eBay restricted my account permanently and won't help me with it

Sensitivezombie@lemmy.zip to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 161 points –

I'm a casual eBay user. On rare occasions, I will sell household items when I no longer use them. Well, I went to sell my Nintendo Switch on eBay and found out my account has been restricted indefinitely selling. When I tried chat with the customer service agent, they provided a name of some entity that I don't recognize in relation to my account for the reason for restriction, then refused to help me any further and simply disconnect. What kind of shity service is that? When I was provided an automated option to "appeal", it didn't work when i clicked on it. It didn't do anything. Same with other options. They don't have any other way to appeal on their website from what I can see. So caught off guard and annoyed.

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aNd i wOuLd lIkE InFoRm yOu tHaT We dOn't mAkE DeCiSiOnS LiKe tHiS LiGhTlY

every time someone has to explicitly say this it's a lie

All the rep did was copy pasta. What kind of ppl are they hiring.

I mean, welcome to every online support chat since they were invented

It's because of crap like this we as society need to go back to brick and mortar shops. Isn't the whole point of online shopping is to provide convenience? How is this convenience.

I mean in a brick and mortar store the owner can also just tell you to beat it without giving a reason, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I would argue you that a big difference would be protest. A permanent placard describing bad business practices or hell a brick through a window if you can’t be bothered. A replacement commercial window could cost a thousand dollars and interrupt revenue generating systems, a decent sized event to attract attention. Here its another lemmy/social media post that eBay treats buyers and sellers horribly because scam buyers and sellers are good enough to game them, the alternative being a botnet to take down eBay long enough to hurt their profits? Sounds like the people at eBay gonna keep doing what the’ve been doing, hell maybe send you boxes of insects or a dissection pig to your place if you make too much noise. A regular store could do the same, but they would also know they have a store just as vulnerable if not more because you could stop their ability to generate revenue.

This is clearly overseas customer service rep with a script. It happens every time I "chat with customer service" for any business at all. Or it's an AI chat, which is equally possible.

Maybe AI? I mean there wasn't anything of substance in the replies.

what kind of shitty service is that

it’s eBay

Yea eBay has been terrible for the entirety of its existence.. unfortunately no one seems to be interested in making a better product and competing against them

There are several alternatives out there but ebay dominates the market share so much they don't seem to do well. And it seems like setting up a competitor would be hilariously expensive and probably would end up just as terrible.

Not to mention rampant fraud. One of the reasons they’re as aggressive and assholish is the sheer amount of illicit activity

If I wanted to sell stolen goods

I mean, I’m not justifying their shitty CS. If he’s been tagged for fraud, they should just say so.

But also… they do (and always will,) have a problem with fraud and acting as a fence.

They do? Every time I've bought a video game on ebay? Stolen from redbox. A cellphone? stolen. I can't remember anything else I've bought on there but you better believe it was stolen.

I’ve been trying to think of a time when I had good customer service from them and came up with nothing so far.

That’s because they’ve never in their history had good customer service lol

I tried to sell my car on eBay back in 2008 - the first thing I ever attempted to sell on their site. I've bought a few random things from eBay over the years, including my car 3 years prior.

My account was immediately flagged for potential fraud and locked down. The only way they'd clear it was if I photocopied my driver's license and mailed it to them; they wouldn't accept a digital copy.

I just created a new account and have been using that ever since. I ended up selling my car outside of eBay; I'm never attempting to sell a vehicle through their site again.

Hate this kind of thing. Would be cool if there was a more decentralized alternative for ecommerce that people actually use.

I had my ebay account restricted the same day I made it. Was really confused and frustrated as I had made the account to buy something

So I just made another account with my same email address just without any periods, have had that account for years. Still no idea why I was restricted at all the first time and not the second..

Had similar happen to me except I didn't get to appeal it for quite a while and they told me they couldn't tell me why it was banned and they wouldn't be lifting it, I had no purchases mind you. Just made another account

If you use eBay and PayPal you're asking for this. They shit all over users and don't care. I've vowed to never use either of them again.

I bought one thing on Ebay, thinking VAT was included, because that's how you buy things here (my offer included VAT). But afterwards they put on 25% what the duck. Then I just thought no more

This is really strange. For some reason they think you are the same person or entity as this techdiscount whatever account. Normally that would be because you have the same mailing address, or link the same bank account or something. Maybe your name and date of birth are similar to this other banned person?

Really stupid.

Can you call on the phone?

Something similar happened to me though I have never sold anything but bought like 3 items over 5 years and my selling got limited for some unknown reason. I figured it's no great loss and deleted my account and made a new one.

I had an ebay account I used for years, and when I was travelling I bought a screwdriver set. A year later, my account was locked, I contacted support and they said it was because of that purchase.

It baffles me why they'd lock an account for buying something, but let alone after 6 months. Have avoided them since.