Problem With Ebay Fee Payment

I recently had a major problem with my payment for my ebay sellers fees. I am a top rated seller on ebay selling quality silver items through my Silver2treasure Ebay Store. There is a fee for every item you list and then when an item sells there is the 10% sellers commission fee. Ebay set a limit of £15.00 in fees and once you exceed this you will not be able to list any further items (but if you sell any at this time, they still take their fees). Now I always pay my fees when they go over this limit (which I have to say is a ridiculous amount for business sellers, as you soon eat into this very quickly). Surely once you become an established seller, as I am, and am actually a top rated seller, this limit should be raised.

Now you can of course set up a direct debit through paypal to pay your fees, but I am afraid that I like to be in control of my finances, and therefore pay my fees by the one time payment method. This means that when my limit has been exceeded I just pay by paypal immediately, my ebay account is credited in a few minutes and I can carry on lising immediately. I usually have to pay my fees every few days, so it is something that I am very familiar with, and my paypal account always has plenty of funds in it for my ebay fees to be paid.

However, last week, my account has exceed the limit and I clicked the paypal button to pay, as I normally do. I had the normal paypal confirmatory email to say that my paypal account had been debited and this payment would be posted to my ebay account in the next few minutes (as it normally does).

I went back in to list my items for that day, but it was still showing that my account had to be paid before I could proceed. I checked my ebay account, but the paypal payment was not showing. I waited a few more mintues tried to list again, but still the same problem. There was obviously a problem so I contacted customer services by way of their chat room, as I needed this to be resolved urgently, as by my account not clearing, I could not list any items.

Well, this was like hitting my head against a brick wall, as we kept just going around and around in circles. The representative was just saying that it could take up to five days to clear, to which I kept insisting that as funds are available, it should clear immediately – as stated in ebay policy and as it had done on every other occasion with absolutely no problem. Then it went from 5 days to 30 days, so quite clearly they had no idea what they were talking about. They also kept asking me to contact paypal. After about 45 minutes in the chat room, I gave up as quite clearly I was getting nowhere. I hoped that if I tried to list again after this time it would have righted itself.

But, no the problem was still there. Anyway to cut a very long story short, I went back into the chat room that day and then gave up and waited until the following day, to see if there as any development, but it was exactly the same (and as my items were selling my account was now going up and up). I went in to the chat room again, taking up another 45 minutes, but still hitting my head against a brick wall. As all the answers I was getting were the same as before, that it can take up to 5 days to clear, to which I kept stating that it didn’t, and explaining that I had received the confirmatory email from paypal that it had been paid. I did contact paypal , to see if there was anything they could do in the interim and copied an email from them in my chat room confirming that the payment had been made and that the funds were available. I was at my wits end as now 24 hours had passed and I had been unable to list any of my items. I had no alternative, as I had to get this sorted, so I teleponed customer support and spoke to a very helpful lady (unlike the customer support people I had previously had dealings with). She immediately found the problem and it was sorted in minutes, and I could not believe how simple it had been, and why or why had the other reps not realised the problem.

All it was, is that all sellers have to set up an automatic payment method, which unbeknown to me has to be updated every 2 years. On the day before I encountered this problem, mine needed updating, but I had not received any reminder or didn’t realise that this had to be done. All it entailed was clicking a button to confirm that my payments would be done through paypal. Please note, this was not updating a card, but merely just confirming that my automatic payments would be done through paypal. A click of a button and I was up and running again.

I had been pulling my hair out for 24 hours, not being to list any items and not getting any help as to why. I now in future, will never bother to email or go into any chat room to get help (as I have wasted many hours, trying to sort out queries, without success), but speak to someone direct on the phone, as clearly it appears that the people on the phone support have had more training and can solve the problem immediately.

My business was on hold for over 24 hours, which was very annoying, and if I had not telephoned customer support as a last resort, no doubt I would still have not been able to list anything for over a week. Surely, as a seller, ebay obviously were not interested that as I couldn’t list anything, the also were losing money.

I have to say that their email and chat room customer support facility is absolutely diabolical.

Problem With Ebay Fee Payment