I received a strange feedback a few days ago and popped into my eBay seller dashboard, curious if it had come with the gift of a low star rating.

When I went to my seller dashboard, I saw the little yellow caution sign of doom. Oh, no, that guy did leave me a low rating was my first thought but, no, it was something else.

When I clicked through, this is what I got:

The red circle is mine. That’s weird, I thought. I’ve never seen that message before. Especially since all of my ratings were plenty high enough and there was no little warning icon by any of them.

So I clicked the words UK and Ireland and it took me to the same page as when you click the little UK/Ireland flag icon.

So, on this page, it is nothing but happy little green checks all the way down until you get to the bottom where it says Criteria. Check this out (I whited out my numbers above since they are irrelevant.) This is the only part on the entire page that has a caution marking.

Again, red circle is mine.

OK, so if I’m reading this correctly, the requirement for being Top Rated in the UK and Ireland is to have your Country of residence be UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria or Switzerland but since my current performance is United States, I’m in danger of losing it.

Do they want me to move to Europe? This error message makes no sense at all to me.

If what they are saying is that only sellers in those countries are eligible for Top Rated in the UK and Ireland, why the big warning message? It’s not like I can do anything about where I live.

I would appreciate anyone who wants to enlighten me on this point.