is it possible to sell a ebay seller account?

[gizmoclearance]

Hi, I am about to close a ebay business (not this id). it's currently a top selelr with 8700+ good ratings (99.7%).  I am closing it because I want to pursuit a professional career.

looks like it's a awful waste because the new business  have to work for a long time to reach that score. 

I am not sure if ebay's rules restrict a transfer of ownership. or if anyone is interest in buying an acocunt wih good history. 

[padi*0409]

No, you cannot sell an eBay account unless it's to direct family, and even then it's very difficult to persuade eBay to allow you to do it.

[chameleon54]

As paddy has said it is very rare for ebay to allow a business to be transferred to a new owner. There are two scenarios where it may be allowed. One is if the owner dies, ebay may allow a family member to continue to run the business. The other is if the ebay business is part of a large B & M store that is sold, the new owners may be given permission to run the ebay ID.

The big issue for ebay is that the feedback score is a reflection of how YOU ran the business. An unscrupulous operator could buy your good feedback and use it to run a large scam operation until ebay found out and shut them down.

Having said that ebay businesses are regularly advertised for sale, even on ebay itself  ( do a search ),  and email addresses are changed in peoples account details all of the time.   ..........  Not condoning anything that may or may not be going on,........... Just sayin.....

[chameleon54]

I just did a search of " ebay business for sale" and came up with 7 Australian listings, including a large ebay only printing business advertised with 3700 feedbacks. Price just over $40,000.   Not legal under ebays terms and conditions, I would have thought, but there on the ebay site. Make what you will of that.

[kopenhagen5]

If you have a new eBay business just change the name of your old one to the new and transfer listings over.

The only situations eBay allow a change of "ownership" (name on account) is when an employee working on the account changes to a new member of staff but all other details remain the same.

Chameleon - buyers will be very unhappy when eBay closes the accounts after all the details change.

No doubt the eBay system has not picked these up yet.

But it could also be they are selling stock and assets without the eBay account.

[digital*ghost]

Ownership of an account can actually be transferred in wider circumstances than those mentioned above, including selling a business to another person, but it can only be done by (and with the approval of) eBay. That means the new owner has to be approved as the account holder. IMO that (potentially) makes the purchase of an eBay business a little trickier than a standard change of business, because a buyer would be hesitant to fork over payment without approval, and the seller may be hesitant to change ownership prior to payment.

One of the reasons eBay not only need to approve the transfer, but facilitate it themselves, is because the account will still be linked to the original account holder even if all of the account holder's details (name, address etc) are changed. That means if you have other IDs and sell your business to someone shonky, and just let them take over the ID, anything they do that affects that account, will affect all of your accounts.

That poses a risk to any buyers of a business where they just take over an ID, too, because if the original account holder is suspended or something on another ID, the ID associated with the business they just bought will also be suspended, so it definitely has to be done the right way. 

[thecatspjs]

Businesses change hands daily in the real world - as ebay does not undertake adequate checks of registrations when an account is set up it is unlikely they would even know when a business changes ownership.

[kopenhagen5]

True DG, but the person citing what you are saying also went on to say that eBay had vitually not given approval to anyone yet.

That was years ago but was making the point even though eBay say it is possible, it apparently is nearly impossible.

[digital*ghost]

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

True DG, but the person citing what you are saying also went on to say that eBay had vitually not given approval to anyone yet.

That was years ago but was making the point even though eBay say it is possible, it apparently is nearly impossible.

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You may be thinking of someone or something else - the info I posted came from Tim Davies (former eBay Aus employee and current president of PeSA), and was posted on his public Facebook page maybe a year or so ago (not long after this topic was last argued discussed argued  ), at the time, he was posting a warning to people thinking about purchasing eBay businesses, and offered to help liase with eBay to get the transfer of ownership approval. 

[clarry100]

I attended Tim's one day golden bullet session down at Pesa last year where there was some discussion on this exact point.
What you say DG is correct about coming from Tim. Basically it can be done but it's not easy. You had better get in touch with Tim if you're going to do it to guide you thru the minefield.