Has anyone ever received this kind of letter from ebay??(it's not spoof)

[forazzurri2axz]

-----Original Message-----
From: eBay Customer Support - rswebhelp
To: forazzurri1
Sent: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 8:20 pm
Subject: FR%OMM002 Information regarding your eBay account
(KMM54812649V85135L0KM)


Hello Bill (forazzurri2axz),

This message is to notify you that in order to assist you in building a
strong foundation for future transactions on eBay, we have placed a
selling limit for your listing activity. These limits are not in place
as a consequence, rather as a preventative measure to help our seller's
keep from becoming overwhelmed with large increases in account activity.


Many members already have limits placed on their account. Account limits
allow us to learn about your selling activity and make sure you're
adhering to our selling practices policy and performance standards.
Limits vary by seller and can change over time.

During this time, we want to confirm you are continuing your positive
history by ensuring you are keeping focused on creating great
transactions for your customers. Doing so will greatly increase the
chances of an ongoing successful eBay business and help to avoid any
future account issues that may arise. These limits will allow you to
continue selling while also allowing us to monitor your incoming
Feedback, Detailed Seller Ratings, and any customer complaints. Please
understand that the actions we have taken do not mean your account
performance is not good, but we do this to help all eBay sellers further
improve their selling history and account performance.

Because you are doing well at selling at these volumes, you should not
hit your selling limit unless you dramatically increase your sales.
However, if you do wish to grow your business, we will gradually
increase your limit as you show that you are able to successfully handle
the higher sales volume. The selling limit on your account is based on
the number and dollar amount of open (active) items and successfully
sold items per calendar month.

You can now sell up to 100 items monthly or up to $5,000.00 monthly.
(Keep in mind that this includes multiple quantity listings which can
greatly influence this number.)

If you do reach one of these amounts during the course of a month you
will be unable to list additional items or increase the price or
quantity of your active items until some of your items end without a
winning bidder or until the 1st of the next calendar month, (If you are
still exceeding the selling limit at the first of the next calendar
month your selling activity will continue to be blocked.)

We believe that your limit is flexible enough to allow you to sell any
current items and is in accordance with the volume you may have listed
in the past. If you do reach the selling limit on your account and want
to increase your sales, please work within the amount for at least 30
days. Once that time frame has expired on 5/3/2012, please reply to this
message and we will conduct a review to see if adjustments are
appropriate.

We hope that you will use this selling limit to your advantage and focus
on succeeding with your current sales. We value you as a seller and hope
to work with you in order to continue to establish a strong selling
history and successful business relationship. It is in our best interest
to help our sellers succeed so that we can have a positive trading
environment and eliminate bad buying experiences on the site.

Good luck with your future transactions!

Sincerely,
Tory

[Gradedcardman]

Haven't received anything like this yet. Of course I never received my note from paypal about getting close to the $20000 level either. I had hoped to avoid the 1099 but to no avail.

[irishdenny]

Just a Question and a thought?!
Are you Listing, Then canceling items(items no longer available) and then selling them(or maybe not) without using the ebay system?
I've heard that ebay is being mindful of this activity because they are losing funds.
I don't know really whats going on. It might a method ebay has thought of to reduce "window shopping/back ally sales" so to speak!?

[D. Bergin]

Just a venue!

[olrac44]

Maybe ebay should think about lowering their ridiculous fees. Seller does all the work and ebay wants %.

[drc]

As eBay is trying to transform into something more like Amazon, they have recently been placing volume limits on many sellers. Nothing abnormal about receiving that type of letter. As your letter indicates, the seller can 'earn' or apply higher for volume levels. eBay will soon by trying to get sellers to follow new uniform shipping/return/performance/etc rules to be like Amazon, and this is their way to get sellers to implement then. I believe the new rules start in May.

[Theoldprofessor]

Hello Bill (forazzurri2axz),

This message is to notify you that in order to assist you in building a
strong foundation for future transactions on eBay, we have placed a
selling limit for your listing activity. These limits are not in place
as a consequence, rather as a preventative measure to help our seller's
keep from becoming overwhelmed with large increases in account activity.

Damn, Bill, what have you done now? By your thoughtless use of eBay in actually selling things (and presumably making money) you have caused them to force one of their junior interns to write, in what may be English, a long and meaningful note suggesting that future success will be punished. Another dumb move on your part. Now if you lost money on eBay, as I do, they'd leave you alone.

I'm especially impressed in the intern's use of the "To Serve You Better" ploy. You must get lots of these. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where I live, has recently closed or reduced hours in a number of smaller town libraries, in order to serve us better. Now we can all go to one giant regional library where all the books will be hidden. But there will be people there who will teach us to dance, or to play the ocarina, or how to pretend to be butterflies, all to serve us better.

Notice too, how the intern has added the common touch by using the phrase "to help our seller's." This confusion of possessive and plural forms has got to have everybody loving eBay. Hey, they're just as dumb as we are!!

How will you reply? Ah, I see below that you already have. The intern's name is Mark, presumably for Mark My Words. It has to be the same guy, because he writes the same junk at the same level. And he thinks that the more he says it, the truer it will become.

Surely you will want to print this letter and have it framed. It's a standard of success few of us willl ever attain. Then take a vow never to sell at a profit again. You will be happier, and eBay will be ecstatic.

[forazzurri2axz]

Originally Posted by Theoldprofessor

Damn, Bill, what have you done now? By your thoughtless use of eBay in actually selling things (and presumably making money) you have caused them to force one of their junior interns to write, in what may be English, a long and meaningful note suggesting that future success will be punished. Another dumb move on your part. Now if you lost money on eBay, as I do, they'd leave you alone.

I'm especially impressed in the intern's use of the "To Serve You Better" ploy. You must get lots of these. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where I live, has recently closed or reduced hours in a number of smaller town libraries, in order to serve us better. Now we can all go to one giant regional library where all the books will be hidden. But there will be people there who will teach us to dance, or to play the ocarina, or how to pretend to be butterflies, all to serve us better.

Notice too, how the intern has added the common touch by using the phrase "to help our seller's." This confusion of possessive and plural forms has got to have everybody loving eBay. Hey, they're just as dumb as we are!!

How will you reply? Ah, I see below that you already have. The intern's name is Mark, presumably for Mark My Words. It has to be the same guy, because he writes the same junk at the same level. And he thinks that the more he says it, the truer it will become.

Surely you will want to print this letter and have it framed. It's a standard of success few of us willl ever attain. Then take a vow never to sell at a profit again. You will be happier, and eBay will be ecstatic.

oldprofessor---I hope you are well and it's good to hear from you..take care Bill

[Runscott]

I had another thought on this, as I anxiously scrambled to get items ready for listing, so I can look more important to ebay and thus not incur any penalties I might be incurring for not playing by rules I'm unaware of.

Well, my reaction described in the above paragraph might be part of why they are doing it. The other might be so that, in order for sellers to sell at the volume they need, the seller will use multiple i.d.'s, therefore incurring multiple ebay store monthly fees.

Ebay will squeeze blood out of a turnip until the turnip just shrivels up and dies. And then they'll sue the turnip for more.

[ctownboy]

As a seller, another thing you are going to have to watch out for is the new change in return policy. The old rules say you can have a 3 day or 7 day return policy or no returns at all on items. Starting in May, I think, the new return policy is going to be something like 30 days or no returns.

I couldn't figure out WHY eBay would do something like this until a couple of weeks ago. Then, I ALMOST, got nailed.

I sold a little figurine which was in really nice condition for all of $7 dollars. The "person" emailed me and gave me specific instructions on how they wanted the item packed and where to mail it to. I followed the instructions and mailed the item out. A few days later, I received another e Mail asking if the item had been shipped (I marked it as shipped on the eBay page) and again gave me the specific instructions on how and where to mail the piece.

A week later, I receive a message that the "buyer" wanted a full refund WITHOUT having to return the figurine because it was broken. I informed the "buyer" that A) they didn't pay for insurance, B) I have a 7 day return policy and that it was past that time frame and C) even if I were to give a full refund, I would have to have the piece returned to me (as stated in my return policy at the bottom of the page) and that pictures would not do.

A few days later, I received another E mail asking about the refund. I then Googled the "buyer" (since they had over 28,000 Feed Back and NO Negatives) and found out they were a PARTNER of eBay.

This company has over 20 different eBay names, all starting with "Flight2..." and what they do is take eBay listings and translate them into Japanese and put them on their Japanese website. When the Japanese buyers buy something, this company takes and adds a percentage to the total and then tacks on additional for the shipping. They then tell the sellers to send the item to a warehouse in California where the items are packed into shipping containers and sent to Japan.

I found out that there have been MANY complaints about this company breaking items and then asking for full refunds. By doing this (and being an eBay partner), they can get off scott free with No Negatives (as far as Feed Back goes) and with eBay still being able to keep all of the fees they have collected.

Once I found this out, I sent an e Mail back explaining that I knew what company they were, about all of the broken items people had complained about (and not gotten anything done from eBay) and that if they wanted the refund then were going to HAVE to mail the item back to me because I KNEW they were a partner of eBay and that, combined, I thought they could afford the small cost for postage.

I never heard back from them.

Now, I have ALL of these company names as restricted from bidding in my auctions. I also know WHY eBay is changing the length of time for return policies; so that third party "buyers" can make their purchases, send them overseas and, if something gets broken, they have the time to get a refund for their clients and eBay gets to keep theri fees while the seller gets shafted (unless there is insurance on an item).

David