Classic case: sudden death of a seller when all seems well.

 Here's the posting:

Our business has been recently suspended from selling on Ebay for having just 11 low DSR ratings out of 1,044 transactions this past year.  We have been on Ebay for over 5yrs, with 4897 feedbacks at 98.8% positive and consistently ranked as Top Rated Seller.  Our overall DSR ratings are 4.8's and 4.9's (with one 4.7 for shipping charge, buyers just don't understand that)   One day out of no where we realized all of our listings have been removed and we have been "indefinetly suspended"   All because in one month we got hit with several "low ratings", yet all feedbacks were positive.  We were .05% over the "performance" threshold.  That results in just 1 low dsr rating from the entire year that put us over the "performance" threshold.  We have tried everything to appeal this case but Ebay does not care anything about the sellers.  They have deemed us to be "unsafe" for the buyers.  How is 98.8% positive rating out of 4897 and 4.8/4.9 DSR ratings be bad for a buyer?  This is completely wrong and I have found this is happening to a WHOLE LOT of sellers.  This was a huge source of income for a small local business.  Jobs have been lost because of this.  All because of .05% over the threshold for one month.  We have been consistenly ranked as Top Rated Seller until this happened.  This is absolutely wrong of Ebay.  How can 98.8% of your 4897 feedbacks be positive, yet the seller gets suspended for a ridiculous rating system.

A review of that seller's feedback confirms the overall picture, but illustrates just what goes wrong when B&M sellers start selling on Ebay.

Seller was selling from a pawnshop, and selling among other complex things, high end electric guitars.  They mostly worked, and life was good, but maybe 5% had some issue.  Seller had a very responsible return policy (although didn't always answer complaints immediately).

In the B&M world, this is a good business.  Customers are mostly happy, and when stuff goes wrong, they get their money back and aren't mad. Everyone knows that carp happens once in a while. All is well.

On Ebay, it will get seller kicked off of ebay.

There are two aspects to that result.

1. The standards for Ebay sellers are counter-intuitively high.  A 5% carp rate is unacceptable, and gets seller kicked off.

2. The rating system is not designed to allow seller to react to the need to make changes. The first notice is often the last notice, "take your business elsewhere, we wish you well".