Your eBay account has been suspended • Hacker News Board

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#31

Post by creativelet » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

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.

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#32

Post by bmarquez » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

guilhas wrote: post #11

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

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.

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#33

Post by Animats » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

creativelet wrote: post #31

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…

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.

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#34

Post by version_five » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

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.

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#35

Post by heavyset_go » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

> 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

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#36

Post by fsckboy » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

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

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#37

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

version_five wrote: post #34

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 minut…

> 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.

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#38

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

kkielhofner wrote: post #15

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.

[deleted]

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#39

Post by mrtweetyhack » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:35 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #5

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…

Ebay AND Paypal are scams

Re: Your eBay account has been suspended

#40

Post by lyubalesya » Fri, Dec 03, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

opwieurposiu wrote: post #7

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.

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?