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Falsely Linked & Banned: 8 Agents Later, Still Trapped in an AI Loop. Please Help.
Summary: mobilebe expressed frustration over being permanently banned from selling on eBay due to an alleged link to a fraudulent account, which they strongly deny. They described multiple interactions with eBay's customer service, characterizing them as unhelpful and automated responses that failed to resolve the issue. papso22 suggested that it might be best to move on from eBay, as the ban won't affect other digital aspects, while mobilebe expressed concern about similar situations and the repetitive nature of customer service scripts.
Hello eBay Community,
I am posting here out of sheer desperation. I am hoping someone—a community expert, a moderator, or anyone who has survived this—can tell me how to reach an actual human being with common sense at eBay.
My wife and I have been permanently restricted from selling. We are an honest family who has lived at the same address in Birmingham since 2010. We have never broken the rules. However, eBay’s automated system suddenly banned both our accounts, claiming we are "linked" to a suspended, fraudulent account called 'hold_me_now'.
Let me be absolutely clear: We have zero connection to this account. We do not know who this person is. We are victims of a bad actor who has either compromised our network, misused our physical address, or triggered a false algorithmic link.
Instead of investigating this identity fraud, eBay’s customer service threw me into an endless, insulting loop of automated scripts. I have dealt with 8 different agents over the past week, and the incompetence is staggering:
Agent 1 told me to use an eBay link to message the fraudster ('hold_me_now') and ask them to fix their own account so mine could be unlinked. (Why would a victim negotiate with a fraudster?)
Agent 2 sent me scripted links to counterfeit item policies, blindly branding my innocent family as counterfeiters.
Agent 3 admitted eBay links accounts based on "financial information," but completely refused my plea to actually verify the banking data, which would instantly prove my innocence.
Agent 4 didn't even read my complaint. They simply looked up the fraudster, proudly informed me the fraudster was already suspended, and closed my ticket.
Agent 5 literally instructed me to log into the fraudulent 'hold_me_now' account to seek more information—an account I do not own and cannot access!
Agents 6 and 7 completely changed the story, claiming the suspension was now due to being a "below-standard seller" and having bad "business practices," directly contradicting the first five agents.
Agent 8 looped right back to the 'hold_me_now' script and entirely ignored my formal legal demand for a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) under UK GDPR.
I have begged the Trust & Safety team to just look at the hard evidence. I asked them to manually check the IP login history, the dispatch locations, and the bank/PayPal routing numbers for 'hold_me_now'. The data would instantly prove the money and shipments never went through my household. I offered our passports, housing documents, and utility bills. Their only reply is: "There is no appeal for this decision."
The human cost of this automated failure is devastating. I am a father of four children. My eldest is 17, and another is finishing his first year of a BTEC Higher Diploma course. I am absolutely terrified that as my children reach adulthood, their digital footprints will be instantly blacklisted by eBay simply because they reside in our family home.
I am also suffering from severe health conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, and central stress retinopathy. Waking up every single day to fight a broken machine and read these contradictory, thoughtless scripts is causing dangerous spikes in my stress levels and severely damaging my health.
Has anyone else experienced this catastrophic failure of the automated linking system? How do you bypass the Tier 1 bots and get a competent Trust & Safety investigator to manually review a financial and IP mismatch?
Any advice would be deeply appreciated. Thank you.
papso22
Mentor3 months agoYou are highly unlikely to be able to overturn the bans, and yes, they may extend to your other family members. But ebay is simply an online marketplace, there are others to buy and sell on, and it's not the end of the world if your family can't use it. Nothing ebay does will damage any other aspect of anyone's digital footprint, it's just ebay that's affected.
I suggest you stop fighting and leave this, and ebay, behind you. It's not worth damaging your health over.
mobilebe
OP3 months agoThanks alot I am thinking how many people are like me and there agent all are reading script
papso22
Mentor3 months agoThere are many instances of unfair bans due to incorrectly linked accounts. I have only seen one overturned and that was where the poster was able to trace the owner of the other account and get them to pay the outstanding fees, thus 'unbanning' all accounts.
Ebay CS rely heavily on scripts but also seem to make stuff up on a whim.