My Not-So Favorable Review of Selling on eBay Despite Earning Almost 9k in sales in less than 2 months
Buying and selling online has imploded into lives across the county in recent years. And while eBay is a very popular option for many, I have found it to be rather exhausting to deal with, expensive and in many ways, a joke.
While I can’t argue with the customer base the platform gave me, I do have some reservations regarding how eBay operates as a buy/sell platform.
My first complaint is that money from sales is not made immediately available to the sellers upon making a sale. When I contacted eBay support regarding this, I was told that eBay determines sellers cash out eligibility via an algorithm that takes into consideration the number of sales, customer satisfaction, and shipments getting out on time.
However, despite having perfect metrics, no customer complaints, 100% positive feedback and over 150 orders shipped and delivered, here I am almost three months in and still not eligible for instant cash out.
Many of my customers are from different countries so I have to ship a lot of packages internationally and sometimes the packages get caught up in customs for days and even weeks, which prolongs payment on my end; despite the fact that the customer paid upfront!
In my opinion this system is unfair and eBay’s “algorithm” must be a joke! One would fairly assume that after months on the platform with almost 200 successful orders shipped and delivered that I have proved myself to eBay.
Yet still no credit where credit is due.
My next gripe is that they are constantly doing metric reviews which puts an additional hold on the funds I am already waiting to receive, even after the products have long since been delivered to the customers.
Again, with perfect metrics and happy clientele you would think that would make for a simple and quick review, but it does not.
Not only are metric reviews regularly scheduled on a monthly basis, many things can also prompt a metric review.
For instance, if I receive a heavy influx of orders that is considered a change in my seller habits and a metric review is automatically initiated.
The same thing goes for if I have a quiet couple of days and sell nothing.
These prompted reviews coupled with the scheduled reviews really ends up tying finances up as it feels like they are almost always doing one. Not to mention there seems to be no benefit to the seller in having the review conducted.
As if I wasn’t disappointed in my experience selling on eBay as it was, they really put the icing on the cake recently by suspending my account.
The suspension was regarding and order that, get this, the customer had already received. It was an international shipment and since it took a while to get to the customer, they opened a ticket with eBay support stating they never got their package. Despite having a valid tracking number that updated myself, eBay and the customer with the location of the package in real time, eBay still suspended my account. It took them over a week to reinstate it. (even though the customer had long since received their item and had simply forgotten to close out the ticket upon the packages arrival)
This once again put my funds on hold, and I had to wait even longer than the usual long wait in order to access money that was rightfully mine.
At the time of my suspension all of my listings were also removed. Not deactivated.. REMOVED! Upon being reinstated I had to manually go through and relist everything from scratch which was a huge pain!
The seller fees on eBay are also a total joke.
I had no idea that eBay took out so much just for allowing you to sell on their platform! They advertise the listings that you can post as free and then charge senseless fees upon selling the item.
Call me crazy but I am pretty sure that would make the listing not free?
Basically you are able to advertise the item for free but once you sell it eBay takes a big cut.
Their promotion option is also a rip off. While I have found promoting my items via eBay does result in sales, eBay charges an astronomical fee for doing so.
They also don’t allow you to pay for situations like buyer refunds out of your pending balance (only your “available balance”) which has a huge effect on the amount that you actually get to cash out in the end.
The available balance also has to pay for shipping labels that you purchased days or weeks ago and ultimately lowers the amount that goes into your pocket. I find it unfair that you cannot use your pending balance for such payments because that money is rightfully yours as long as you can provide proof of shipment. For sellers like myself with a great track record it is a slap in the face that eBay still doesn’t trust me to send out my orders.
Overall, it seems like it takes a long time to prove yourself to eBay and in turn you have to suffer financially as you wait for their algorithm method to deem you dependable. At this point it is seeming like it will never happen!
There is also a lot of competition on eBay, if you want your listings to be successful you have to price your items competitively despite already losing so much to eBay fees and shipping costs (if you choose to cover shipping) and as I mentioned while their promotion option does help to sell your items quickly, eBay does charge you for the service. It is almost not worth promoting in the end.
Overall I can safely say that eBay has provided me with a great customer base and that is about it!
Be on the lookout for an upcoming post about my experience selling on Mercari. You will find it is much more favorable than what I have to say about selling on eBay.
As always thanks for reading!
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