My seller level's dropped to below standard

[foofooshop]

My seller level's from top sellers dropped to below standard because of 4 closed cases without me. So, my sales dead in the last 2 months because of my level. It's Chicken-and-egg problem. If I want to back to the top seller level I should sell good but I couldn't because my level is below! 

How should I  recover my shop? 

[chameleon54]

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@jellybirddesigns wrote:

@foofooshop - sorry to hear about your wife.

You DO have a responsibility to your buyers and need to take time to deal with issues when they arise. A case can take just 30 seconds to resolve, so it's not going to impair your abililty to look after your wife and son.

I'm a seller on Amazon, and that site 100% does not care if you have business or personal issues. They expect every seller to have a backup plan to get an item to their buyer, or to deal with any problems right away, otherwise your metrics will take a hit.

Ebay is really no different - if you are unable to sell due to family health reasons then you need to put your shop on vacation or halt your listings. You really need to deal with buyers problems otherwise you will rapidly find yourself unable to sell on this site.

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Unfortunately in these sorts of situations, people can become overwhelmed and simply not able to cope. The stress of dealing with ebay cases on top of a everything else can be too much. The OP would have been best to cancel all sales, but maybe they needed the money urgently. From feedback scores it appears they are not highly experienced and may not have been aware of the implications of simply letting cases close automatically.  

I,m not saying ignoring ebay cases is a good idea, I,m just saying it sounds like the OP has been through a very difficult time and perhaps their actions, while regrettable are understandable.

[foofooshop]

Thanks for a lot of Ethical Advice. But I still couldn't see any solution! 

[south.coffee]

Happened to us on our secondary store. I was 'happy' for eBay to close out 3 x INR cases by the same SCAM buyer but never realised my non intervention would affect my seller level.

Next thing is the additional 3% fees as penalty !

After several goes at pointing out how unfair we were treated and how obvious the SCAM buyer operated, I said I would close the account. Someone finally listened and all 3 cases were nulled and our seller level restored.

Lesson learnt.

[jellybirddesigns]

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Thanks for a lot of Ethical Advice. But I still couldn't see any solution! 

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@foofooshop - the only solution is for you to attend to your buyers complaints.

There's not much other help we can really give you as the responsibility is in your hands.

[digital*ghost]

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@foofooshop wrote:

Thanks for a lot of Ethical Advice. But I still couldn't see any solution! 

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There generally isn't a "one size fits all, guaranteed to work" solution for these kinds of situations,  - it can be difficult to increase sales even when the odds aren't stacked against you.

Your options (in general) would be to ride it out and hope things resolve after a future assessment of your selller level, or attempt to increase sales, and the easiest way (again in general) to increase sales is to increase the volume of products you have listed, especially if you only have 5 "hooks" (listings) cast in a vast sea of items. 

Loss leaders are also another way to increase sales, if that is viable - if I were in this situation, I would look at some low-cost, but very popular items that can cross-promote what I already have listed, and offer them at the lowest price possible. Loss leaders generally mean you often lose money on each sale of that particular item, but the point of them is to attract business, get listings higher in rankings, and use them to cross-promote other items where you can make a profit, so it's basically a form of advertising. 

Lets say you get 100 pet-related products in stock, and sell them at a total loss of $1 each unit - ultimately you could look at it as paying $100 to get more notice to your listings, try and turn this situation around, get back the regular seller level, hopefully retain consistent sales after that point, and get rid of that additional fee that's hurting your profits now anyway. If a loss-leader isn't viable, perhaps something where you break even. 

As mentioned at the top of my post though, this isn't a guaranteed solution - no one can really offer that, just ideas. 

[*tippy*toes*]

When my husband got sick and needed major surgery in the city 4 hours away, I ended all my listings because I knew I wouldn't be able to manage them. Ebay and buyers don't care what is going on at home. If you have active listings, it's up to you to manage them. If you can't, end them, or you pay the price. If items are buy it now, it takes less than a minute to end them all. Auctions take longer and they have to be ended individually.

[dontmissthese]

I lost my TRS badge on one account because my number of sales dropped below a threshold.

Luckily Coles were giving away those little collectables and selling them cheap built up my sales

number and I got the TRS badge back a month later.

You can use a similar technique to trade yourself away from that 4% FVF penalty ( or rather

it was 4% last time I looked ).

Good luck with it all and I hope your other half is on the mend.