29 ms·

Your eBay account has been suspended

211 points by quisquous 5y ago

Got an email from eBay this morning: " Hello brokeninfinity, We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk. We understand that this must be frustrating, but this decision was not made lightly and it’s important that we keep our marketplace safe for everyone. Learn more about how and why accounts can be suspended... " I'm a long time, infrequent eBay user, mostly buy stuff, 331 stars, 100% feedback rating. Haven't used eBay recently, no idea what just happened. Maybe someone was trying to hack my account? The suspension email has no reply address. I tried contact eBay through their web chat, and they say 'Sorry Scott, live support's currently unavailable.' I guess I'll stop using eBay now. The summary execution with no explanation and no escalation path and no appeal is not endearing. Count me added to the chorus of folks calling for regulations that will eliminate this sort of abusive behavior against consumers. We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. I mean, I shudder to think of the position I would be in right now if I depended on eBay for anything important. Thank goodness for me that I do not, but not everyone can say the same. What do you think?

quisquous 5y ago
Update...got an email from eBay around 7p Pacific: " Hello brokeninfinity, We're pleased to let you know that your account is reinstated. If you had any listings that were removed when the account was suspended, we've restored those listings... " Perhaps this discussion caught an eBay-er's attention, and if that was you, thank you for helping out. And thank you HN for helping call attention to my case. That said, it shouldn't take this sort of attention for eBay to do the right thing. My point stands that eBay inappropriately suspending accounts without explanation or hope of appeal is not ok. And the email reinstating my account did not contain an apology or an explanation of what went wrong, so while I appreciate it, it's not enough. eBay needs to stop treating people this way.
Asmod4n 5y ago
Thank luck you even got a Mail. I’ve put one(1) common used thing for sale on eBay with pictures I took myself and they just deleted the account with no explanation at all. Couldn’t contact support because they couldn’t find an account with my address.
b3nji 5y ago
I had the same thing happen a few years ago with PayPal, it was completely out of the blue. I've been a user for over a decade. There was no route of recourse I could follow, that was it, the end, done. There was nothing out of the ordinary I was buying from eBay, I had a few subscriptions via PayPal, and didn't really sell things on eBay either. I feel it was an algorithm fail, a bit of code that arbitrarily decides to delete you off the system. Maybe something we can look forward to more of if we aren't careful?
GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago
> We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. The GDPR is your friend. It gives you the right to appeal against automated decision making. A human must look into and review the decision to suspend your account if you request it. The human must be easily contactable and able to make a decision based on the facts. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ Article 22: "The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her."
_iobt 5y ago
The exact same thing thing happened to me last night. Account suspended with a perfect but low volume selling record. I haven't used it for a year. Received an email this morning saying it has been reinstated. Either way it did make me waste my time removing my cards from PayPal and emptying that account. The reason I stopped using them is that they appeared to manually use the direct debit to take money from my account (and more than they should have) after I'd logically won against a fraudulent return according to their policies last year. My last action was to make a SAR which showed again that it was closed against their policies. Knowing eBay at first I thought they may have looked into the case and wanted to cover their backs. I wouldn't be too surprised now if it was just a bug.
PaulHoule 5y ago
My wife got kicked out of PayPal for no good reason 15 years ago. I think she could have reinstated it if she sent a fax but she wasn't about to send a fax. If you want to know why people aren't adopting 2FA, it's because we know it's just a matter of time until the hole that attaches your Yubikey to your keyring wears away, your Yubikey disappears, and with customer service that amounts to "talk to the hand" at many sites, it's a digital death sentence.
- quisquous 5y ago
  Yah, that sucks...losing access to PayPal can be really bad depending on your situation. My brother got kicked off Facebook a couple weeks ago because his account was hacked and they couldn't decide who was legit and who wasn't, so they just threw up their hands and shut down his account. It hurt because he used Facebook a lot. I agree that 2FA doesn't solve the problem of companies deciding not to invest in good, considerate, human, security conscious, customer support. More technology isn't always the right answer, especially when it comes to questions of companies harming and then dehumanizing their customers because it's cheaper than doing than the right thing.
- robalfonso 5y ago
  Because of this, I make a point of having 3 2fa keys. A daily driver, a backup key on a key ring and the final one in a fireproof safe. Like you I would be afraid what would happen if I lacked my key. Companies need to at least clarify “what happens if I don’t have my key” also one time codes are a thing that need to be saved and can help mitigate a hardware failure.
  - thelittleone 5y ago
    Amazing that in 2021 there are few better alternatives than have 3 x 2FA keys.
    - Alupis 5y ago
      What would be that alternative? The point of 2FA is "something you have"... if you lose it, you no longer have it. It's designed to lock you out if lost/stolen... otherwise, what would be the point? As an aside, 2FA keys are not what most people use... they use cell phone numbers, time-based rolling-code authentication apps, email addresses, etc. It's your choice to use a physical key, even if it might technically be the most secure of the options. Security is always a trade off with convenience. GP seems to not understand the point of 2FA. If you can simply call up customer support and maneuver you way back into a locked account, then so can the "bad guys". Any information they have about you can be found by a determined attacker... hence, the "something you have" approach.
tluyben2 5y ago
Because my accounts are so old and I have so many of them, I get a message regularly saying that my account for service xyz has been suspended. When I contact them there a) never is a good reason for why it was done (hint; it is usually because they started using or recently updated some AI fraud detection service) b) small companies easily restore your account; with big ones it is usually game over. Ebay (and Paypal) are rather notorious for this: PayPal has actually gotten more robust but now I actually cannot close my account. They don't know why but computer says no; it is an ancient account, so, as a software engineer, I can take a few guesses. The most annoying is the level of support: even if the support is polite and responsive and human to begin with, which is not often at big companies (note I do not live in the US so I get routed to my country support for that bigcorp; I do not know if support is better over there), they often have no clue what they are talking about and only have canned responses. You used to be able to escalate to another level but that seems to have been removed (too expensive of course). So when I can I stick with small companies; when they get funded or taken over, I find an alternative. I manage small SaaS products myself and I definitely will never leave anyone hanging, not even for a few hours; many small companies have the same feeling. Of course, often you cannot do anything else but take the large ones. Luckily with banking this changed over the past years, but plenty things are still utterly broken support (and because you need support, also software wise probably) wise.
- mrtweetyhack 5y ago
  Ebay AND Paypal are scams
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Didn’t PayPal start charging you for maintaining an account?
- dangle1 5y ago
  That's interesting, I wonder if I have an 'uncloseable' PayPal account, since it started as an x.com account in '99 when they were giving people $20 to open one.
  - 5y ago
tmysl 5y ago
can report the same here. happening to tons and tons of people today, zero details in the email
opwieurposiu 5y ago
Somebody probably hacked your account and listed a bunch of macbooks for sale. If you list a bunch of expensive stuff with little history of selling eBay will ban you. It also depends on the items "you" list, for some reason apple products turn the fraud score up to 11.
- quisquous 5y ago
  Good idea. I just checked and I don't see anything for sale or recently for sale. And I rotated my password for good measure. I can still login, I just can't buy or sell anything. I got a flurry of what looked to me like phishing emails 'from eBay' right before my account was suspended...they claimed to cancel my bids on a bunch of old, long over auctions, with the call to action asking me to click on link with a URL referencing a local DLL. So yah, something fishy is going on, but I can't help eBay figure it out if they just disable my account and make themselves unreachable. Is this what ghosting feels like?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >with the call to action asking me to click on link with a URL referencing a local DLL. Are you talking about the urls that have "eBayISAPI.dll" in them? That's just how their urls are, not some sort of attempt to execute dlls on your computer.
- lyubalesya 5y ago
  With literally zero information or reasoning given by eBay, one can always invent a justifiable cause for eBay's actions out of thin air. Given their behavior, do they deserve this much benefit of the doubt?
ponyous 5y ago
I got it today as well. No idea what's up yet, something to do with one of the orders I cancelled recently? I spoke with the seller and we resolved the issue completely without issues. I use unique password for ebay.
simse 5y ago
I had my brand new account banned today as well. How does one sell an iPhone on Ebay without being suspicious?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  With a new account, you don't. Most buyers would run away from new accounts selling iPhones. Maybe eBay has institutionalized that running away.
  - simse 5y ago
    Yeah that's fair, I'm facing the same thing with credit, since I just moved to the UK.
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Buying and/or selling other items to build up your feedback first (My current account is 12 years old, and I have sold several iPhones there, 2 recently, with little issues, though you don't have to watch out for scam attempts) Mercari is also a good platform to sell on.
Normille 5y ago
I posted this in another thread on the same subject: Not exactly related but: a couple of weeks ago I suddenly had my account 'restricted' on eBay and told I could no longer sell or receive payment for anything I'd sold until I uploaded a load of personal ID documents [passport / driving licence, etc] to confirm my identity. This, after I'd been buying and selling on eBay for 19+ years. Browsing their 'community' forum, it became clear that eBay have done this to loads of people recently, including many who had been members even longer than me. What disgusted me even more than this obnoxious privacy invasion was the number of people on the forum who'd actually sent eBay all the required documentation instead of telling them to go fuck themselves. Luckily I had no uncleared payments in my account. So I've just stopped using eBay. It's just a pity there's no viable alternative. Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to help rein in the jaw-dropping arrogance of these mega-corporations. EDIT: > The summary execution with no explanation and no escalation path and no appeal is not endearing Agreed. I've had this happen to me before with Twitter as well. Got 3 accounts suddenly suspended for no reason. Boring long story but, after about 6 months they re-instated them with nothing more than a "Whoops! We made a mistake". What makes these 'summary executions' [I like that description!] infinitely more annoying is that there's no way to enter into any kind of a dialogue about it. If you receive an email from eBay, telling you you've been suspended, it'll come from a no-reply address and good luck actually finding any way to contact them through their website. It just sends you round and round in circles before eventually dumping you onto their 'Community' forum, which is basically just a load of other pissed off users, shouting into the void. I know the old argument goes "Their playground. Their rules" and, in general, I agree with that. But, with these huge corporations which have a virtual monopoly on certain arenas of internet activity, there ought to be some safeguards in place to protect users against arbitrary [and often unfounded] account suspensions. This kind of thing could literally bankrupt someone's business, if they relied heavily on eBay sales.
- bovermyer 5y ago
  Yeah... my eBay account is very old (maybe 1998 vintage?), and I almost never use it anymore. But I have a fondness for out of print, obscure tabletop RPGs, and eBay is probably the only market I know of for that, outside of knowing a guy who knows a guy. Losing access to eBay would be annoying. Not world-ending, because perspective. But annoying.
guilhas 5y ago
I would really like to find a good alternative Endless captchas, randomly asking to login again, holding payments, asking for more and more user data, now demands ID card picture and social security number for selling, dropping PayPal... After 10 years without problems, getting really tired the past 6 months
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Mercari is a good platform (though it doesn't solve the Paypal issue - pretty every platform is moving to their own payment platform)
  - Normille 5y ago
    Unfortunately [UK member here] Mercari is US only. The only direct eBay alternative I'm aware of is eBid[0]. From time to time I check it out, when eBay is pissing me off more than usual. But it has always seemed like a ghost town. Also, their financial model puts me off. They have no seller fees, but you have to buy seller membership [per week / month /year etc] to sell. Given the apparent lack of activity on the site and the chance that I'd get no buyer interest at all, that seems like a bit too much of a gamble to me. [0] https://www.ebid.net/uk/ https://www.ebid.net/uk/
- humaniania 5y ago
  Etsy has been moving into this space.
- bmarquez 5y ago
  I've had success using OfferUp, though they do require personal information if you ship your items. Local transactions (Craigslist style) don't require it. I deleted my eBay account after over a decade of use, when eBay switched from PayPal to managed payments (basically requiring social security number and bank account) -- I didn't trust eBay with my personal data after dealing with increasingly poor customer service.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  Of course, the context here is that every additional security measure is because a scammer has already used that method to hijack accounts or perpetuate fraud... which means that every succesful company with a similar market will either eventually follow the same trajectory or see its support and verification costs balloon into total unprofitability.
kgwxd 5y ago
My email client is also my RSS client. I just panicked a little bit.
- roneoo 5y ago
  :D
- Cyphase 5y ago
  It took me a moment to parse the headline on the HN front page, because there was no domain name but also no "Ask HN:" or similar.
kkielhofner 5y ago
Same thing happened to me last year. Listed an item, it got pulled, almost identical message. Contacted support, account is banned from selling forever. I’d had it since 1998.
- atlanta90210 5y ago
  What was the item?
  - kkielhofner 5y ago
    It was an EVGA Nvidia GTX 1080.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reginold 5y ago
  Similar experience, replied elsewhere in the thread. I had some luck contacting the Better Business Bureau. eBay is a dumpster fire, better move is to never use them again and warn others against it.
chronogram 5y ago
If Ebay has 2FA you should write in your post if you’ve been using 2FA.
- quisquous 5y ago
  I don't have 2FA enabled on my eBay account. I use a unique, complicated password though, and I don't see any suspicious activity on my account, though, apparently eBay saw something wrong. Unfortunately they won't tell me what's wrong, so I can't figure it out or help. AFAIK eBay doesn't support WebAuthn. I got a set of 3 Yubikeys some months ago (1 for my laptop, 1 for my workstation, 1 for backup in my fire safe) and I wanted to protect my eBay account using them, but eBay only offers me options to add SMS or eBay's mobile app as 2nd factors.
  - nyuszika7h 5y ago
    They do support WebAuthn, but only on Windows. (It works perfectly fine on Linux if you spoof your user agent.) Also note that the option is not under "2 step verification" but a separate "Security key sign in" section lower down, because their implementation is not really 2FA, it's just an additional login method (email + security key) and it doesn't disable regular email + password login.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
creativelet 5y ago
This happened to me after I sold some AirPods. Not just with Buy It Now, but after I waited a week for the auction to end, and was literally about to post them in the mail. After being suspended I could no longer access the listing. I managed to reach their customer support line and had the most arrogant agent I've ever had in my life. Like someone who genuinely felt like I was some kind of evil hacker, and actively got off on punishing me. It was disgusting. FYI - I'm just some regular person who reads this website, and I honestly feel really weird actually being one of the people who posts replies. But reading this brought back such angry memories of that encounter that I felt compelled to actually create an account and share my experience. In the end I switched to one of the much better app-based modern competitors that we have in the US (edit: it was Mercari) and never looked back. Too bad the rest of the world is still stuck on eBay.
- Animats 5y ago
  This happened to me after I sold some AirPods. You are not supposed to resell Apple products. You must treasure the precious. To resell can get you kicked out of the cult.
- toolz 5y ago
  Hope you'll edit and include the name of the app. If they've solved a problem for you then they deserve the mention!
  - bbitmaster 5y ago
    Not the OP, but Mercari is a good one. (Maybe there are others?)
    - creativelet 5y ago
      Yup, you guessed correctly!
  - creativelet 5y ago
    Sure, that's fair. It was Mercari. Thank you Mercari!! I now use it for regular items, and Poshmark and Depop for clothes. No more broken web 2.0 app literally yelling at me that I hacked it.
version_five 5y ago
Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions, as well as dark patterns (or straight up impossibility) to prevent actual interaction with a person to resolve your issue. I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time (maybe 20 minutes). I'm a libertarian and normally oppose this kind of thing, but the obvious abuses from every big tech company are too big to ignore and are exactly the kind of thing where government regulation does make sense.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions Yep. > I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time This would solve several problems that exist. What if legally-mandated customer support came to, say, 30% of Google's operating costs? What if it was 80%? It's not obvious that banning no-recourse decisions is an improvement to the world. > (maybe 20 minutes) Well, no, that's ridiculous. Legally mandated 20-minute response times means legally-mandated no-recourse decisions. Only the computer can respond quickly enough to comply.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I definitely see your point. At the same time, I think a lot of "tech" has really derived value by circumventing regulation and norms - easy examples are Uber and Airbnb which seemed great and legitimately "disrupted" tired industries, but it turned out a lot of stuff in those industries was the way it was for a reason, and when companies mature and end up putting that stuff back, their competitive advantage evaporates. That could also be true for ecommerce (broadly defined) - if they can't viable run a business without having x% of customers get shafted because they have an issue where they can't even talk to a person, is that still OK? Maybe it is. Is it OK that a company is able to destroy any competition by not offering personal service, so the people it screws have nowhere else to go? I'm not sure. Maybe it's not 20 minutes (I picked that because I know that if the regs just required a phone number companies would have a 30 hour wait time, or an infinite one pretending you're almost there) but there needs to be some standard - or a credible threat of competition that isn't there with platforms
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Count me added to the chorus of folks calling for regulations that will eliminate this sort of abusive behavior against consumers. We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. If this is what you want, then you'll need to escalate your problem to regulatory authorities, even if doing so only means they become aware of the problem. I've posted links to forms that you can use to report issues like this to state-level and federal-level regulators here[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193
- quisquous 5y ago
  Thanks for this. The first link led me to the State of California Department of Consumer Affairs. I filled out the form to file a complaint and got an error: "The requested URL was rejected. Please consult with your administrator. Your support ID is: 18093870959457122962". LOL it's dead ends all around. No one wants to hear from plebs. I'm not giving up though. I'll go through your links and I'll figure out how to get through to someone. Might have to write a physical letter. :)
fsckboy 5y ago
ebay answers the phone, call them. the "call me back" option works fine too.
- zbrozek 5y ago
  Paypal doesn't, however. I wanted to switch bank accounts associated with PayPal and just... couldn't. That account is now dead, and I've switched to carrying a checkbook with me to settle up dinner with friends.
  - fsckboy 5y ago
    paypal also answers the phone for me; you need to set the phone call up from the web. the only time I call them is when I'm having a problem with ebay. So happy that I can use ebay without paypal now.
    - zbrozek 5y ago
      I tried that and got such a runaround that I gave up. They don't provide a sufficiently valuable service to be worth the effort.
inthegreenwoods 5y ago
eBay works well until something goes wrong, then it fails totally. The reason is that it is totally automated. When you received a “letter” like the one you got it is natural to assume that there is someone behind it who knows what they are doing. In fact it is a bot. You cant ask a bot “why” it did something. It doesn’t know. eBay is a much too early version of machine “intelligence”. In fact it is not intelligent at all. This makes life easy for thieves. The whole business model assumes that no one will ever have to be paid wages to sort things out. There is no budget to do so. The complaint process is just a bit of theatre to disguise the fact that you are being gaslighted.Time spent on getting a reply is time wasted. “They” don't care. In fact “they” don’t exist.
astrange 5y ago
There is such a thing for payment processors, which includes PayPal and maybe eBay; it's https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/.
mercerbell 5y ago
I have had the exact same thing today. I got an email informing me my account has been permanently suspended. I haven't done anything wrong. I've managed to contact them a few times via email but get the exact same email reply each time. It sucks. If I'd done something wrong I'd understand, but nope. Unless buying a new phone case is a violation? I was looking for a solution and it brought me here. I hope you sort it out. Also, I made an account purely just to add a comment. Haha
- mercerbell 5y ago
  Just a little update. I too got an email today from eBay saying my account has been reinstated. Just when I'd drafted a hefty email too. Oh well. I'm glad it's sorted but it's shocking how they get away with this.
- reginold 5y ago
  Contact the Better Business Bureau. They will go to work for you on this maybe. eBay is a despicable company.
  - mercerbell 5y ago
    Ah I used them when my Activision account was hacked and I was banned. It worked.
reginold 5y ago
Yes, eBay is atrocious. I was banned based on my IP, along with all my family's accounts a few days later. It's an automated system. Customer support will say the equivalent of "it's a secret" why you were banned. Yeah right it's some dumb batch job. Save yourself feeling abused. Don't bother trying to fix it. Waited 6 months and created a new account. Another time I sold an item and shipped it. The froze my account. Same "it's a secret" bs. What did work for me was contacting the Better Business Bureau. That got me answers, months later. It was because I shipped the item before the Paypal payment had cleared. eBay is a shitty company. To the extent this is the future of software, we a f-ed as we get older. These systems are going to chew us up and spit us out.
brokencode 5y ago
I closed my eBay account after I saw what kinds of scams and misrepresentations they have been allowing in the GPU market. For example, people selling literal pictures of GPUs instead of the real thing, but putting it in the GPU category and listing for $1000+ dollars. It’s almost as if they’ve given up on their whole mission of being a safe and reliable place to buy and sell goods online. After all, who actually wants to pay for moderators? Not them, clearly.
fortuna86 5y ago
Ebay flies under the radar for having some of the worst customer service of any company, tech or no. I got defrauded on their platform last year, they sided with the scammer and I closed my account I opened in 2001.
utopcell 5y ago
I once ordered an LCD TV on eBay. After a few weeks a tiny box was delivered. I was lucky enough to be home at the time of delivery, so I rejected the package. I asked for a refund from the seller, which I received. From what I saw on comments on the seller's page, this had happened to a few other buyers, who were unlucky enough to open their tiny boxes, only to find ..excrement in them. There was no way for me to report this to eBay. Since I got a refund, there was no way to complain about it. eBay has become very hit-and-miss, and is probably not that great for used items anymore since you now have to pay taxes for them.
ineptech 5y ago
It seems like the common thread is that all of the accounts being mysteriously banned are old, and KYC rules have changed. Is it possible that this (the "you're banned, make a new account" message) is just because it was too expensive to build a workflow for old accounts to enter updated info?
whoknowswhat11 5y ago
This happens for a few reasons. 1) Inactive or low activity account starts selling (instead of buying) high value / high risk items. Think GPU's, Macbooks, etc. 2) An old account has activity (including someone trying passwords from various breaches some of which might match an old salt). Because old account takeover and then fraudulent sales is a pretty big issue (old accounts often have 100% positive ratings) this seems to trigger the bots. 3) Accounts without KYC - normally you are asked to update. I'm not sure how old accounts have to be to have problems. I'm from early 1999 which was three or four years after I think they got going. The fraud problem was getting pretty ridiculous on ebay so kind of glad they are cracking down but it's got to be a pretty imperfect hammer and so no doubt lots of false positives. I've gone to selling my old iphones / ipads etc back through apple. No where near the price you get elsewhere, but no hassle either from my experience.
- patio11 5y ago
  This comports with my general understanding of the matter. By total coincidence, I just wrote a newsletter on this topic (like, minutes ago), and it includes a description of triangular fraud, which is particularly relevant for e.g. sales of desirable, fungible, high-ticket electronics via online platforms from accounts which don't have a long history of being electronics retailers. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fraud-supply-chain/ https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fraud-supply-chain/
howdydoo 5y ago
I'll add to the chorus. Something like this happened to me recently. I bought a heating element for my dishwasher on eBay. I received a non-genuine part, took photos, and requested a return. Next thing I know my 15-year-old account is banned. Maybe the seller reported me in retaliation? eBay's "support" AI sure isn't interested in telling me what happened. I hate this world we've created, where you can get banned from services at random with no recourse and locked out for life by an AI. The same thing happened to my Discord account a few months ago too :( It almost makes me want to start a meme Twitter account and build up a big follower count. That's apparently the only way to reach a human in customer support at a big tech company these days.
- Normille 5y ago
  >It almost makes me want to start a meme Twitter account and build up a big follower count. That's apparently the only way to reach a human in customer support at a big tech company these days... Until your Twitter account gets randomly banned for no good reason.
nikkwong 5y ago
Agreed with your sentiment that there needs to be some due process for these companies. Amazon has been holding $24,000 of my seller accounts proceeds for a year now stating that I "violated their TOS" by using the same IP address as my girlfriend uses (who was also an Amazon Seller). Both my and her accounts had perfect selling histories; weren't selling anything against tos, etc. I've been wanting to take them to court over it; but most lawyers have quoted me at the process costing ~$8-9k; which, I'm terrified to be on the hook for if I lose. (I guess I did violate their TOS? But if that is their TOS, it's wildly stupid and should be illegal/not hold up in court). So, they just have the money I use to buy food for me and my family and there is nothing I can do about it. The level of stress it's brought me over the last year...has been unimaginable for me if I were to ponder it before the situation occurred. I still always have the hope that I'll recover it some time, some how, if consumer regulations change or if Elizabeth Warren gets her way. But for now it's me against them and they clearly are making whatever calls they want.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  What is the TOS that you’re violating? Are you responsible for someone else using the same internet connection somehow?
- wombat-man 5y ago
  You're not going to go from 0 to $8k in legal expenses that quickly. See if you can find a lawyer that you can trust, ideally one who has experience with this kinda thing to give you an opinion. A good lawyer will be frank about whether or not the cost to engage is worth it. Others are probably correct in saying there is probably an arbitration clause involved. You might just find that a letter from a lawyer might lead Amazon to reconsider their decision to hold your funds. Also I'd be wary of lawyers quoting you a flat fee like 8k to "take care of it". I had to deal with a completely different legal issue several years ago. Some lawyers gave an up front figure of like $5k-$9k or something. Ended up consulting with an attorney at an agreed hourly rate of ~$300/hr or something. Ended up using less than an hour of his actual time to consider the situation and give me legal advice. Ended up only paying a few hundred for the whole thing.
- 5y ago
charles-m-knox 5y ago
I recently had to sell a MacBook Pro. Decided to open an eBay account because I never use eBay, and pretty much immediately had it banned. I stripped the EXIF data from the laptop’s photos for fear of eBay not removing them for me - I didn’t want my GPS info exposed. I also accessed the website without a VPN and a fresh Firefox profile with only uBlock Origin. I own a clean email domain and used it for the account. I also verified my bank accounts the next morning. I was banned 20 minutes after posting my listing and received the same message as OP - live chat is not currently available, and their fraud support line redirects to their discontinued phone number. Even after verifying my bank details the next day, nothing changed. I wasn’t trying to scam anyone. I just wanted to try and sell something I legitimately owned. eBay locked me out completely with no recourse or proper justification. Truly awful company. Shocked that it’s even functioning with this level of “support”.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  When I open an eBay account I buy a few dozen small items to get some positive feedback first. Shouldn't have to do such stupidity, but it's the only way to get yourself some "credit history".
- Normille 5y ago
  To be fair, I doubt you'd have got any offers for the laptop anyway. Even if eBay hadn't blocked your account. I certainly wouldn't buy a laptop from a new account with zero feedback.
- nikkwong 5y ago
  At least you hadn't shipped the MacBook out, to then get banned and lose the MacBook; which has certainly happened to a lot of people based on anecdotes I've read in the past.
  - charles-m-knox 5y ago
    That would have been horrifying. I ended up selling the MacBook Pro locally via Facebook Marketplace, but only after rejecting 20+ people trying to get me to ship it across the country and paying me via PayPal. I really do wonder often - at a certain point, does every company just simply become an anti-fraud service more than their original product? How much time and money do Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. spend fighting fraud? It’s unfortunate that businesses have to bake this kind of turmoil into their business model.
mr_toad 5y ago
Are you sure the email actually came from eBay? I get lots of emails about “my”eBay account that I don’t have.
mdmglr 5y ago
> We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk. My eyes cannot physically roll any further. I recently bought an SD card from eBay. It was 256 GB and when I plug it in to my computer it reported more space. Some odd multiple like 261 GB. I ran f3 [1] and found sure enough the card did not have the storage it promised. I asked eBay for a refund. They refunded me. I gave the seller a negative review in an effort to warn other prospective buyers. eBay refused to ban the seller. Further the seller sent me an eBay message threatening me for my negative review and eBay did nothing. What is happening to you, if you genuinely did nothing wrong, is a symptom of some alpha-level ML/algorithm-based fraud detection that was made by some data scientist with poor data or no clue. And support is not trained to address this. [1] https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduct...
- Normille 5y ago
  I bought some heat-shrink off Amazon once, for an electrical project. I ordered "1cm diameter". When it came, it was 2cm in diameter. I kept it as it was too cheap an item to bother returning and it would probably come in handy some time anyway. As per your 'warning to others' notion I wrote a review that simply said "Be aware that this heat-shrink is actually 2cm diameter. Looks like someone at Amazon doesn't know the difference between diameter and radius" Pretty light-hearted, I thought. But I got an email off Amazon saying my review had not been published as it was 'offensive' and 'blah... blah... T&C... blah... blah... no personal attacks'. Sometimes, the hyper-sensitivity of these companies is breath-taking.
mingraffia 5y ago
I am a 22 year members 100% positive feedback on 442 purchased and don't see anything and I got the email today 12/3/21 @ 439 pm EST...with no instructions on why but the above generic message.
marioingraffia 5y ago
I am a 22 year members 100% positive feedback on 442 purchased and don't see anything and I got the email today 12/3/21 @ 439 pm EST...with no instructions on why but the above generic message.
erickj 5y ago
> "permanently suspended" Suspend: "to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspend https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspend so... "permanently temporarily ceased". The corp speak could not be thicker.
- llukas 5y ago
  Not necessarily corp speak: permanently suspended means you cannot use their services but they will still process data about you ;)
patio11 5y ago
Sorry that happened to you. As some HNers know I have a long-time hobby of working customer service state machines, and I'm going to take the liberty of writing the most effective resolution path here for the general case, in case you or other HNers ever need to solve this. Live chat is probably staffed by external agents and they may have the least ability in the various tiers of the CS hierarchy to help with problems, particularly hard problems requiring substantial judgement. Your princess in in another castle. It is quite possible that there is a business decision made to not let live agents speak to you for fear that a scammer will outmaneuver this tier of agent into getting a reinstatement by pretending to be a legitimate customer confused as to why they suddenly had their account deactivated. There is a team which makes these sort of decisions (even if they also support teams which implement computer systems that make these decisions at scale), and they also unmake these decisions. You generally can route messages to that team by going in through email support, particularly email support for businesses. If you cannot, there is also a team which handles internal escalations, and your objective is to find a public-facing individual who will file a ticket with them. This always, always, always includes the Legal department and Investor Relations, and may include e.g. their Comms people, social media people, etc etc. For businesses which tend towards the traditional/stody, I generally used to recommend paper letters to Legal/IR/Office of the President/etc, but for businesses which trend towards tech industry (and increasingly in finance), at messaging them on Twitter from an account that looks like very plausibly a human will often achieve the same effect. Ignore basically everything they say in your message to the person attempting to achieve an internal escalation, and stick with the facts of your business relationship: I've been a user for N years, believe my account was deactivated in error, wish to continue being a user, and would like to reverse this decision. What information do they need to quickly come to this decision? In the alternative, can they please justify it in writing with specificity to you; you've already read the material they sent you but it clearly doesn't apply to your case. It is generally not instrumentally effective to be angry. The symptom you are detecting is downstream of a larger set of business decisions which weren't made for malice. Those decisions have a false positive rate. The business made a series of decisions with regards to false positives, customer support costs, escalation pathways, cost to operate them, etc. All of that is irrelevant to you, though; you just want to present like a professional who wants their account back, and in particular, you want to present like a professional who is very organized and motivated. Organized and motivated professionals who are savvy enough to write Investor Relations to get what they want are the start of a lot of stories which have cost e.g. financial firms a lot of money, because they're capable of collecting paper trails and submitting them to e.g. regulators, and they're detected and dealt with early in the process. Best of luck and skill. Disclaimer: comment written in personal capacity. I have some amount of knowledge of how this works professionally and some amount of knowledge from spending years ghostwriting letters into the financial industry on behalf of people who, demographically speaking, generally do not resemble the typical HNer with this problem, but who also felt incapable of avoiding the runaround.
GodLovesUgly 5y ago
Reporting same here. 10+ year buyer only account with no selling activity and a perfect 100% feedback record. No clue why I got a “perma ban”. No recourse to contact the company. Messages VIA FB messenger were not answered.
bagels 5y ago
Rich, coming from the company (apparently with orders coming all the way from the CEO) that terrorized a journalist with shipments of cockroaches, a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask, and who even traveled cross country to spy on their house. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/ebay-manager-imprisoned-for-harassment-of-journalists-the-ceo-wanted-to-take-down/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/ebay-manager-imp...
- bredren 5y ago
  Yeah, I don’t think people realize how totally messed up eBay had to have been for the CEO to be knowledgeable about the harassment of a couple over their email newsletter. Ebay’s head of security was sentenced to two years. This was not very long ago. That customer support “ain’t so great” is probably one of the lesser concerns for this organization.
jrexilius 5y ago
The same happened to me. Bought a few things over the span of a decade and a half, sold a few things. Never any problems or returns, on either side, all good reviews. After about 8-9 months of not using my account got the same summary execution with no recourse. I think I originally opened my account in like 99 or 00 such and had a nice short handle.. It pissed me off enough to never use eBay again.
touchpadder 5y ago
Automated systems are really poor in managing edge cases.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
n0rlant1s 5y ago
Hey! Sorry to hear. At this point, eBay is no longer a tech company but a legacy service. I’m building https://limited.co https://limited.co, the next generation of peer-to-peer marketplaces, with auctions and more. We launched a few weeks ago into the mechanical keyboard space and will be expanding into all goods. Check us out!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tutus 5y ago
If you've logged in from the same computer to an account that was suspended, or share some of the same contact information, then that information can be used to link your legitimate account to a suspended account. The above email happened to me when my ex-girlfriend's mom got her account suspended. I had not talked to those people in a decade. I paid $400 or something along those lines to be able to talk to a live person as part of the eBay seller Anchor subscription to get my case reviewed immediately.
missusmarmite 5y ago
SOLVED: This just happened to me earlier today and I just got it fixed. I think there is a glitch in the system. I got emails saying bids on items already paid for and received had been cancelled. Then I got the suspension email. I went to the help chat in top left of my ebay acct page and explained I have 100% positive reviews and have been a member for years without ever breaking a rule. They apologized and fixed it immediately.
xen2xen1 5y ago
Similar email today. They must be on a tear. Been using mine for years. I just logged I with a new device the day before. Makes me wonder.
charlieyu1 5y ago
I used to sell a lot on eBay a long time ago. 15-20 years ago maybe. Recently I login into my account again trying to sell something, was rejected because I sell in excess of $250. Then I’m told to call the local customer service at working hours. Of course I need to go to work, so I find some time to make a call. Instead of anyway to get a human to answer, I’m told to input a code from my phone. Which the code wouldn’t show on mobile of course, you have to use the desktop version. Hadn’t cared enough to make a call since. eBay is a dying company. They don’t give a fuck to individual sellers anymore, they try to adapt to the Amazon model. Except their website is very difficult to use, different components don’t even work together.

211 points by quisquous 5y ago

quisquous 5y ago

Update...got an email from eBay around 7p Pacific: " Hello brokeninfinity, We're pleased to let you know that your account is reinstated. If you had any listings that were removed when the account was suspended, we've restored those listings... " Perhaps this discussion caught an eBay-er's attention, and if that was you, thank you for helping out. And thank you HN for helping call attention to my case. That said, it shouldn't take this sort of attention for eBay to do the right thing. My point stands that eBay inappropriately suspending accounts without explanation or hope of appeal is not ok. And the email reinstating my account did not contain an apology or an explanation of what went wrong, so while I appreciate it, it's not enough. eBay needs to stop treating people this way.

Asmod4n 5y ago

Thank luck you even got a Mail. I’ve put one(1) common used thing for sale on eBay with pictures I took myself and they just deleted the account with no explanation at all. Couldn’t contact support because they couldn’t find an account with my address.

b3nji 5y ago

I had the same thing happen a few years ago with PayPal, it was completely out of the blue. I've been a user for over a decade. There was no route of recourse I could follow, that was it, the end, done. There was nothing out of the ordinary I was buying from eBay, I had a few subscriptions via PayPal, and didn't really sell things on eBay either. I feel it was an algorithm fail, a bit of code that arbitrarily decides to delete you off the system. Maybe something we can look forward to more of if we aren't careful?

GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago

> We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. The GDPR is your friend. It gives you the right to appeal against automated decision making. A human must look into and review the decision to suspend your account if you request it. The human must be easily contactable and able to make a decision based on the facts. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ Article 22: "The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her."

_iobt 5y ago

The exact same thing thing happened to me last night. Account suspended with a perfect but low volume selling record. I haven't used it for a year. Received an email this morning saying it has been reinstated. Either way it did make me waste my time removing my cards from PayPal and emptying that account. The reason I stopped using them is that they appeared to manually use the direct debit to take money from my account (and more than they should have) after I'd logically won against a fraudulent return according to their policies last year. My last action was to make a SAR which showed again that it was closed against their policies. Knowing eBay at first I thought they may have looked into the case and wanted to cover their backs. I wouldn't be too surprised now if it was just a bug.

PaulHoule 5y ago

My wife got kicked out of PayPal for no good reason 15 years ago. I think she could have reinstated it if she sent a fax but she wasn't about to send a fax. If you want to know why people aren't adopting 2FA, it's because we know it's just a matter of time until the hole that attaches your Yubikey to your keyring wears away, your Yubikey disappears, and with customer service that amounts to "talk to the hand" at many sites, it's a digital death sentence.

quisquous 5y ago
Yah, that sucks...losing access to PayPal can be really bad depending on your situation. My brother got kicked off Facebook a couple weeks ago because his account was hacked and they couldn't decide who was legit and who wasn't, so they just threw up their hands and shut down his account. It hurt because he used Facebook a lot. I agree that 2FA doesn't solve the problem of companies deciding not to invest in good, considerate, human, security conscious, customer support. More technology isn't always the right answer, especially when it comes to questions of companies harming and then dehumanizing their customers because it's cheaper than doing than the right thing.
robalfonso 5y ago
Because of this, I make a point of having 3 2fa keys. A daily driver, a backup key on a key ring and the final one in a fireproof safe. Like you I would be afraid what would happen if I lacked my key. Companies need to at least clarify “what happens if I don’t have my key” also one time codes are a thing that need to be saved and can help mitigate a hardware failure.
- thelittleone 5y ago
  Amazing that in 2021 there are few better alternatives than have 3 x 2FA keys.
  - Alupis 5y ago
    What would be that alternative? The point of 2FA is "something you have"... if you lose it, you no longer have it. It's designed to lock you out if lost/stolen... otherwise, what would be the point? As an aside, 2FA keys are not what most people use... they use cell phone numbers, time-based rolling-code authentication apps, email addresses, etc. It's your choice to use a physical key, even if it might technically be the most secure of the options. Security is always a trade off with convenience. GP seems to not understand the point of 2FA. If you can simply call up customer support and maneuver you way back into a locked account, then so can the "bad guys". Any information they have about you can be found by a determined attacker... hence, the "something you have" approach.

tluyben2 5y ago

Because my accounts are so old and I have so many of them, I get a message regularly saying that my account for service xyz has been suspended. When I contact them there a) never is a good reason for why it was done (hint; it is usually because they started using or recently updated some AI fraud detection service) b) small companies easily restore your account; with big ones it is usually game over. Ebay (and Paypal) are rather notorious for this: PayPal has actually gotten more robust but now I actually cannot close my account. They don't know why but computer says no; it is an ancient account, so, as a software engineer, I can take a few guesses. The most annoying is the level of support: even if the support is polite and responsive and human to begin with, which is not often at big companies (note I do not live in the US so I get routed to my country support for that bigcorp; I do not know if support is better over there), they often have no clue what they are talking about and only have canned responses. You used to be able to escalate to another level but that seems to have been removed (too expensive of course). So when I can I stick with small companies; when they get funded or taken over, I find an alternative. I manage small SaaS products myself and I definitely will never leave anyone hanging, not even for a few hours; many small companies have the same feeling. Of course, often you cannot do anything else but take the large ones. Luckily with banking this changed over the past years, but plenty things are still utterly broken support (and because you need support, also software wise probably) wise.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago
Ebay AND Paypal are scams
tinus_hn 5y ago
Didn’t PayPal start charging you for maintaining an account?
dangle1 5y ago
That's interesting, I wonder if I have an 'uncloseable' PayPal account, since it started as an x.com account in '99 when they were giving people $20 to open one.
- 5y ago

tmysl 5y ago

can report the same here. happening to tons and tons of people today, zero details in the email

opwieurposiu 5y ago

Somebody probably hacked your account and listed a bunch of macbooks for sale. If you list a bunch of expensive stuff with little history of selling eBay will ban you. It also depends on the items "you" list, for some reason apple products turn the fraud score up to 11.

quisquous 5y ago
Good idea. I just checked and I don't see anything for sale or recently for sale. And I rotated my password for good measure. I can still login, I just can't buy or sell anything. I got a flurry of what looked to me like phishing emails 'from eBay' right before my account was suspended...they claimed to cancel my bids on a bunch of old, long over auctions, with the call to action asking me to click on link with a URL referencing a local DLL. So yah, something fishy is going on, but I can't help eBay figure it out if they just disable my account and make themselves unreachable. Is this what ghosting feels like?
- gruez 5y ago
  >with the call to action asking me to click on link with a URL referencing a local DLL. Are you talking about the urls that have "eBayISAPI.dll" in them? That's just how their urls are, not some sort of attempt to execute dlls on your computer.
lyubalesya 5y ago
With literally zero information or reasoning given by eBay, one can always invent a justifiable cause for eBay's actions out of thin air. Given their behavior, do they deserve this much benefit of the doubt?

ponyous 5y ago

I got it today as well. No idea what's up yet, something to do with one of the orders I cancelled recently? I spoke with the seller and we resolved the issue completely without issues. I use unique password for ebay.

simse 5y ago

I had my brand new account banned today as well. How does one sell an iPhone on Ebay without being suspicious?

Scoundreller 5y ago
With a new account, you don't. Most buyers would run away from new accounts selling iPhones. Maybe eBay has institutionalized that running away.
- simse 5y ago
  Yeah that's fair, I'm facing the same thing with credit, since I just moved to the UK.
bdcravens 5y ago
Buying and/or selling other items to build up your feedback first (My current account is 12 years old, and I have sold several iPhones there, 2 recently, with little issues, though you don't have to watch out for scam attempts) Mercari is also a good platform to sell on.

Normille 5y ago

I posted this in another thread on the same subject: Not exactly related but: a couple of weeks ago I suddenly had my account 'restricted' on eBay and told I could no longer sell or receive payment for anything I'd sold until I uploaded a load of personal ID documents [passport / driving licence, etc] to confirm my identity. This, after I'd been buying and selling on eBay for 19+ years. Browsing their 'community' forum, it became clear that eBay have done this to loads of people recently, including many who had been members even longer than me. What disgusted me even more than this obnoxious privacy invasion was the number of people on the forum who'd actually sent eBay all the required documentation instead of telling them to go fuck themselves. Luckily I had no uncleared payments in my account. So I've just stopped using eBay. It's just a pity there's no viable alternative. Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to help rein in the jaw-dropping arrogance of these mega-corporations. EDIT: > The summary execution with no explanation and no escalation path and no appeal is not endearing Agreed. I've had this happen to me before with Twitter as well. Got 3 accounts suddenly suspended for no reason. Boring long story but, after about 6 months they re-instated them with nothing more than a "Whoops! We made a mistake". What makes these 'summary executions' [I like that description!] infinitely more annoying is that there's no way to enter into any kind of a dialogue about it. If you receive an email from eBay, telling you you've been suspended, it'll come from a no-reply address and good luck actually finding any way to contact them through their website. It just sends you round and round in circles before eventually dumping you onto their 'Community' forum, which is basically just a load of other pissed off users, shouting into the void. I know the old argument goes "Their playground. Their rules" and, in general, I agree with that. But, with these huge corporations which have a virtual monopoly on certain arenas of internet activity, there ought to be some safeguards in place to protect users against arbitrary [and often unfounded] account suspensions. This kind of thing could literally bankrupt someone's business, if they relied heavily on eBay sales.

bovermyer 5y ago
Yeah... my eBay account is very old (maybe 1998 vintage?), and I almost never use it anymore. But I have a fondness for out of print, obscure tabletop RPGs, and eBay is probably the only market I know of for that, outside of knowing a guy who knows a guy. Losing access to eBay would be annoying. Not world-ending, because perspective. But annoying.

guilhas 5y ago

I would really like to find a good alternative Endless captchas, randomly asking to login again, holding payments, asking for more and more user data, now demands ID card picture and social security number for selling, dropping PayPal... After 10 years without problems, getting really tired the past 6 months

bdcravens 5y ago
Mercari is a good platform (though it doesn't solve the Paypal issue - pretty every platform is moving to their own payment platform)
- Normille 5y ago
  Unfortunately [UK member here] Mercari is US only. The only direct eBay alternative I'm aware of is eBid[0]. From time to time I check it out, when eBay is pissing me off more than usual. But it has always seemed like a ghost town. Also, their financial model puts me off. They have no seller fees, but you have to buy seller membership [per week / month /year etc] to sell. Given the apparent lack of activity on the site and the chance that I'd get no buyer interest at all, that seems like a bit too much of a gamble to me. [0] https://www.ebid.net/uk/ https://www.ebid.net/uk/
humaniania 5y ago
Etsy has been moving into this space.
bmarquez 5y ago
I've had success using OfferUp, though they do require personal information if you ship your items. Local transactions (Craigslist style) don't require it. I deleted my eBay account after over a decade of use, when eBay switched from PayPal to managed payments (basically requiring social security number and bank account) -- I didn't trust eBay with my personal data after dealing with increasingly poor customer service.
crooked-v 5y ago
Of course, the context here is that every additional security measure is because a scammer has already used that method to hijack accounts or perpetuate fraud... which means that every succesful company with a similar market will either eventually follow the same trajectory or see its support and verification costs balloon into total unprofitability.

kgwxd 5y ago

My email client is also my RSS client. I just panicked a little bit.

roneoo 5y ago
:D
Cyphase 5y ago
It took me a moment to parse the headline on the HN front page, because there was no domain name but also no "Ask HN:" or similar.

kkielhofner 5y ago

Same thing happened to me last year. Listed an item, it got pulled, almost identical message. Contacted support, account is banned from selling forever. I’d had it since 1998.

atlanta90210 5y ago
What was the item?
- kkielhofner 5y ago
  It was an EVGA Nvidia GTX 1080.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reginold 5y ago
Similar experience, replied elsewhere in the thread. I had some luck contacting the Better Business Bureau. eBay is a dumpster fire, better move is to never use them again and warn others against it.

chronogram 5y ago

If Ebay has 2FA you should write in your post if you’ve been using 2FA.

quisquous 5y ago
I don't have 2FA enabled on my eBay account. I use a unique, complicated password though, and I don't see any suspicious activity on my account, though, apparently eBay saw something wrong. Unfortunately they won't tell me what's wrong, so I can't figure it out or help. AFAIK eBay doesn't support WebAuthn. I got a set of 3 Yubikeys some months ago (1 for my laptop, 1 for my workstation, 1 for backup in my fire safe) and I wanted to protect my eBay account using them, but eBay only offers me options to add SMS or eBay's mobile app as 2nd factors.
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  They do support WebAuthn, but only on Windows. (It works perfectly fine on Linux if you spoof your user agent.) Also note that the option is not under "2 step verification" but a separate "Security key sign in" section lower down, because their implementation is not really 2FA, it's just an additional login method (email + security key) and it doesn't disable regular email + password login.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

creativelet 5y ago

This happened to me after I sold some AirPods. Not just with Buy It Now, but after I waited a week for the auction to end, and was literally about to post them in the mail. After being suspended I could no longer access the listing. I managed to reach their customer support line and had the most arrogant agent I've ever had in my life. Like someone who genuinely felt like I was some kind of evil hacker, and actively got off on punishing me. It was disgusting. FYI - I'm just some regular person who reads this website, and I honestly feel really weird actually being one of the people who posts replies. But reading this brought back such angry memories of that encounter that I felt compelled to actually create an account and share my experience. In the end I switched to one of the much better app-based modern competitors that we have in the US (edit: it was Mercari) and never looked back. Too bad the rest of the world is still stuck on eBay.

Animats 5y ago
This happened to me after I sold some AirPods. You are not supposed to resell Apple products. You must treasure the precious. To resell can get you kicked out of the cult.
toolz 5y ago
Hope you'll edit and include the name of the app. If they've solved a problem for you then they deserve the mention!
- bbitmaster 5y ago
  Not the OP, but Mercari is a good one. (Maybe there are others?)
  - creativelet 5y ago
    Yup, you guessed correctly!
- creativelet 5y ago
  Sure, that's fair. It was Mercari. Thank you Mercari!! I now use it for regular items, and Poshmark and Depop for clothes. No more broken web 2.0 app literally yelling at me that I hacked it.

version_five 5y ago

Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions, as well as dark patterns (or straight up impossibility) to prevent actual interaction with a person to resolve your issue. I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time (maybe 20 minutes). I'm a libertarian and normally oppose this kind of thing, but the obvious abuses from every big tech company are too big to ignore and are exactly the kind of thing where government regulation does make sense.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions Yep. > I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time This would solve several problems that exist. What if legally-mandated customer support came to, say, 30% of Google's operating costs? What if it was 80%? It's not obvious that banning no-recourse decisions is an improvement to the world. > (maybe 20 minutes) Well, no, that's ridiculous. Legally mandated 20-minute response times means legally-mandated no-recourse decisions. Only the computer can respond quickly enough to comply.
- version_five 5y ago
  I definitely see your point. At the same time, I think a lot of "tech" has really derived value by circumventing regulation and norms - easy examples are Uber and Airbnb which seemed great and legitimately "disrupted" tired industries, but it turned out a lot of stuff in those industries was the way it was for a reason, and when companies mature and end up putting that stuff back, their competitive advantage evaporates. That could also be true for ecommerce (broadly defined) - if they can't viable run a business without having x% of customers get shafted because they have an issue where they can't even talk to a person, is that still OK? Maybe it is. Is it OK that a company is able to destroy any competition by not offering personal service, so the people it screws have nowhere else to go? I'm not sure. Maybe it's not 20 minutes (I picked that because I know that if the regs just required a phone number companies would have a 30 hour wait time, or an infinite one pretending you're almost there) but there needs to be some standard - or a credible threat of competition that isn't there with platforms

heavyset_go 5y ago

> Count me added to the chorus of folks calling for regulations that will eliminate this sort of abusive behavior against consumers. We need some sort of 'due process' required of companies that operate above a certain scale. If this is what you want, then you'll need to escalate your problem to regulatory authorities, even if doing so only means they become aware of the problem. I've posted links to forms that you can use to report issues like this to state-level and federal-level regulators here[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193

quisquous 5y ago
Thanks for this. The first link led me to the State of California Department of Consumer Affairs. I filled out the form to file a complaint and got an error: "The requested URL was rejected. Please consult with your administrator. Your support ID is: 18093870959457122962". LOL it's dead ends all around. No one wants to hear from plebs. I'm not giving up though. I'll go through your links and I'll figure out how to get through to someone. Might have to write a physical letter. :)

fsckboy 5y ago

ebay answers the phone, call them. the "call me back" option works fine too.

zbrozek 5y ago
Paypal doesn't, however. I wanted to switch bank accounts associated with PayPal and just... couldn't. That account is now dead, and I've switched to carrying a checkbook with me to settle up dinner with friends.
- fsckboy 5y ago
  paypal also answers the phone for me; you need to set the phone call up from the web. the only time I call them is when I'm having a problem with ebay. So happy that I can use ebay without paypal now.
  - zbrozek 5y ago
    I tried that and got such a runaround that I gave up. They don't provide a sufficiently valuable service to be worth the effort.

inthegreenwoods 5y ago

eBay works well until something goes wrong, then it fails totally. The reason is that it is totally automated. When you received a “letter” like the one you got it is natural to assume that there is someone behind it who knows what they are doing. In fact it is a bot. You cant ask a bot “why” it did something. It doesn’t know. eBay is a much too early version of machine “intelligence”. In fact it is not intelligent at all. This makes life easy for thieves. The whole business model assumes that no one will ever have to be paid wages to sort things out. There is no budget to do so. The complaint process is just a bit of theatre to disguise the fact that you are being gaslighted.Time spent on getting a reply is time wasted. “They” don't care. In fact “they” don’t exist.

astrange 5y ago

There is such a thing for payment processors, which includes PayPal and maybe eBay; it's https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/.

mercerbell 5y ago

I have had the exact same thing today. I got an email informing me my account has been permanently suspended. I haven't done anything wrong. I've managed to contact them a few times via email but get the exact same email reply each time. It sucks. If I'd done something wrong I'd understand, but nope. Unless buying a new phone case is a violation? I was looking for a solution and it brought me here. I hope you sort it out. Also, I made an account purely just to add a comment. Haha

mercerbell 5y ago
Just a little update. I too got an email today from eBay saying my account has been reinstated. Just when I'd drafted a hefty email too. Oh well. I'm glad it's sorted but it's shocking how they get away with this.
reginold 5y ago
Contact the Better Business Bureau. They will go to work for you on this maybe. eBay is a despicable company.
- mercerbell 5y ago
  Ah I used them when my Activision account was hacked and I was banned. It worked.

reginold 5y ago

Yes, eBay is atrocious. I was banned based on my IP, along with all my family's accounts a few days later. It's an automated system. Customer support will say the equivalent of "it's a secret" why you were banned. Yeah right it's some dumb batch job. Save yourself feeling abused. Don't bother trying to fix it. Waited 6 months and created a new account. Another time I sold an item and shipped it. The froze my account. Same "it's a secret" bs. What did work for me was contacting the Better Business Bureau. That got me answers, months later. It was because I shipped the item before the Paypal payment had cleared. eBay is a shitty company. To the extent this is the future of software, we a f-ed as we get older. These systems are going to chew us up and spit us out.

brokencode 5y ago

I closed my eBay account after I saw what kinds of scams and misrepresentations they have been allowing in the GPU market. For example, people selling literal pictures of GPUs instead of the real thing, but putting it in the GPU category and listing for $1000+ dollars. It’s almost as if they’ve given up on their whole mission of being a safe and reliable place to buy and sell goods online. After all, who actually wants to pay for moderators? Not them, clearly.

fortuna86 5y ago

Ebay flies under the radar for having some of the worst customer service of any company, tech or no. I got defrauded on their platform last year, they sided with the scammer and I closed my account I opened in 2001.

utopcell 5y ago

I once ordered an LCD TV on eBay. After a few weeks a tiny box was delivered. I was lucky enough to be home at the time of delivery, so I rejected the package. I asked for a refund from the seller, which I received. From what I saw on comments on the seller's page, this had happened to a few other buyers, who were unlucky enough to open their tiny boxes, only to find ..excrement in them. There was no way for me to report this to eBay. Since I got a refund, there was no way to complain about it. eBay has become very hit-and-miss, and is probably not that great for used items anymore since you now have to pay taxes for them.

ineptech 5y ago

It seems like the common thread is that all of the accounts being mysteriously banned are old, and KYC rules have changed. Is it possible that this (the "you're banned, make a new account" message) is just because it was too expensive to build a workflow for old accounts to enter updated info?

whoknowswhat11 5y ago

This happens for a few reasons. 1) Inactive or low activity account starts selling (instead of buying) high value / high risk items. Think GPU's, Macbooks, etc. 2) An old account has activity (including someone trying passwords from various breaches some of which might match an old salt). Because old account takeover and then fraudulent sales is a pretty big issue (old accounts often have 100% positive ratings) this seems to trigger the bots. 3) Accounts without KYC - normally you are asked to update. I'm not sure how old accounts have to be to have problems. I'm from early 1999 which was three or four years after I think they got going. The fraud problem was getting pretty ridiculous on ebay so kind of glad they are cracking down but it's got to be a pretty imperfect hammer and so no doubt lots of false positives. I've gone to selling my old iphones / ipads etc back through apple. No where near the price you get elsewhere, but no hassle either from my experience.

patio11 5y ago
This comports with my general understanding of the matter. By total coincidence, I just wrote a newsletter on this topic (like, minutes ago), and it includes a description of triangular fraud, which is particularly relevant for e.g. sales of desirable, fungible, high-ticket electronics via online platforms from accounts which don't have a long history of being electronics retailers. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fraud-supply-chain/ https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fraud-supply-chain/

howdydoo 5y ago

I'll add to the chorus. Something like this happened to me recently. I bought a heating element for my dishwasher on eBay. I received a non-genuine part, took photos, and requested a return. Next thing I know my 15-year-old account is banned. Maybe the seller reported me in retaliation? eBay's "support" AI sure isn't interested in telling me what happened. I hate this world we've created, where you can get banned from services at random with no recourse and locked out for life by an AI. The same thing happened to my Discord account a few months ago too :( It almost makes me want to start a meme Twitter account and build up a big follower count. That's apparently the only way to reach a human in customer support at a big tech company these days.

Normille 5y ago
>It almost makes me want to start a meme Twitter account and build up a big follower count. That's apparently the only way to reach a human in customer support at a big tech company these days... Until your Twitter account gets randomly banned for no good reason.

nikkwong 5y ago

Agreed with your sentiment that there needs to be some due process for these companies. Amazon has been holding $24,000 of my seller accounts proceeds for a year now stating that I "violated their TOS" by using the same IP address as my girlfriend uses (who was also an Amazon Seller). Both my and her accounts had perfect selling histories; weren't selling anything against tos, etc. I've been wanting to take them to court over it; but most lawyers have quoted me at the process costing ~$8-9k; which, I'm terrified to be on the hook for if I lose. (I guess I did violate their TOS? But if that is their TOS, it's wildly stupid and should be illegal/not hold up in court). So, they just have the money I use to buy food for me and my family and there is nothing I can do about it. The level of stress it's brought me over the last year...has been unimaginable for me if I were to ponder it before the situation occurred. I still always have the hope that I'll recover it some time, some how, if consumer regulations change or if Elizabeth Warren gets her way. But for now it's me against them and they clearly are making whatever calls they want.

ViViDboarder 5y ago
What is the TOS that you’re violating? Are you responsible for someone else using the same internet connection somehow?
wombat-man 5y ago
You're not going to go from 0 to $8k in legal expenses that quickly. See if you can find a lawyer that you can trust, ideally one who has experience with this kinda thing to give you an opinion. A good lawyer will be frank about whether or not the cost to engage is worth it. Others are probably correct in saying there is probably an arbitration clause involved. You might just find that a letter from a lawyer might lead Amazon to reconsider their decision to hold your funds. Also I'd be wary of lawyers quoting you a flat fee like 8k to "take care of it". I had to deal with a completely different legal issue several years ago. Some lawyers gave an up front figure of like $5k-$9k or something. Ended up consulting with an attorney at an agreed hourly rate of ~$300/hr or something. Ended up using less than an hour of his actual time to consider the situation and give me legal advice. Ended up only paying a few hundred for the whole thing.
5y ago

charles-m-knox 5y ago

I recently had to sell a MacBook Pro. Decided to open an eBay account because I never use eBay, and pretty much immediately had it banned. I stripped the EXIF data from the laptop’s photos for fear of eBay not removing them for me - I didn’t want my GPS info exposed. I also accessed the website without a VPN and a fresh Firefox profile with only uBlock Origin. I own a clean email domain and used it for the account. I also verified my bank accounts the next morning. I was banned 20 minutes after posting my listing and received the same message as OP - live chat is not currently available, and their fraud support line redirects to their discontinued phone number. Even after verifying my bank details the next day, nothing changed. I wasn’t trying to scam anyone. I just wanted to try and sell something I legitimately owned. eBay locked me out completely with no recourse or proper justification. Truly awful company. Shocked that it’s even functioning with this level of “support”.

kingcharles 5y ago
When I open an eBay account I buy a few dozen small items to get some positive feedback first. Shouldn't have to do such stupidity, but it's the only way to get yourself some "credit history".
Normille 5y ago
To be fair, I doubt you'd have got any offers for the laptop anyway. Even if eBay hadn't blocked your account. I certainly wouldn't buy a laptop from a new account with zero feedback.
nikkwong 5y ago
At least you hadn't shipped the MacBook out, to then get banned and lose the MacBook; which has certainly happened to a lot of people based on anecdotes I've read in the past.
- charles-m-knox 5y ago
  That would have been horrifying. I ended up selling the MacBook Pro locally via Facebook Marketplace, but only after rejecting 20+ people trying to get me to ship it across the country and paying me via PayPal. I really do wonder often - at a certain point, does every company just simply become an anti-fraud service more than their original product? How much time and money do Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. spend fighting fraud? It’s unfortunate that businesses have to bake this kind of turmoil into their business model.

mr_toad 5y ago

Are you sure the email actually came from eBay? I get lots of emails about “my”eBay account that I don’t have.

mdmglr 5y ago

> We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk. My eyes cannot physically roll any further. I recently bought an SD card from eBay. It was 256 GB and when I plug it in to my computer it reported more space. Some odd multiple like 261 GB. I ran f3 [1] and found sure enough the card did not have the storage it promised. I asked eBay for a refund. They refunded me. I gave the seller a negative review in an effort to warn other prospective buyers. eBay refused to ban the seller. Further the seller sent me an eBay message threatening me for my negative review and eBay did nothing. What is happening to you, if you genuinely did nothing wrong, is a symptom of some alpha-level ML/algorithm-based fraud detection that was made by some data scientist with poor data or no clue. And support is not trained to address this. [1] https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduct...

Normille 5y ago
I bought some heat-shrink off Amazon once, for an electrical project. I ordered "1cm diameter". When it came, it was 2cm in diameter. I kept it as it was too cheap an item to bother returning and it would probably come in handy some time anyway. As per your 'warning to others' notion I wrote a review that simply said "Be aware that this heat-shrink is actually 2cm diameter. Looks like someone at Amazon doesn't know the difference between diameter and radius" Pretty light-hearted, I thought. But I got an email off Amazon saying my review had not been published as it was 'offensive' and 'blah... blah... T&C... blah... blah... no personal attacks'. Sometimes, the hyper-sensitivity of these companies is breath-taking.

mingraffia 5y ago

I am a 22 year members 100% positive feedback on 442 purchased and don't see anything and I got the email today 12/3/21 @ 439 pm EST...with no instructions on why but the above generic message.

marioingraffia 5y ago

I am a 22 year members 100% positive feedback on 442 purchased and don't see anything and I got the email today 12/3/21 @ 439 pm EST...with no instructions on why but the above generic message.

erickj 5y ago

> "permanently suspended" Suspend: "to debar temporarily especially from a privilege, office, or function" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspend https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspend so... "permanently temporarily ceased". The corp speak could not be thicker.

llukas 5y ago
Not necessarily corp speak: permanently suspended means you cannot use their services but they will still process data about you ;)

patio11 5y ago

Sorry that happened to you. As some HNers know I have a long-time hobby of working customer service state machines, and I'm going to take the liberty of writing the most effective resolution path here for the general case, in case you or other HNers ever need to solve this. Live chat is probably staffed by external agents and they may have the least ability in the various tiers of the CS hierarchy to help with problems, particularly hard problems requiring substantial judgement. Your princess in in another castle. It is quite possible that there is a business decision made to not let live agents speak to you for fear that a scammer will outmaneuver this tier of agent into getting a reinstatement by pretending to be a legitimate customer confused as to why they suddenly had their account deactivated. There is a team which makes these sort of decisions (even if they also support teams which implement computer systems that make these decisions at scale), and they also unmake these decisions. You generally can route messages to that team by going in through email support, particularly email support for businesses. If you cannot, there is also a team which handles internal escalations, and your objective is to find a public-facing individual who will file a ticket with them. This always, always, always includes the Legal department and Investor Relations, and may include e.g. their Comms people, social media people, etc etc. For businesses which tend towards the traditional/stody, I generally used to recommend paper letters to Legal/IR/Office of the President/etc, but for businesses which trend towards tech industry (and increasingly in finance), at messaging them on Twitter from an account that looks like very plausibly a human will often achieve the same effect. Ignore basically everything they say in your message to the person attempting to achieve an internal escalation, and stick with the facts of your business relationship: I've been a user for N years, believe my account was deactivated in error, wish to continue being a user, and would like to reverse this decision. What information do they need to quickly come to this decision? In the alternative, can they please justify it in writing with specificity to you; you've already read the material they sent you but it clearly doesn't apply to your case. It is generally not instrumentally effective to be angry. The symptom you are detecting is downstream of a larger set of business decisions which weren't made for malice. Those decisions have a false positive rate. The business made a series of decisions with regards to false positives, customer support costs, escalation pathways, cost to operate them, etc. All of that is irrelevant to you, though; you just want to present like a professional who wants their account back, and in particular, you want to present like a professional who is very organized and motivated. Organized and motivated professionals who are savvy enough to write Investor Relations to get what they want are the start of a lot of stories which have cost e.g. financial firms a lot of money, because they're capable of collecting paper trails and submitting them to e.g. regulators, and they're detected and dealt with early in the process. Best of luck and skill. Disclaimer: comment written in personal capacity. I have some amount of knowledge of how this works professionally and some amount of knowledge from spending years ghostwriting letters into the financial industry on behalf of people who, demographically speaking, generally do not resemble the typical HNer with this problem, but who also felt incapable of avoiding the runaround.

GodLovesUgly 5y ago

Reporting same here. 10+ year buyer only account with no selling activity and a perfect 100% feedback record. No clue why I got a “perma ban”. No recourse to contact the company. Messages VIA FB messenger were not answered.

bagels 5y ago

Rich, coming from the company (apparently with orders coming all the way from the CEO) that terrorized a journalist with shipments of cockroaches, a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask, and who even traveled cross country to spy on their house. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/ebay-manager-imprisoned-for-harassment-of-journalists-the-ceo-wanted-to-take-down/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/ebay-manager-imp...

bredren 5y ago
Yeah, I don’t think people realize how totally messed up eBay had to have been for the CEO to be knowledgeable about the harassment of a couple over their email newsletter. Ebay’s head of security was sentenced to two years. This was not very long ago. That customer support “ain’t so great” is probably one of the lesser concerns for this organization.

jrexilius 5y ago

The same happened to me. Bought a few things over the span of a decade and a half, sold a few things. Never any problems or returns, on either side, all good reviews. After about 8-9 months of not using my account got the same summary execution with no recourse. I think I originally opened my account in like 99 or 00 such and had a nice short handle.. It pissed me off enough to never use eBay again.

touchpadder 5y ago

Automated systems are really poor in managing edge cases.

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n0rlant1s 5y ago

Hey! Sorry to hear. At this point, eBay is no longer a tech company but a legacy service. I’m building https://limited.co https://limited.co, the next generation of peer-to-peer marketplaces, with auctions and more. We launched a few weeks ago into the mechanical keyboard space and will be expanding into all goods. Check us out!

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tutus 5y ago

If you've logged in from the same computer to an account that was suspended, or share some of the same contact information, then that information can be used to link your legitimate account to a suspended account. The above email happened to me when my ex-girlfriend's mom got her account suspended. I had not talked to those people in a decade. I paid $400 or something along those lines to be able to talk to a live person as part of the eBay seller Anchor subscription to get my case reviewed immediately.

missusmarmite 5y ago

SOLVED: This just happened to me earlier today and I just got it fixed. I think there is a glitch in the system. I got emails saying bids on items already paid for and received had been cancelled. Then I got the suspension email. I went to the help chat in top left of my ebay acct page and explained I have 100% positive reviews and have been a member for years without ever breaking a rule. They apologized and fixed it immediately.

xen2xen1 5y ago

Similar email today. They must be on a tear. Been using mine for years. I just logged I with a new device the day before. Makes me wonder.

charlieyu1 5y ago

I used to sell a lot on eBay a long time ago. 15-20 years ago maybe. Recently I login into my account again trying to sell something, was rejected because I sell in excess of $250. Then I’m told to call the local customer service at working hours. Of course I need to go to work, so I find some time to make a call. Instead of anyway to get a human to answer, I’m told to input a code from my phone. Which the code wouldn’t show on mobile of course, you have to use the desktop version. Hadn’t cared enough to make a call since. eBay is a dying company. They don’t give a fuck to individual sellers anymore, they try to adapt to the Amazon model. Except their website is very difficult to use, different components don’t even work together.