What happens to your eBay account if your seller level is below standard?

Welcome to my Talking About eBay Podcast.  A weekly show where I discuss the latest eBay news, offer advice on running an account and share some stories about mistakes I witnessed former clients making on eBay.

In this week's pod, I reminisce about the time where one of my former clients' eBay account was downgraded to Below Standard.  For those of you unfamiliar with what that is, it’s basically the last chance saloon section of eBay.

If you have been consistently breaking eBay’s rules or basically, giving customers a bad experience then eBay will put your account on probation. That is the dreaded Below Standard status.  eBay purgatory.

But what happens to your account when you go Below Standard?

Can you ever get back to Top Rated status after such a punishment?

Honestly, I don’t know.  It depends on a lot of different factors but I was there when a high volume high 6 figure turnover eBay account was downgraded to Below Standard.  Full disclosure, I never got to see if the account recovered but, I was able to see what caused it.  

And it might just surprise you.

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Talking About eBay is a podcast for the lonely eBay’ers out there.  

Pursuing the eBay dream can sometimes be a nightmare.  The ups and downs are severe and they are worse if you have no one to talk to.  

Well, I’m here.  My weekly podcast is my therapy and hopefully you will find it helpful too.

You can catch my podcast here… or search Talking About Ebay on Spotify, iTunes or Amazon Music

https://shows.acast.com/talking-about-ebay

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In this episode, I’m talking about Customer Service.  Obviously it goes without saying that good customer service is essential but when it comes to eBay, in my experience, good customer service is very rare.

You see, all my clients had successful bricks and mortar selling businesses and all bar none prided themselves on the positive relationships they had built with their customer base.  But, something strange seemed to take over them when they would deal with an unhappy customer on eBay.

They would be consumed with an overwhelming belief that the unhappy customer was in fact a scam-artist trying to rip them off.

It always fascinated me.  So I figured that my first episode should focus on customer service strategies.

:::EPISODE NOTES:::

In this episode I talk about the importance of developing stock replies to the kind of messages that can ruin your day.  As promised, here are the most frequent queries you will have to deal with and my advice on how to structure a stock reply.

Lowball Offers (don’t just decline them or reply with a figure, let the customer know why you have responded with the figure or are having to decline their offer)

For example; “Because of postage and fees and initial cost, this is the lowest I can go, sorry.”

Item Did Not Arrive

Apologise, provide tracking or if no tracking is available, ask them to wait an extra day or two with the promise of a refund if the item does not turn up.

Item Damaged

Apologise.  Take responsibility and work with them to find a suitable resolution.

Customer Does Not Want Item

Provided it has not been worn, used or if sealed; opened.  Structure your stock reply to ask for them to return it.

Measurements or Particulars That You Do Have Time To Deal With

This is probably my most used template.  Let them know that you can’t answer them right now as you are not near the product but you will get back to them with the relevant info ASAP.

Shipping Outside The Global Shipping Program

Just let them know that you do not provide that service.

It is VERY IMPORTANT that your templates are written in such a way that it appears to your customer that you have just written it.  It has to feel organic and unique to their problem.  No one likes it when they think they have been palmed off to an automated bot.

Thank you for taking the time to listen and hopefully, you found it useful.  Feedback would be really appreciated.  You can get in touch with me here…

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