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Not mentioned here is that ebay processes making these decisions, including bots and support, may be using external signals to make these decisions. Have you e

Not mentioned here is that ebay processes making these decisions, including bots and support, may be using external signals to make these decisions. Have you ever caused them trouble when using the PayPal account you connected to your eBay accounts? How about with any of any of eBay’s (many) subsidiaries? Can your email or any other personal info provided to eBay be linked to risky activity (from their perspective) if eBay uses a service to analyze that risk? This is not to say eBay is correct or justified in blocking your account. But just noting that it’s not as simple as: 1. makes account 2. Buy product 3. Banned. — They have other signals available as well.

pocketsand 4y ago
And their signals may well be noisy. This is why it is infuriating. They have some model and some threshold. If an account goes over the threshold, they're banned. For whatever reason, OP ends up over the threshold, and eBay is completely unwilling to put any customer service effort into reviewing whether they model may have misclassified OP's account. Having the service be completely off limits for a certain % of companies because it's too hard to assess errors is part of the business strategy, and it's an absolutely awful experience for the small number of people it affects. Luckily, OP can probably live without eBay. Now imagine what happens in scenarios like these, which show up every few weeks on HN and other news media. 1. Sellers who make a living off sites like eBay who have their livelihood thrashed when model goes Beep on their account for some reason. 2. Businesses (and their customers) that rely upon cloud services that have their accounts closed indefinitely for unspecified reasons. 3. People locked out of their Gmail/similar accounts for unspecified reasons, who then lose access to every account tied to those accounts. If you've ever been in one of these situations, it turns into a Kafkaesque dystopian runaround at best, and complete blackout at worst. I ended upon on the wrong end of an indefinite suspension from Google. I had to appeal a dozen times with no insight from them. I ultimately tracked it down to an off-by-one error on a payment card zip code. I had moved across town and my zipcode went up by one. Google didn't like that and I was a threat until I figured it out. Took months.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This is a good reminder for something that's been true about running a business, whether enormous or tiny, since forever: If you are dependent on a single source for anything business-critical, your business is at risk. Period. This is why most companies go to great lengths to avoid that situation.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  These "I got banned from X" stories happen so frequently, yet people still seem surprised when it happens. It should be obvious by now that you should not have your livelihood or business utterly dependent on a single point of failure cloud service, particularly one you don't have a formal business relationship with or any expectation of customer support. This goes for not only businesses but anything you deem valuable. Don't keep your only copy of X on a free cloud service. Don't host a critical E-mail account on a free, support-less mail provider. Don't rely on free social networking single sign-ons for access to other things you need. How many of these "I've been banned" incidents need to happen before people wise up?
NikkiA 4y ago
And 'internal' signals that appear to be external - eg, ebay has a massive dataset of experience with your local delivery companies, and knows if they will be handling a lot of 'went missing in delivery' complaints from you.

pocketsand 4y ago

And their signals may well be noisy. This is why it is infuriating. They have some model and some threshold. If an account goes over the threshold, they're banned. For whatever reason, OP ends up over the threshold, and eBay is completely unwilling to put any customer service effort into reviewing whether they model may have misclassified OP's account. Having the service be completely off limits for a certain % of companies because it's too hard to assess errors is part of the business strategy, and it's an absolutely awful experience for the small number of people it affects. Luckily, OP can probably live without eBay. Now imagine what happens in scenarios like these, which show up every few weeks on HN and other news media. 1. Sellers who make a living off sites like eBay who have their livelihood thrashed when model goes Beep on their account for some reason. 2. Businesses (and their customers) that rely upon cloud services that have their accounts closed indefinitely for unspecified reasons. 3. People locked out of their Gmail/similar accounts for unspecified reasons, who then lose access to every account tied to those accounts. If you've ever been in one of these situations, it turns into a Kafkaesque dystopian runaround at best, and complete blackout at worst. I ended upon on the wrong end of an indefinite suspension from Google. I had to appeal a dozen times with no insight from them. I ultimately tracked it down to an off-by-one error on a payment card zip code. I had moved across town and my zipcode went up by one. Google didn't like that and I was a threat until I figured it out. Took months.

JohnFen 4y ago
This is a good reminder for something that's been true about running a business, whether enormous or tiny, since forever: If you are dependent on a single source for anything business-critical, your business is at risk. Period. This is why most companies go to great lengths to avoid that situation.
ryandrake 4y ago
These "I got banned from X" stories happen so frequently, yet people still seem surprised when it happens. It should be obvious by now that you should not have your livelihood or business utterly dependent on a single point of failure cloud service, particularly one you don't have a formal business relationship with or any expectation of customer support. This goes for not only businesses but anything you deem valuable. Don't keep your only copy of X on a free cloud service. Don't host a critical E-mail account on a free, support-less mail provider. Don't rely on free social networking single sign-ons for access to other things you need. How many of these "I've been banned" incidents need to happen before people wise up?

NikkiA 4y ago

And 'internal' signals that appear to be external - eg, ebay has a massive dataset of experience with your local delivery companies, and knows if they will be handling a lot of 'went missing in delivery' complaints from you.