Screwed by Ebay / PayPal for a 2nd time in 3 months !

Hi all,

I'm once more in serious need of venting my anger and frustration this time regarding that corrupt, immoral and opportunistic company called eBay.
Note that PayPal was bought out by eBay and so I essentially consider them to be one mega-company.

About 3 months ago, I created 2 threads that outlined in great detail my attempt to resolve a situation whereby PAYPAL froze my account and summarily withheld a $300 auction payment which they refused to forward to my bank account. This amount was the proceeds from goods that I successfully sold on their parent company eBay.
Trying to resolve the situation with their so-called "Customer Support" was nothing short of an exercise in frustration.

Here are the 2 threads:

I refused to disclose my annual income to PAYPAL and they froze my funds !

PAYPAL - Judge, Jury and Executioner


Ok, so 3 months down the track and my wife decided that she'd like to have her own eBay and PayPal accounts and about 5 days ago went through the process of setting up these 2 new accounts.

All went well with both the eBay and PayPal accounts created ... no problems so far.

She then put her very 1st item up on eBay for sale which eBay initially accepted.
However, checking a few hours later on it's progress, she was surprised to find that the item had been removed from eBay auction and her BRAND NEW and SQUEAKY CLEAN account summarily SUSPENDED.

Thoroughly confused, she sent the following email to eBays customer support:

Two days later, she received the following response:



Apparently even though she was a brand NEW eBay user, she had somehow still managed to attract the ire of eBay and fallen foul of it's draconian policies ... not bad going for an eBay noob !

So, gritting her teeth and trying to keep her (justifiable) anger in check, she calls up Customer Support in the hope that someone will have the decency to give her a straight answer regarding her suspension ... but based on previous dealings with eBay / PayPal customer support, fat chance of that happening ... and she wasn't disappointed

After getting the run around for approx 10 mins, customer support finally came across with a completely ridiculous explanation.
My wife apparently was suspended by eBay / PayPal for having committed no crime or infraction other than being related (married) to another eBay user who's own eBay/PayPal accounts had been previously suspended (see above 2 threads) with no legitimate explanation from eBay / PayPal for the earlier suspension.

So here we have eBay admitting and stating that they have a policy that if one family member in a household becomes suspended, then EVERY family member in that same household is automatically and summarily penalized and punished and not allowed to hold an eBay / PayPal of their own. Even worse, if the original family household member is PERMANENTLY banned from eBay / PayPal, then their policy is to make the entire family in the houshold pay and PERMANENTLY ban all of them from ever owning an eBay / PayPal account of their own.

Let me repeat ... one person in the family household gets banned ... then EVERY person in the family household gets banned ... PERMANENTLY !
No appeal and no review ... EVER.


She tried to explain to customer support that this surely must be illegal as in effect they're assuming that every family member in the household, is by association, automatically guilty of having breached eBays/PayPals conditions and therefore condemned to suffer the same fate of excommunication.

Talk about being completely innocent of ANY wrong doings yet being "tarred and feathered" by eBay.

Is this wrong ? certainly.
Is this immoral ? most definitely.
Is this illegal ? I would most certainly state that it is.

eBay have agreed to re-review her suspension and will contact her with their decision in 72 hours ... somehow I'm not going to be holding my breath.

I've decided that if they do not reverse the suspension at that time, I've decided to seek legal advice regarding the $300 of MY money that eBay/PayPal have refused to forward to me as well as the "illegal" (in my opinion) suspension of my wife's NEW account.

Time to take a stand and bring these greedy and self-serving basta#ds to some kind of accounting !

So she was banned because you probably share an IP address and there are issues with you in the past?
Sounds like safe business practice.

Sorry man. I would do the same.

reply to post by tauristercus


Hi there. It may also be that you know a deadbeat, and ebay knows about it. When tshtf, those new companies that specialize in cleaning up your embarrassing internet past ought to be heavily attacked. Heavily.

I feel for you, but ebay sucks. They are the cutting edge of nwo conformity. Remember when they felt so good about themselves that they outlawed cash? They outlawed anything but paypal. The mark of the beast. Anyway, now you have cooties.

I'm trying to find the name of a long haired pseudo cool hippie hirsute who FOX was promoting when rahm became president de facto. Michael F something. Can't find it. He started up a company to erase all those online boo boos you made when you thought you had freedom, and FOX was helping him get started, so you know it's bad. Hopefully the guy is now advertising on CL to do naked workouts with side orders of sex, or maybe naked house cleaning. Yes, it's all the rage now.

The basic trend is using algorithms to associate you with anything or anyone that is out of lock step with the nwo planning group. That is why certain persons will not answer an email from you. They are afraid that the system will brand them as a known associate. Rebellious thought, bad credit, an antisemitic utterance...those are HUGE red flags. Any correspondence between right thought and wrong thought will cause a lowered world citizen status for the person who is trying to accept technofascism as a political system.

I did read most of your original thread. What was the outcome? What was the reason for paypal/ebay stealing money and offing you? Do you owe a bank money? I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, they knew that the new account would have been used by you, since they know you sleep with her.

Originally posted by randomtangentsrme
So she was banned because you probably share an IP address and there are issues with you in the past?
Sounds like safe business practice.

Sorry man. I would do the same.

No ... she was suspended because she shares the same "household" address as a suspended member ... not because she had done anything herself to warrant the suspension.

Simply "tarred and feathered" and presumed guilty by association.

reply to post by tauristercus


Or presumed to be the same as the past trouble.
I feel for you, but as a business owner I would be cautious too.
I am not saying they are in the right, but I see their point.

Yes, and that is ebay for you. On the other hand, I as a dealer/auctioneer would look at my customers, too - the same household as someone who is on one of my blacklists (for whatever, I didn't read those other threads)? Banned. Could be the very same person I just banned before.

Try something else, they don't have the monopole on online-auctions.

Wait... You never received you funds back? (I recall your first threads). That's horrible, but Lawyer costs alone might nullify that $300. If you doing it on principle, I say sue the bastards.

I've been a member of eBay for years, and never had an experience like your experience. Before I opened my own account, I worked for a power seller on eBay (for years). We never once encountered an issue like that (and I personally over saw sales exceeding $300,000/year)... I do know that if an account is suspended, it nullifies the ability to open another account if it shares the same IP/ home address/ so on.

The problem is, your a small time seller. eBay sort of only cares about their higher tier sellers. For instance, I had a personal rep when I worked for the power seller. Had a direct line, direct email, so forth. Now that I sell on my own, I have nothing but their crappy customer service to rely on...

EBay is a horrible company. They keep taking more fees, and cutting off the sellers to promote a "happy buying experience" which promotes Buyers committing frauds. The "new" eBay and it's fees cost me and another coworker our jobs, because the owner of the company couldn't justify continuing with the raising costs (it wasn't worth selling, with eBay taking more and more of the pie), so we were laid off as eBay just took to much.

Even when you follow their rules, they will take your money. I sold about $150 worth of things last month, and they took about $50 or so dollars in fees. They even charge a fee on shipping, that causes the seller to lose even more money in the grand scheme of things, even when charging exact shipping costs (I already loss money on shipping supplies as it is, but then greedy eBay takes more). It's outrageous, and just keeps getting worse each and every year.

It's not worth selling on eBay, unless you fit their new mold of a seller. Trust me, your wife would be better off taking her products to another site.

Good luck, but consider her experience a blessing in disguise.

Forgot to mention that eBay also stated that an existing account held by my son for almost 2 years (but not recently used) would also most likely be placed into permanent suspension the next time it was used

Originally posted by squidboy
Wait... You never received you funds back? (I recall your first threads). That's horrible, but Lawyer costs alone might nullify that $300. If you doing it on principle, I say sue the bastards.

I was originally informed that even though the eBay buyer received the goods from me immediately upon completion of the auction, that PayPal were going to "retain and hold onto" the $300 for a total of 180 days (6 months).

As far as I'm concerned, eBay / PayPal are nothing but a bunch of crooks ... taking everything they can but giving the absolute minimum back in return. As for their so-called "customer service" ... what a joke !

reply to post by tauristercus

So here we have eBay admitting and stating that they have a policy that if one family member in a household becomes suspended, then EVERY family member in that same household is automatically and summarily penalized and punished and not allowed to hold an eBay / PayPal of their own.

lol unlucky dude... but they don't always do that, I have close relatives who have banned accounts on eBay and PayPal. I think the real reason they are treating yourself and your associates with such a harsh treatment is because you generated a fair amount of bad publicity for them... which is one of the worste thing you could do to annoy a money hungry internet monopoly.

reply to post by tauristercus


Well, they were always good to me, mostly, and I did 1000 perfect feed backs, and lived hand to mouth. If they started to hold my cash, I'd have been done in a week, They never did that, but everyone else was seeing it happen (30 day hold on funds) to them. I saw the writing on the wall, though, and one day stopped listing anything there. I simply disagree (hate) with their politics. It started out they took 10%, soon 15%, eventually 20%, and yes they steal shipping fees as part of their commission. Like someone said: they deliberately started tossing off the small people, and making it harder and harder to get on. They took everything they could. And they do look for political affiliations, bad credit, stuff like that. It's a conspiracy. There are other ways to get by.

Just look at it as a precursor to the final game of the digital age: enslavement and compliance. They have the means to figure out anything, but they do allow shill bids because it pays the bills. I'm guessing they did not like your credit situation. It became clear, quickly, that if you lose credit, you lose ebay. I think they let me have my funds simply because if they held them, I'd have faltered sooner, and the banks would have suffered.

I had problems with PayPal taking too long adding money taken from my checking account when I first started using their services.... I won an auction but the seller in England must have had a problem getting his money from them and refused to do the transaction... I recently sold some auto parts for $143.00 and they charged me $25.00 for the transaction.. There is something very wrong with having to pay that much to my way of thinking.... Has anyone else been charged at that kind of rate for a sales transaction?

All this talk about ebay makes me wanna buy a copy of the Adventures of Ford Fairlane.....good movie!

reply to post by randomtangentsrme


Surely it can't be anything to do with the I.p.
For example if you use a mobile phone to access eBay your I.p. is different every time you restart your phone.Mobile phone companies assign you a random I.p. from a pool of them that they have.

reply to post by glen200376


I sadly do not know enough about computers to know for sure, but from a business perspective. If I ban a member from IP X, and I get a new member from IP X, I would be suspect.
That is just my opinion, and I currently do not have a website to advertise my self, but that is where I see this issue stemming from.

Originally posted by randomtangentsrme
reply to post by glen200376

 

I sadly do not know enough about computers to know for sure, but from a business perspective. If I ban a member from IP X, and I get a new member from IP X, I would be suspect.
That is just my opinion, and I currently do not have a website to advertise my self, but that is where I see this issue stemming from.

That could be as this entire country has been blacklisted from both ebay and paypal.

reply to post by tauristercus


While you may not like it, what Ebay did is not illegal, and is actually normal business practice. Disagree? Quit paying your cable bill. WHen your cable gets cut off, have your wife try to open an account, and make sure that they know you still live there with her. She will immediately be denied, and asked to pay the past due amount.

Accounts, for the most part, can be viewed as "household" or "individual".

I don't think there is anything illegal about it, as they are not determining this based on race or religion or something. And if it were illegal, i would disagree vehemently with it. While you have rights as a consumer, you don't have a right to consume.

Originally posted by randomtangentsrme
So she was banned because you probably share an IP address and there are issues with you in the past?
Sounds like safe business practice.

Sorry man. I would do the same.

I agree, but I also would have never dealt with Ebay, they are mighty big and powerful online and I prefer cash transactions anyway.
Paypal is just another bank just like I mentioned in your other thread OP.
I'm sure someone will be along shortly to give me the legalese on why paypal is not a bank...

I have been an ebay member for two years already, I have a paypal account, I have never been in any type of controversy with their policies.

Actually I will honestly say that my experience with Ebay has been very smooth.

I also have an account with Amazon and they also has been very nice to me.

I call shenanigans on this post; OP do you really expect the smart observant people of ATS to miss that there's no such word as restrictionand? Yeah man, there's a space in there, whatever beef you have with Ebay take it up with the Better Business Bureau. Trying to make fake posts and get people on your side accomplishes what exactly?

Here's my personal opinion...you are mad that you got some free items, by saying you never received the item from the shipper...and that Ebay finally got hip to your scam and banned you and flagged your IP address so you couldn't keep it up. I have been ripped off by the likes of you; it is a known fact that Ebay will take the buyers side instead of the sellers, until that buyer gets some flags, the seller then wises up and requires a signature.

I have dealt with Ebay and Paypal for over 15 years several times a month and have had zero problems from either; it has always been some dirt bag trying to scam on the other end, that's really the only issue in my massive amount of experience with both of these two companies.