Seller account support
Marketplace seller account support for Scottish ecommerce brands
If you sell from Scotland and your marketplace account has been suspended, restricted, or had its payouts frozen, two things about being Scottish work against you that most appeal advice never mentions: how your company number reads to an automated verification check, and what Highlands and Islands delivery does to the performance metrics that trigger deactivation in the first place.
Updated 3 August 2026
Highlands and Islands delivery is an account-health problem, not a logistics one
Every marketplace judges you on delivery metrics: how often parcels arrive by the promised date, how often tracking scans on time, how often a buyer opens a case because nothing turned up. Those metrics are the single most common route into a suspension that has nothing to do with policy.
Scottish sellers hit them from both directions. Shipping from the Highlands, the Islands, or anywhere off the central belt means your first-mile collection is later and less frequent than a seller in Manchester. Shipping to Scottish postcodes means IV, HS, KW, PA, PH, ZE, and the island parts of AB and KA fall outside most carriers' standard next-day network, so a service sold as 24-hour quietly becomes 48 or 72.
The marketplace does not model any of that. It compares your promised dispatch date against the carrier scan and marks you late. Enough of those in one evaluation window and you are Below Standard, and Below Standard is what precedes most metric-driven suspensions.
Handling time set from mainland assumptions
Dispatch promise copied from a generic template, not from your actual collection times
Carrier de-scopes Highlands and Islands
The 24-hour service is 48 or 72 hours to IV, HS, KW, PA, PH, ZE
Late deliveries accumulate quietly
Each one is small; the metric is a rolling percentage
Rating drops below standard
Visible on the dashboard before any notice arrives
Restriction or deactivation
The notice cites the metric, not the geography behind it
No policy is broken anywhere in this chain, which is why the eventual notice reads as a surprise.
The SC company number problem in marketplace verification
A limited company registered in Scotland has a company number beginning SC. English and Welsh companies have an eight-digit number with no letters, and Northern Irish companies begin NI. All of them are Companies House registrations and all of them are equally valid.
Marketplace verification systems do not always agree. Forms that expect a purely numeric company number, checks built against an England and Wales data shape, and reviewers who have simply never seen an SC prefix all produce the same outcome: a verification that stalls, loops, or fails without ever telling you which field it disliked. Sellers then re-upload the same correct documents for weeks.
- Enter the company number exactly as Companies House holds it, prefix included, with no spaces and no leading zeroes added or removed.
- Make the registered-office address on the marketplace match the Companies House record character for character, including whether it says "Street" or "St".
- If your trading address and registered office differ, expect to prove both. A Scottish council tax bill or a utility bill in the director's name covers the trading side.
- Where a form refuses the SC prefix outright, that is a form bug and not your error. Say so explicitly in the case, and give the Companies House registration so a human can verify it directly.
What Scottish sellers can use as proof of address and proof of business
Verification refusals are usually about document form rather than document content: the right fact on the wrong kind of paper. What Scotland issues is slightly different from what a generic help page assumes.
Usually accepted
- Council tax bill from your Scottish local authority, current year
- Bank statement from a UK account in the business or director name
- Utility bill dated within the window the marketplace states
- Companies House certificate of incorporation showing the SC number
- HMRC correspondence showing the business name and address
Usually refused
- Screenshots or photos of a screen rather than the document itself
- Statements with the address or account number partly hidden
- Documents older than the stated window, however valid
- A trading name that appears nowhere on the Companies House record
- Anything where the address punctuation differs from the marketplace record
UK consumer law belongs in some appeals and not others
Two pieces of UK law come up constantly in cases where the underlying dispute is with a buyer rather than the marketplace: the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which give a distance-selling buyer a 14-day right to cancel, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which gives a short-term right to reject goods that are faulty.
Cite them where a defect or a case genuinely turned on a returns question and your handling was correct. Do not cite them at a marketplace reviewing your account health, because the marketplace's own policy is stricter than the statutory floor and quoting law at it reads as arguing rather than fixing. The reviewer is looking for a root cause and a change, not a legal position.
Working with us from Scotland
Everything runs remotely and in writing, which is the right shape for this work anyway: appeals are documents, and the evidence lives in your Seller Central or Seller Hub account rather than in a meeting. You open a case, we read the actual notice rather than your summary of it, and you get the route out in writing within one working day.
- We work in UK hours, so a case opened in the Scottish morning is read the same morning.
- We never ask for your marketplace password, and we do not need account access to draft an appeal.
- You keep the draft either way. If you would rather send it yourself, send it yourself.
Guides that apply here
Nearby
Common questions
Do you help ecommerce sellers based in Scotland specifically?
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Yes. We work with sellers across Scotland, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, the Highlands, and the Islands. The work is remote and document-based, so where you are in Scotland makes no difference to the service, though it does change the delivery-metric evidence that belongs in your appeal.
Does my company number starting with SC cause problems with Amazon or eBay verification?
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It should not, because an SC number is an ordinary Companies House registration. In practice some verification flows are built around the England and Wales numeric format and stall on the prefix. If your verification is looping without telling you which field failed, the company number field is worth checking first.
Can Highlands and Islands delivery times really get my account suspended?
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Not directly, but the late deliveries they produce feed the performance metrics that do. Most carriers exclude Highlands and Islands postcodes from their standard next-day service, so a dispatch promise built on mainland assumptions generates late arrivals you never see coming. That is a root cause a reviewer will accept if you evidence it and show the handling time you changed.
How quickly can you look at my case?
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You get a first reply within one working day, in UK hours. How long the marketplace then takes is their decision, and it is usually a few working days for an appeal review, longer where identity verification is involved.
Do you need my eBay or Amazon password?
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No, and you should never give it to anyone. We draft appeals from the notice you were sent and the screens you can show us. You file it from your own account.
Marketplace policies, carrier service areas, and performance targets change. Check the current policy page on the marketplace before acting on anything here, and treat this page as general information rather than legal advice. No outcome can be guaranteed on any appeal.