Question Re: Help please - I cannot bid or make offers, and messag... in Member To Member Support DO NOT DELETE

Help please - I cannot bid or make offers, and message comes up in French!

poppykiki — Sat, 13 Feb 2021 19:54:08 GMT

Hello

I am looking for some advice please.....
I appear to have been blocked from bidding or making Best Offers on various items.
This is not particular to one, or even several, sellers but a general issue - and I have not had any issues with any sellers to give them reason to block me anyway!

There are 2 scenarios that keep happening:

1. I try to bid - one recent example was a bottle of perfume - I got a pop-up message in FRENCH telling me it was a restricted item and I could not bid (fortunately there was a translation included underneath - I assume it was a true translation and not something additional. I was still on the UK site, I checked.
I am still able to bid on other perfumes though - even "high-end" ones that are often restricted for new sellers etc

2. I try to make a Best Offer - two recent examples - a set of CDs and a room spray. Both times I get a message saying the seller is unable to respond to me and to go back to the listing - I do that, try to contact the seller, select the subject "Making an offer", get sent back to the Best Offer page - and so it starts again, round and round in circles. What the **** ??

Would be very grateful for any words of wisdom on either of these issues please!

I have no idea if they are linked in some way or not

A few things you will probably suggest or want to know first:

My account is on the UK site - it always has been

I live in the UK - I always have done
I am not new to ebay, but I go through spells of using it and not
I both buy and sell

I have a Paypal account linked

I do not have an address in France listed for any reason (such as sending items as a gift)
My language settings are English - I do not speak French

I have never received any messages from ebay (other than today's pop-up) telling me I cannot bid on certain items, or that my account is restricted in any other way

I am totally confused as to why this is happening, especially since both have started at the same time.

Can anybody help me please?

Re: Help please - I cannot bid or make offers, and messag...

tressygirl — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 07:40:35 GMT

It could just be a security measure.

If an account is not used for a while, then there is sudden activity, it raises red flags to eBay, as many dormant accounts are used by hackers.

Contact eBay Customer Services to verify you are the account holder by answering some secuerityt questions correctly.

To contact eBay Customer Services, type Advanced Search in to Help & Contact bar top of your eBay page. Scroll down to the bottom of that page, you will see the options to choose Have Us Call You, or Chat With Us.

Both options will give you an approximate time you need to wait for a response from their team.

Lines open today, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Re: Help please - I cannot bid or make offers, and messag...

poppykiki — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 10:47:48 GMT

My account is certainly not dormant - unless you mean I have not bought or won anything, I have certainly made bids that didn't win 😞
I didn't originally try CS because my experience of them is that they are nice but usually very vague, and only liable to suggest all the blindingly obvious reasons.
I had just wondered if anyone else had experienced a similar issue or had any ideas of what I might do to fix the problems. In the light of no other suggestions, I guess I will need to contact them after all.
Thanks for your response! 🙂

Re: Help please - I cannot bid or make offers, and messag...

red_magpie — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 11:05:46 GMT

A bit more information would have helped.

If the perfume was listed on eBay's site in France, it's unsurprising that the pop-up reply was in French (but with an English translation below). This may also explain the restriction, some items are restricted for export in France.

As for being blocked, as has been said you have used your account so little that you're probably now subject to the same restrictions on the number and value of items you can buy as a new member.

Remember also that sellers in other countries may block bids from the UK, and that even within the UK many sellers will block bidders in remote regions, where there can be problems with courier surcharges.