Switching from another platform
The mechanics are easy and the cost is not where people expect it.
What does not transfer
Almost everything you value. This is worth being blunt about before you decide, because the mechanical part of switching takes an hour and the part that hurts takes months to rebuild.
| What you have | Does it move? |
|---|---|
| Buyer feedback and standing | No. Reputation accrues per platform and starts at zero. This is the real cost of switching and the main reason not to. |
| Vendor relationships | Partly. A vendor active on both may recognise you, and you have no way to prove continuity without linking identities, which has its own cost. |
| Your balance | No. Withdraw it before you go, and do not leave a balance behind on a platform you have stopped watching. |
| Dispute history | No, in either direction. A clean record does not follow you and neither does a bad one. |
| Your PGP key | Technically yes and think carefully. Reusing a key across platforms links the identities permanently. |
The key reuse question
This is the decision with lasting consequences and it gets made carelessly, usually because reusing a key is convenient and the downside is invisible at the time.
One key across two platforms is a permanent, cryptographic statement that the two accounts are the same person. It cannot be retracted later. If either identity is ever exposed, the other goes with it, including retroactively, including on platforms that no longer exist but whose data does.
A fresh key per identity costs you the ability to carry proof of continuity, which is a real loss for a vendor and close to irrelevant for a buyer. Buyers should generate a new one. See the key.
Doing it properly
- Finish or close out everything open where you are. Do not run two platforms with orders in flight, because you will lose track of a delivery window and that is how disputes get filed late.
- Withdraw your balance rather than leaving it. A balance on a platform you have stopped visiting is exposed with nobody watching.
- Generate a new key for the new identity unless you have a specific reason not to.
- Set up here from scratch, treating yourself as a first timer for the setup steps even though you know them.
- Expect to be treated as new, because you are. Vendors weight recent volume, and yours is zero here.
One thing that does transfer
Judgement. You already know how to read a vendor profile, what a dispute involves, and how listings are dressed up. That is genuinely valuable and it is the reason a switcher is not really a beginner, even though every number attached to them says otherwise. Keep the judgement and expect the numbers to take a while.