Hello all!
Got a strange one here. A little background: from 2000 until about five years ago, I had a legitimate eBay account in my own name. Began selling towards the end of that stretch. All went well, until the day when some clown shipped me back an empty box and demanded a refund. I refused, eBay sided with them, I immediately unlinked my bank account/CC and ditched the account to avoid being forced into the scam (which was 100% inevitable - wasn't easy to walk away from that account, but I refused to refund that idiot AND let them keep the item).
A few months later, I opened a new account under a pseudonym. Never touched the old account again, cookies cleared, all new contact info, different IP (but same ISP), different bank account (but same bank). Thought I was being careful, but apparently I missed something - it didn't take eBay long to claim I was linked to an account that was not in good standing (presumably my old one). They didn't issue any restrictions, but the "we see you're linked with..." warning remained.
My selling volume is pretty low, so it took me until just a couple months ago to FINALLY meet the requirements to have the 'paypal funds hold' automatically removed.
Again, everything was going fine... and then I had to leave town unexpectedly. A few auctions ended while I was gone (for items worth under $20). Buyers paid, I wasn't there to ship, cases opened, eBay started issuing refunds. Fine by me - that's what it's there for. But it appears as though eBay also decided to withdraw seller fees around the same time, thus overdrawing my Paypal account. The final item to be refunded was paid by eBay, and they wanted compensation. Again, no biggie - within hours an automatic transfer had made the Paypal account whole again, and eBay got their money.
Had it ended here, we'd have no problem. But then I got an email from eBay:
Quote:
ACTION REQUIRED: DON'T LOSE ABILITY TO BUY AND SELL ON EBAY
You must reimburse eBay for outstanding Buyer Protection Fees to avoid having your account placed on hold or suspended.
It's easy to resolve the outstanding buyer protection balance on your account. You can view your case(s) that require reimbursement in the Resolution Center, then, make a one-time payment using a credit card to pay each claim individually.
If you have already paid your eBay Buyer Protection fee balance, please disregard this message.
Thank you,
eBay Global Collections
Your buying and selling privileges will be limited and/or restricted, as well as your ability to communicate with other members through eBay messages. Your account may be sent to a collection agency for the balance owed.
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If you've already paid, disregard? Sounds fine to me. Until a few days later, when - without any further communication - all my selling limits dropped to zero. One auction was still going, and was allowed to complete - but as for listing anything else, it's no soup for me.
Found the case which spawned the mess and explained the snafu in an appeal (since there seemed to be no other way to contact them). This yielded nothing but a rejection of the appeal, no surprise.
So I bit the bullet and called eBay. First call was over the weekend, rep insisted that the Vetting Department needed to call ME, wanted a phone number. My response? "They did it without speaking to me, they can UN-do it without speaking to me." Got nowhere. Second call was yesterday morning, rep looked it over, asked if I had any other accounts ("nope, it's just me here"), and told me she was transferring me to the Vetting Department so I could plead my case ("plead my case? makes it sound like I did something wrong"). After 15 minutes on hold and no answer, I hung up.
SO... anybody familiar with this sort of mess? And what's my best course of action here? I don't really want to make a new account... just finished jumping through all their $*#&^@ hoops once to be able to sell without restrictions, don't really want to do it all again (or, worse, get noticed and chased off again).
