Review of the BBE rating system for small sellers.
Hello everyone! I'm a small seller from Ukraine who was faced with a selling restriction due to low BBE rates. In a year of working on eBay, I've only had 151 sales, all of which have 100% positive feedback. In October, I received a notification that my account was below the BBE system's 8.1% threshold. To be honest, I didn't even know this policy existed until I received the notification.
I had four transaction defects, two of which involved buyers asking to cancel the order because they didn't know how. eBay support assured me that canceling the order "at the buyer's request" wouldn't count toward my statistics, but that turned out to be incorrect. In one order, a partial refund was agreed upon with the buyer, but they didn't accept the offer within two days. I could only resubmit the request through support, where they told me it would count toward my defects. Is that fair? The fourth defect was sent to a buyer in Brazil; their order was stuck at customs because they didn't want to pay the customs fee. A dispute was opened for non-receipt, which I ultimately won, but it was still counted toward my BBE statistics. Fair?
The most annoying thing about all of this is that the entire way from the first warning to the block, support assured me that everything was fine with my account, keep working, the BBE system is more about recommendations. And my account will definitely not be punished very severely for such violations.
To normalize my performance, they recommended getting as many successful orders as possible. This seems logical, but a seller like me who makes 10-15 sales per month is evaluated on the same level as stores that make thousands of shipments during the evaluation period. So, to reach the standard, I needed to make more than 100 sales per month, which is impossible. I also noticed that after the first warning, views and orders on my account dropped by 3-4 times.
On November 25th, I received a notification that eBay had decided to permanently restrict my sales. Appeals were filed, but they were dismissed with formulaic responses, most likely without the intervention of a living person.
The most annoying thing is that the support specialist assured me the whole time that everything was fine with the account and that I had nothing to worry about.
I like eBay, but I think the new BBE policy is too strict and unfair for sellers. I hope eBay listens to small sellers and gives them a chance to improve and show that they deserve to be part of the community.
Thank you for your attention, peaceful skies!
