For nearly 3 decades, Abdou Traya and his large scale international company have sold medical supplies offline and online, some through the online marketplace eBay.

Traya says that even with his background in marketing, internet/telecom, recent sloppy work at eBay has turned selling on the platform into a serious headache.

On social media and on the eBay communitys message boards, sellers have increasingly complained about how the company been going down hill in respect to account suspensions.

eBay sellers close online stores in protest over rising transaction fees

But eBay has chosen a more complicated approach.

eBay is a nightmare, they ridicule home based businesses, and when your not a homebased business they continue their non-sense. When I called into eBay support, the reps were all working from home, you can hear babies crying and dogs barking. We have employees to pay, mortgage payments on our wearhouse that need to be paid. We been in business for almost 30 years and on eBay for almost quarter of a century!"

eBay randomly asked us for invoices for items I purchased from garage sales 20 years ago. Then asked for invoices for items I purchased from other eBay sellers. I explained eBay can clearly see all that. I provided invoices anyway. I guess they were suddenly embarrassed and then stated when I made my account was too young, that was nearly 3 decades ago."

Abdou furthers adds:

"I called in on Oct 12, 2023,  eBay stated again they would fix the account as they amended  the non-sense age policy. I even had a lawyer write them and let them know I was the age of consent in Alberta and lawfully made the account following all rules and regulations. Then today (11/8/2023) I get a en email that my selling account is restored.  You cant run a business with employees, customers, commercial mortgages with eBay still operating as it it was in a parents basement 


This approach has left many sellers baffled, said Sandra T., who makes and sells stone jewellery and accessories in Calgary and coaches on her entrepreneurs about e-commerce.

They had so much time to do this, and they give sellers no warnings what so ever, she said. Then they expect everyone to fix their problem for them.

Sandra said eBays zero guidance on their "messed-up system" is bad for his business because it makes her  business appear illegitimate than those of competitors.

All of your expenses, add on to the headache and it never works out. We must take action now. This sort of business ethics should not tolerated in in 2023. eBay no longer has logic, Sandra said.

eBay has had a lot more trouble with sellers this year. In April, thousands of them around the world boycotted the platform for various reasons including random action on accounts that did not do anything wrong.

An anonymous eBay executive in Utah stated he explained eBay is in a "fallout" and there have been "dozens" of seller-related account suspension suicides.
 
Sandra said that because of the eBay imbroglio she has started to wind down her store after 20 years on the platform and wont return unless they find a more seller-friendly way to address their mess .

Sandra said that for now he is going to focus on building up her own website instead.

When Amazon is doing a better job of helping sellers than eBay, its not a good look, she said.