Ebay Australia
Mistakenly suspended my selling account for no reason - non-existant customer service won't rectify their mistake

Just would let every-body of how ridicolous an organisation Ebay is. I have been selling on Ebay for some time now (2 years). Not making super money but handy enough to survive.

On Monday morning I received an e-mail from them notifying that my account was now suspended:
We regret that your eBay account has been suspended due to the following policy violation:

*Previously Suspended User*
eBay prohibits users who are currently suspended from registering new accounts. Our records indicate that your account is associated with the following previously suspended account (s):
nocturnal-07

I have never heard of this person - so I replied to the notice asking Ebay to correct this error.

I noticed from this user's feedback that they sold pyjamas for a month earlier in the year and are no longer registered.

At this stage, I am pretty annoyed - as most familiar with Ebay knows - most of your weekly sales are on the weekend (particularly Saturday). I just had particularly successful day, selling around $6000 of goods at auction with another couple of second chance offers worth approx $3000 open to users to buy.

As part of Ebay's process when suspending a user, they send an email telling the customers of recent transactions not to pay for goods recently bought from me. They also locked my account making me unable to access sales information to complete finalised sales.

The next day, after 30 hours of no reply to my email, I contact Ebay on the phone - I finally found a customer service number on the internet. After being told, that I was ineligible for phone support (not a powerseller), I could be helped this once. Help really wasn't the word I would use to describe what I received. They weren't allowed to say how I was linked to this person just that they (their computer program) had linked me to being this other user. I had two options - fix up the original account that was suspended (the fact that it wasn't me matter little) or appeal my reinstatement. He kindly offered to send me via email the details of all my sales via email within two hours so I could complete these (I received 4 BLANK files with no information whatsover later that day). I also was explained that my queries could be only answered by the kind people at Trust & Safety and there was currently a 48 hr queue.

I finally received answer (?) from trust Safety two days later. This wasn't really answer just a rephrasing of what they original told me in the first place:

Thank you for writing to eBay. I will be happy to assist you further regarding the suspension of your account.
Your account was suspended because of the eBay policy violation described below:

Being linked to a previously suspended user nocturnal-07

Alot of help that is so I replied - 2 days next e-mail was received:
Thank you for writing in again. My name is xxxx and I will be assisting you with your appeal.

Your account was suspended because your contact information is the same or similar to the contact information of the following account which was previously suspended:

Nocturnal-07

This referred to the first e-mail and suggested I still needed to follow that procedure (ie apply to be reinstated).

Another reply, this time I stated the details I had found out about this user: selling pyjamas, first name, email - all no way related to me whatsover.

And now I wait - no income, no store, nothing. All at the mercy of Ebay International.

Lesson of this story - don't rely on someone else for your entire business income. Only use Ebay for brand awareness for other businesses (ie other online stores, physical stores). Think as the fees as advertising.

Angry from oz
Highett
Australia

Company: Ebay Australia
Country: USA
Phone: 0395533011
Site: ebay.com.au

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