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Having A Backup Plan For The Serious eBay Seller

BY: Mark Kenny
Words: 631

Not a day goes past when I here of some seller frustrated that eBay have pulled their auction listing. It is very easy to violate an eBay listing guideline without knowing, the first you’ll learn about it is when you receive an email from eBay.

If it’s a serious violation or a number of smaller repeated violated eBay can & will close down or suspend your account. Don’t be fooled into thinking they need your revenue as a seller, I know of one eBay power seller who paid close to £25,000 per year to eBay in sellers fees & had his account closed overnight.

Firstly and most importantly familiarize yourself with all the selling guidelines on eBay. By doing things right first time, you’ll be less likely to have your auctions cancelled by eBay’s safe harbour team.

But let’s image the worse case scenario, you’re an eBay trading assistant or a professional seller dependant on eBay and overnight eBay close your account, pulling all your listings in the process. Overnight your business will disappear.

Don’t fool yourself that by sticking strictly to eBay guidelines you’ll avoid the hassle. You’ll have many competitors on eBay who will try and report you at some point, even if their accusation is false your listing may be pulled by an overzealous eBay employee.

Leaving eBay listing violations alone there are still potential hazards that may jeopardize your account or account status. Negative feedback, your account being hi-jacked, even forgetting your account password could cause massive delays to your business. If you get too much negative feedback, you may want to abandon the account altogether and start afresh.

eBay does allow you to have more than one registered account as long as it using another email address, so it is essential to have at least one backup account for emergency use. Keep one registered for a spare account and also remember to consider that eBay does not use allow certain selling features (Buy-It-Now, Featured Plus) to be used until your feedback is at a certain level - normally 10 for the most widely used features. It may be worth buying a few low priced items to get your feedback to the required level.

If you are suspended from selling eBay guidelines states the following:

“Members who are suspended are prohibited from registering new accounts with eBay, or bidding or selling on eBay using any existing accounts. eBay reserves the right to suspend existing accounts as well as new accounts opened by anyone in the same household of a suspended user or by any other associates of a suspended user.”

Now I’m sure that 99% of eBay sellers, especially serious sellers (like yourself) reading this would not violate rules to a degree where your account was suspended. And I’m not recommending you to continue selling on eBay even though your were suspended.

BUT, what I will say is in the unlikely event this did happen what would you do?

You have an obligation to your clients, yourself and your business to get things back on track as soon as possible. Having an eBay account registered in the name of a distantly located friend which you can use discreetly may allow you to keep your business long enough to sort out your original problem with eBay.

Some situations can be sorted out within hours, while others carry an automatic suspension for 30 days. Now, no business can afford to stop trading for 30 days & expect to carry on when the suspension is lifted as if nothing has happened. You’ll lose credibility, you’ll lose money and most importantly you will have lost a lot of clients.