Man, when it rains, it pours. First, I was banned from Kohl’s for being a reseller, and then yesterday morning, I get this email:
Your account has been suspended for multiple violations of eBay?s Site Interference Policy. Unfortunately, this action became necessary when additional occurrences were identified around eBay Deals quantity circumvention.
You will not be able to use eBay in any way going forward.
Your orders will be cancelled and any outstanding selling fees are due immediately, and any amounts that you haven’t previously disputed will be charged to the billing method currently on file.
We appreciate your understanding.
Thank you,
eBay
My first emotion was sadness. My second thought was, “Shit! How am I going to sell all of my inventory?” I never got angry because I had a feeling I knew what I had done. Back in January, Giftcardmall had a sale on $100 Sears gift cards for $80. So I bought 2 of them (item limit) with my main Ebay account, and I had read from DansDeals that people were buying multiples by using different Ebay accounts. I had read the terms to mean ‘per account’ and Ebay allows you to have multiple accounts. I didn’t know the limit was ‘per customer.’ Then I bought a 2nd item – a $100 iTunes card for $75. I then bought many more gift cards since then, but only on my main account, so really I only made those 2 purchases on my 2nd account. So, 3+ months later, I’m not sure why or how it took them this long to get around to it, but they must have IP or cookie tracked me (I didn’t make any effort to hide the 2nd account’s purchase just because I honestly didn’t think it was an issue) and banned my main account. It would have been nice if they had warned me before just permanently banning me. Thanks for giving the customer the benefit of the doubt there eBay. The weird thing is that they left my 2nd account alone….for now.
Appeal
Apparently the first thing you should NOT do is to create a new account because they will eventually find and ban you again. I then replied to the suspension email to see if I can appeal it. I was on the verge of being a Top Seller again next month and I had sold A LOT of stuff through them over the past year. I told them I had been with them for over 15 years now and my account has been in good standing. I also called them and got a rep in the Philippines who was no help. She wouldn’t even escalate the issue for me and basically said it’s over for me. So now I’m waiting for a reply to my email to see if I can be reinstated.
Conclusion
Am I still sad 12 hours later? No, not really. Why? Because I had been meaning to sign up for Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). I tried signing up a long time ago, but the process was too confusing so I gave up and didn’t try again. But tonight, I did go through the entire steps and will be shipping my first item to Amazon tomorrow. I have to say I’m pretty excited. Or maybe I’m just in the first step of the 5 stages of grief. By the way, as I type this, apparently, there is an entire forum for people who were banned from eBay. I’m not sure what they are selling or what they’re doing, and I didn’t read too much of it. I think I’ll take this as a sign that I should stop reselling, or that it was a sign for me to move to Amazon. Moral of story – don’t circumvent eBay purchase limits.
Did you appeal a decision? It just happened with my account, but I have absolutely didn’t play such games. Before my wife and myself used own ebay accounts for purchases, but for some reason my wife’s account didn’t work when paypal was needed, so she closed her ebay account herself. Is there a way to appeal their suspension, because in my case, I played by the rules?
No I did not appeal. I know one reader who called 3-4 times and eventually got it reversed, so prepare for an uphill battle.
I know what you’re going through… My nightmare started when I accepted selling for third parties… Didn’t know this was not allowed… I had a long excellent sales history on ebay, with 100% positive feedback…It took me quite some time to get over it… I went into a deep deep depression… Ebay is totally fucked up… disloyal s.o.b.’s… I pray they’ll go under…
Shawn, give it some time. After 3 months, you’ll be thankful you don’t have to deal with stupid buyers anymore. Then reset your router so you get a new IP address, go open a mailbox, get a new phone number and you’re back in business.
But what bank information… How can I get around that…? The weird thing is after a very long time, I checked my ebay account yesterday… It asked me to create a new pass word because the old one wasn’t good no more… which I did. Upon logging in it said that my account was blocked because I had violated ebay policy. But I still see the “sell” feature, and when I click on it, it allows me post stuff… but I haven’t tried doing so yet… I suspect it will allow me to enter everything, and then when I click “submit” at the end, it will reject it… But it’s still kind of awkward that the sell feature is there when the account is suspended…
You can actually have people pay the same paypal account, so you’re clear there. i would give up on your old eBay account and do what I said before.
eBay will ban you at any point. If there is any suspicion with having multiple accounts, they will suspend you. It doesn’t even have to relate to multiple accounts, it can be for any reason pretty much.
No, Ebay does allow multiple accounts. http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/multiple-accounts.html
Yes they allow multiple accounts provided they are under the same details matching on both accounts.
But if you have other accounts where the information doesn’t match completely, then both can be suspended.
For example, having two accounts under your name with all the same info; yet, you have other accounts in your household with the only difference being the name.
Agree, I had created a new eBay account using my parent’s details and they suspended me. I didn’t change anything except for the name. Message was is that they linked me to a previous suspended account.
I think I told this story before but I got my friend and his entire household (which he was sharing rooms with – so those were really innocent people) banned from Ebay. It took a year and creative name/address obfuscating for me to get back into Ebay. My friend ended up moving to Australia, not sure if his roommates ever got to open Ebay accounts again. It’s been almost 10 years so I hope they forgive me 🙂
Sorry to hear the bad news on eBay. I had a ton of problems with eBay/PayPal buying gift cards and landing into the Philippines call center so I just ask “can I be transferred to an American call center” and they gladly oblige. My issue still isn’t resolved, so I’ve pretty much given up buying gift cards on eBay
You should read Trevor’s post on FBA:
https://saverocity.com/taggingmiles/beginners-guide-to-fulfillment-by-amazon-setting-up-an-account/
Haha you’re one stop ahead of me. I read it and will be posted something about it today.
As for eBay, yeah, I may try to talk to the US call center one more time before hitting the final nail in the coffin.
I was shut down over BS. They claimed I was circumventing the limits, which was a total lie, and they had absolutely no evidence. There’s no one to speak to, and they just say you’re a risk so we’re banning you; this way they don’t need proof.
Wow. Good to hear. And you didn’t buy from multiple accounts? Did you have roommates or someone else who bought that shipped to your address?
Nope, 1 account. They closed a whole bunch of people in my neighborhood at the same time. I think they suspected that all the accounts were owned by the same person trying to circumvent the purchase limits, but that’s not true.
Man, that SUCKS! They can go to hell for all I care.