled transactions (ie, not having an item in stock that was listed), and late item deliveries will count against sellers. While this was a great change, it left many sellers who had been suspended under the previous rules out in the cold; many of them would have been fine under the new metrics system, but it was too late — they were already banned from selling.
A Second Chance — On Both Sides
Sellers who were frustrated in the past with eBay’s strict metrics might be pleased to hear about these changes. If your account was suspended or restricted in the past, keep an eye out for an email from the industry giant. While not quite begging forgiveness, the emails do seem to acknowledge that the seller platform was far from perfect in the past, and claims that the improvements that have been made mean that some former sellers can now resume business.
If you think you might be interested in reinstating your business with eBay, take the time now to polish up your potential listings and learn the current rules of the site. Sellers who have already received their offer say that it is stressed that their accounts are not reinstated with no strings attached; for the forgiveness to take full effect, you will be required to list items for sale before the offer expires.
