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    Discussions
    • TagsChevronRightIcon
    fraudulent listing
      • Member To Member SupportChevronRightIcon
                       
      What do the 4-character codes after the product description mean?
      pawyl_40
      pawyl_40
      Posted 3 days ago • Last reply 3 days ago
      1
               
    • mobilebe
      • Help from the CommunityChevronRightIcon
      • Member To Member Support
               
      mobilebe
      Falsely Linked & Banned: 8 Agents Later, Still Trapped in an AI Loop. Please Help.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

      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.

      1 week agolast reply 1 week ago
      3
               
    • budgie666archery
      • Help from the CommunityChevronRightIcon
      • Member To Member Support
               
      budgie666archery
      Fake goods
                                       

      Hi. I inadvertently purchased a fake Makita tool. Makita have confirmed that the tool is fake. I highlighted the issue to eBay but there useless AI algorithms have said there is no issue as the seller had altered his listing. I then started the appeal but this was also useless. I doubt if an actual human has read my complaint. / issue. I asked the seller for a full refund which he agreed to, he then waited for the 30 day return policy to elapse and has said it's now too late to get a refund. This has really put me off buying from eBay ever again.

      1 week agolast reply 1 week ago
      3
               
    • bigbars
      • DiscussionChevronRightIcon
      • Buying
               
      bigbars
      Seller cancelled my order claiming issue with my address
               

      Hello everyone, or Good morning, depending when you read this, sorry for the extremely long post. I sent an offer on an auction earlier last week for which the seller accepted. It was a few pounds less than the originally listed price, but seemed like a great deal, happy days I thought. Looked forward to receiving it. Sale completed. Paid immediately. After 3 days I woke up to see a notification that the seller at 5:17am had cancelled the sale with the category “problem with buyers address”. Unfortunately, the seller had to cancel your order due to the following reason: Something was wrong with the buyer's delivery address. Here's a summary of your refund. You should receive it in 3-5 working days. With zero contact from the seller to query any issues, it did make me wonder, is this a sneaky means to back out of the sale without having problems with eBay? Does blaming the buyer for a problem with the issue allow the seller to circumvent an issue with sale? On the help page it states, “Keep in mind that cancelling an order may result in a transaction defect and affect your seller performance level. You can cancel an order up to 30 days after the sale, even if the buyer has already paid. “ And “A seller can cancel an order if: The buyer hasn't paid within the time allowed The buyer used the wrong delivery address at checkout The item is out of stock (this will result in a transaction defect)” Surely you would engage with the buyer if there was any problem or concerns, which there shouldn’t be as I used it thousands of times. Doing this at 5:17am made me feel it’s dodgy, but why accept the offer if you didn’t feel like selling at the price? I messaged the seller almost immediately on noticing this, around 15 mins later, no immediate response from the seller.. also annoying is the fact you are forced to wait 3-5 days for the refund when the money is out your account pretty much straight away on purchase. I know this bit is a banking thing but still compounds things. I’ve always wondered if they (financial institutions) make interest on the days holding the money, sorry processing the refund. 8am I received this response from the seller, which looks like a standard waffle; We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but our dispatch team has informed us that the listed item is defective and not in proper working condition. To avoid any disappointment, we have cancelled your order and issued a full refund. The amount should be credited back to your original payment method within 3–5 working days. As a growing business, we are committed to learning, improving, and ensuring customer satisfaction at every step. Your understanding and patience truly mean a lot to us. We kindly ask for your consideration regarding feedback, as we continuously work to improve our service and provide the best possible experience for our customers. As a gesture of goodwill, we would be delighted to offer you a fair discount on your next purchase. Please feel free to browse our store and let us know if there’s anything you like. Thank you again for your understanding and support. We genuinely value your custom and hope to serve you again in the future. Warm regards,  Now, if that were true, why claim an issue with my address? Surely they should have selected the option to indicate an issue with the item. And seems to me they selected the address category to avoid a strike on their record. I was about to start a convo on here but saw the community was down for migration until today, so questioned the seller as to why they claimed there was an address issue, 6 days later... no response. With nearly 4000 active items for sale, over 8000 sales made and feedback entries in the 5000s  the growing business mentioned doesn’t seem genuine. I'd also be inclined to think the offer of a discount on a further purchase is just lip service to give the appearance of providing decent customer service. Or am I just being overly cynical? One reason that got my spidey sense tingling was that this has been multiple times sellers over the last two weeks undertaken what I see is underhand tactics to avoid completing a sale, had another one say "buyer requested cancellation" probably due to not wanting to sell at the extremely low price and promptly relisted it straight away.   Thank you for reading and sorry for the long post but wanted to cover everything.

      1 month agolast reply 3 weeks ago
      8