1st and last sale

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Summary: emmacharles-0 shares his frustrating experience with his first sale on eBay, where he encountered account setup problems and difficulties verifying his identity. These complications delayed payment by eight weeks and required many calls to customer service, which gave varying and sometimes contradictory instructions. In the end, his account restriction was lifted, but he received a rather unfriendly message suggesting possible violations of eBay’s rules. Other participants, madelodie and francexpressdeal, recommend reading the terms of use and contacting customer service to clarify the situation.

I made a sale of €250 on ebay; my first sale. Communication with my buyer was difficult at first, who had to choose a pickup point that didn’t suit him because of a bug and travel 15 km further to pick up the parcel. The parcel was delivered to him on August 24. I got paid today, October 18, 8 weeks later. It was my first sale, and since my account wasn’t fully set up the first time around, a red banner tells me that updates are needed. Pretty normal for a first try.

The trouble begins

1) what needs to be updated? The page with the red banner doesn’t say, so you have to proceed by trial and error. Probably personal data, identity documents, or something else? The info can’t be found anywhere on the site; it’s going to be like this, a waste of time and inconsistencies from start to finish.

Never mind, let’s call support, who answer very quickly. Know that the first call is useless; you need at least 10 min of checks—last name, first name, postal code—to get to level 2, the team in charge of verifying identity data

2) long and pointless exchanges follow, and then finally comes today’s “solution”: your ID has to be uploaded again

a) the passport doesn’t “go through,” they don’t give me any more explanation (I imagine because of reflections?), I try again, and it still doesn’t go through

b) I scan it to avoid reflections. The red banner doesn’t change. After a few days (I’m told it will take 6 days for a response this time, but I object!) support tells me the reason is that you must not scan it, for “security reasons.” I haven’t found any confirmation of a specific security flaw with scanners and not digital images; it seems very far-fetched to me. Interested if you have info.

c) so I photograph my PC and send that instead of the passport. Front and back separately. I send the side with the “driver’s license” as the front, the side with the photo as the back. But it was the other way around; at ebay it’s the other way around, you had to know that. It still takes me several days and calls before I’m told. And then, apparently, it’s authentic, like the rest, ebay “isn’t allowed” to put the files back in their place! They are allowed to make us angry and waste our time.

d) since nothing is moving, I call again and again, each time with an anonymous person. I no longer know what to do. A woman tells me it’s “because you can’t see the corners of the photo,” which is original! and that you have to place the document on a background before taking the photo. A new requirement out of nowhere. I do it, of course, without believing it.

e) at each step, no acknowledgment of receipt from them, no message from ebay. I go away for 6 days at sea, no news on my return. I get sick with covid, no message after 8 days. Meanwhile, they keep my €250.

f) but wait, you weren’t supposed to use a white background! Of course! You were supposed to use a black background! It was obvious, wasn’t it? I do it again.

g) It still doesn’t work! The new reason is “the hyphen,” this hyphen included in my last name that not everyone is lucky enough to have, which has to be included or removed depending on the ebay operator. I remove it, put it back, nothing works. And I finally understand that for validation the entered name must obviously match the one on the identity document (because the passport had a hyphen, the PC didn’t). Here, their request is logical, but they only realized it at the end, without bragging about it. Two more phone calls. 39 minutes on the last one just to reach the right person (no surprise).

h) Several times per session, secure logins are repeated with captchas, ticking mice or stairs, requesting codes, etc. Often, it crashes with the enigmatic “the information entered does not match,” and sometimes you have to restart the computer at that point.

Finally: the restriction has been lifted! I should receive what I’m owed.

We were expecting at least a friendly closing message from eaby, and we get a message that’s borderline unfriendly

“I am pleased to inform you that the restriction applied to your account has been lifted. You can now access eBay again.
Any further violation of eBay rules in the future may result in additional restrictions on the privileges associated with your account.”

“violation” of rules? Where are these rules written? People often say “ignorance of the law is no excuse”; at ebay it’s “no one is supposed to know the law”; may lead to “additional” restrictions? So this matter isn’t over? Is there still a dispute? Am I flagged?