Pros and Cons of changing user ID

[jfmgray]

I would be interested in people's opinion on changing my seller ID to be the same as my store name and to better reflect my brand.  I set the ID about 10 years ago when I was just selling personal items, but now have an established brand and business.

Are there any negatives if I change my username?

[heihachi_73]

Just make sure that your new eBay name doesn't match your email address left of the @ sign, they brought in that ridiculous rule a few years ago. So if you registered as batman8888 umpteen years ago and try to rename your account to johnsmith1234 on eBay and your well-established, 10+ year old email/username is also johnsmith1234 at bigpond/hotmail/gmail etc. and a ton of other websites, eBay says screw you, get a new email or change your name. At least PayPal doesn't do that.

[digital*ghost]

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@heihachi_73 wrote:
@Just make sure that your new eBay name doesn't match your email address left of the @ sign, they brought in that ridiculous rule a few years ago. So if you registered as batman8888 umpteen years ago and try to rename your account to johnsmith1234 on eBay and your well-established, 10+ year old email/username is also johnsmith1234 at bigpond/hotmail/gmail etc. and a ton of other websites, eBay says screw you, get a new email or change your name. At least PayPal doesn't do that.

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eBay (said they) introduced that rule so as to make it harder for people to guess email addresses and spam / phish members from their user IDs.

PayPal doesn't have user IDs on public display for all to see, so they wouldn't need to have that kind of measure in place. 

[brerrabbit585]

I've sometimes thought about changing my ID to be the same as my store and my website but decided that while my ID is different they've got twice as many chances of finding me on ebay. I did change my store name when I started my website so that they'd be exactly the same if I ever got my own domain name.

I've got quite a few repeat buyers that aren't following me. I've never followed most of the sellers I buy from but just look through my feedback for them if it's been a while since I bought from them. If they changed their ID I'd never find them. I don't recognise most of the IDs that are following me (I've got a pretty good memory for that sort of thing).

If you get plenty of new customers it wouldn't do any harm to change your ID. The same applies to really regular buyers because they'd always be watching some of your items and notice a change, but you might lose some occasional buyers. However, unless they specifically look for you to browse your items, they'd find your items in the general category anyway.

Edit: sorry, only the second para was in response to what padi said.  The rest is directed at the OP, and anyone else contemplating the same change.

[*tippy*toes*]

A few sellers I regularly buy from all have stores. I have absolutely NO idea what their store name is, but I know exactly what their eBay ID is, even the ones with obscure names/spelling. I don't follow any of them, so I'd be stoofed if they changed their ID! If I haven't bought from them for awhile, I just type their ID into advanced search to find them.

I've changed my ID's a few times, but I don't have enough regular buyers whereby it would be an issue.