Suspension is not arbitrary and it is not permanent in most cases. The first job is finding out which of a short list applies to you.
Where the reason is written down
For a store: Account health. The messages are specific — Your store is suspended, so you can’t go live. Check Account Health for details. That screen names what happened and, where it is a measured standard, exactly what would clear it.
For a buyer: the restriction notice itself, and your strike history.
Read that before writing to anybody. Most appeals that go nowhere are appeals to a reason that was never the reason.
The buyer reasons
Unpaid wins. The common one. Each win you do not pay for is a strike, and three strikes inside ninety days pauses bidding. Strikes age out — the window runs from each strike rather than from your first.
Reports upheld. Chat conduct, or behaviour in a show. How moderation works.
Bidding on your own items, through any account. This is the serious one, because it is deliberate rather than careless.
The store reasons
Four different states, with different wording and different routes:
- Waiting for approval — not a suspension. A new store, not yet reviewed.
- Suspended — something to fix.
Check Account Health for details. - Closed —
Your store is closed. Reopen it to list items.This is usually your own doing: vacation mode taken further, or a store closed and not reopened. - Banned —
Your store has been closed and can’t list items.The end of the road, for the things that deserve it.
Being measured badly on store health is the usual path to suspension: order defect rate, late shipments, cancellations, missing tracking, slow replies, low ratings. Each one on that screen tells you what would fix it.
How to appeal
- Read the reason on Account Health or the notice.
- Fix what can be fixed first. An appeal that arrives alongside the problem still happening is a weaker appeal.
- Write one message, from the app, with: what you think happened, what you have done about it, and what you are asking for. Specific and short.
- Wait. Sending it four times does not speed it up and does make the record messier.
What works: "Three orders were late in September because my courier stopped collecting from my area. I have switched couriers and the last eleven went on time."
What does not: "Please reactivate urgently, I have done nothing wrong."
What never helps
Opening another account. Strikes and standing follow the person. A second account created to get round a restriction is a worse position than the one you were in. Can I have two accounts?
If you genuinely did nothing
Say so, and say what you think was misread. Decisions are made on records, and a record can be wrong — but it is answered with specifics, not indignation.
More: what Metzee will not do, what happens to a reported seller, what happens if I don’t pay.