Why I got banned from selling on Ebay - How not to run a business!

Hey look, I changed my shirt. It's a

Christmas miracle. I want to talk about

the time when I got banned from eBay,

banned from selling on eBay. A few years

ago, I used to do a lot of selling on

eBay. It started out with me going to

charity shops and flea markets and buying

cheap crap like jewelry and wooden boxes,

and then I'd sell them on eBay and a few

people would buy them, but it didn't

really work out very well. I wasn't making

much money, it was taking too much time,

so I decided to start buying bulk

items from China and Hong Kong. I used to

mainly buy these cheap plastic watches

from Hong Kong. You could buy a pack of 10

watches for about £3, and then you could

sell each watch for about £2.50.

Sometimes people would buy more, like

they'd buy 5 or 10 all at once, and if you

sell them all together, then it cuts down

on the postage cost. The problem was that

these watches are really bad quality and

they kept breaking, and customers kept

saying, I want a refund, this watch has

broken, or There's no batteries in this

watch, send me another one. So I lost some

money because a lot of them were defects

or they were broken or they just weren't

working properly. There was even this one

time when I bought a box of pens, about 40

pens, from this guy in Hong Kong who

was selling loads of them, and I bought it

for about £10, maybe £5,

and I sold it on eBay. Someone just bought

the whole lot off me for about £25. I was

so happy, it was so exciting. And those

watches, loads of people would buy those

watches every day. I would sell about 5 to

10, but I wasn't making that much money

because you have to pay for postage, you

have to pay for the eBay fees, the PayPal

fees, and then some of them got broken or

you had to replace them. So I was only

making maybe £6 or £8 a day. It wasn't

anything to celebrate, but it was nice.

It was like a fun little hobby that was

making me some extra pocket money. And

then one day I was browsing eBay and then

I noticed some people were selling stuff

from Japan on eBay. And they were just

selling random crap like magazines,

books, cosmetics, food items. And I

noticed that a lot of them were actually

living in Japan and selling stuff on the

UK eBay. So I thought to myself, hey, why

don't I give this a try? It doesn't look

too hard. So I did a lot of research. I

checked out what other people were

selling. They were mainly selling stuff

like magazines. And I checked out how much

they were selling the magazines for, how

much you have to pay to actually get the

magazines in the first place, how much

postage costs, and it actually worked out.

They were making nice money from it. You

could also check their feedback, so you

can even check how many magazines they

were selling that month, and they were

actually making enough money that you

could live on. So my main idea was to just

copy them and sell magazines like they

were doing. I went into the convenience

stores shops, bookshops, and I took photos

of various magazines. And then I went

online to find like a nice stock image to

use, and no one was buying anything. I

didn't sell any magazines, no one was

interested, and I didn't understand what I

was doing wrong. I was doing it just like

what the other guys were doing. I was

selling it for the same price, I even

undercut them, but people weren't buying

from me. And then one day I decided to try

selling knife sharpeners, sharpening

stones. And for some reason, they sold

like hotcakes. They were selling so

quickly. I used to go onto Amazon Japan

and I'd buy all these knife sharpeners,

and then I'd sell them for twice the price

on the English eBay, the UK eBay. I was

selling maybe 5 to 8 knife sharpeners

every day. I was going to the post office

every day with a big bag of parcels to

send, and that must have looked pretty

strange, a bit suspicious. One time, the

woman at the post office even asked me if

the parcels were reaching their

destination properly, and I said Yep,

yep, there's no problems. Thanks. That

was, that was nice of her. And there was

this one knife sharpener that was selling

really well, better than all the others.

One day I got so many orders, maybe 30

orders. I had so much money coming in. It

was so exciting. And then disaster struck.

I went on to Amazon Japan to buy more

knife sharpeners, and I had bought all of

the knife sharpeners on Amazon, on Amazon

Japan. They were out of stock of the knife

sharpener that I really needed, that I had

all these people waiting for. It said on

the Amazon Japan page that they would,

they would get more stock of that knife

sharpener in a week or 2. So I thought

it'd be okay to make the customers wait on

eBay while I wait for more stock of the

knife sharpener from the Japanese people

who were selling on Amazon Japan. But that

was a big mistake because people weren't

happy. They started demanding that they

get a refund, and that was kind of tricky

because I already spent all the money

buying new stock. So loads of people

started to get angry and they demanded

refunds, and I tried explaining. I said,

I can't refund you right now because I

spent the money buying stock, and if you

could wait a few weeks, then I could get

the knife sharpener over to you. But most

people weren't happy with that, and loads

of people started opening cases with eBay

so that eBay would give them a refund.

And about 20 or 25 people opened

cases and eBay refunded them, and they all

left me negative feedback, which made me

unable to continue selling because I had

so much negative feedback and eBay had put

minus— a minus balance onto my seller's

fees. So I was on something like minus

£1,000 in seller's fees. I ended up

cancelling the orders for the knife

sharpeners on Amazon Japan, so I got my

money back from Amazon Japan,

and then I decided to pay all that money

back to eBay to get my seller's fee back

into the positive out of the negative.

And even after I paid the money back, my

account, my account was still banned from

selling on eBay. I thought if I paid all

the money back, it would be fine and I'd

be able to sell again, but nope. I phoned

eBay explaining this situation and They

said that unfortunately, because of my

recent negative history, that I won't be—

I'm not suited to selling on eBay, which

is their way of saying nicely, we don't

want you selling on our site, please fuck

off. But he also said on the phone,

although you can't sell on eBay anymore,

eBay is still a great place to do

shopping. It's like they just banned me

from selling, at the end of it they're

still encouraging me to come and do my

shopping on eBay. I was like, no thanks,

I'm not buying on eBay ever again. It was

so frustrating. I thought if I paid back

eBay, then everything would be fine. I

didn't realize that they were going to ban

me from selling. Maybe if I knew that they

were going to ban me from selling, I

wouldn't have paid them the money back. I

mean, what was the point? It was just

really disappointing because I had spent

years working on that eBay seller's

account. I had nearly 2,000

positive feedback points. I was— I had a

nice reputation. I had almost 100%

positive, maybe 98% or something. And it's

just gone just like that. My, my eBay

seller's account, just no longer able to

sell. Yeah, I know I could have just made

a new seller's account, which I did, and I

even made a new PayPal. I even opened up a

new bank account so that I could link it

to my new PayPal, but I just gave up. I

wasn't really enjoying selling stuff.

It's not really something I feel

passionate about. I wasn't making much

money by doing it, and it just felt like

This is too much hard work. I don't really

want to do this. It's not worth the time.

It's not worth the effort, and I don't

even use eBay anymore. I used to use eBay

for everything. I used to buy stuff on it.

I used to sell cameras and used games.

Now I have to sell everything on Amazon,

which is fine. It's just that eBay was

better. I don't know if this will still

work now. Maybe if you want to go to

Japan, you could try it out yourself.

Just go on to Amazon Japan, look up knife

sharpeners, buy a few, then put it onto

the English eBay for double the price.

You can make a bit of extra pocket money.

Yeah, I know, it was all my fault. You

should never advertise that you're selling

something if you don't actually have the

stock, and I should have refunded those

guys their money back straight away, even

if it meant that my bank account went into

negative figures. But it's all in the past

now. Can't be changed, can't be rectified.

I'm not really going to be an eBay seller

ever again.