QLD Help with Unfair Treatment of eBay Seller?

[Mare Pomana]

Hey Guys,

I own and operate an eBay store and have been selling with eBay as a seller for the last 3 years. Things with eBay have been going well and I have put a lot of time, effort and money into my business to get it to where it is.

This year I received 3 defects to my account which resulted in me getting penalised by eBay and thus having my store ranking go right down. The defects meant that products of mine which were top of the list for the last 3 years are now not showing in the top 100. This happened over night.

I made contact with eBay in regards to these defects, stating that I did not agree with the defects. The defects from eBay were because buyers had opened cases against me then eBay had closed these cases stating that I did not resolve these cases. I had in fact resolved these cases and this was an error on eBay's behalf.

After making contact with eBay they have stated that I was correct and that this issue was an error on their behalf. eBay stated that because this was an error by their system they cannot rectify the issue until after March 20th to which no one is sure on how my store will look after this due to being out of the top rankings for so long.

This error on eBay's behalf has cost me about $10k this year so far as it has been going on since the beginning of the year. I have had a look through the eBay User Agreement and cannot find any information in regards to being unfairly treated by their system.

Can someone please help?

 

[Rod]

This is a business to business dispute and likely belongs in the commercial arena, not Australian Consumer Law

eBay can be difficult to deal with and you need to be careful about antagonising your key business supplier. Try dealing with them to get what you consider to be a reasonable settlement (probably not the full amount) and if that fails read through eBay's terms and conditions. It may be they have a mandatory grievance/arbitration process that needs to be followed before court action can be undertaken.

 

[Mare Pomana]

Hi Rod,

Thank you for your response. eBay is a company who are renowned for treating their sellers unfairly which is just what you can be in to expect when using their system. They bring you all of the customers but you have to play by their rules. That is the nature of the beast.

This issue that I have been face with this year obviously has ruined my business and they have admitted that it was a fault on their behalf but as they said 'it is what it is so deal with it'. I will look into the arbitration process further and foil up a plan.

Once again, thank you for your input