Hello eBay Community,
This post is quite long, but I have to explain a problem I've been trying to resolve for the past few months.
In June 2021, when I was living in Italy, I opened my first eBay account and sold a variety of objects with great success. I continued to sell until September 2021, when I permanently moved to London, UK, for both family and study reasons. From that moment until September 2024, which was a few months ago, I didn't use eBay and didn't sell anything on it as I focused on other activities. In September 2024, however, a friend of mine who has a wholesale nut and dried fruit business approached me with the idea of selling some products online as well. Having previously worked on eBay, I suggested to give this platform (and not other ones out there) a try, so we started selling a variety of nuts and dried fruits online using the same account I had used four years before in Italy. The reason why I chose to use that one and not create a new one (which we eventually did) was because that account already had excellent feedback, which I reckoned would have made a good launching point.
Everything went well until one day in December, when I received a message saying that my account has been partially restricted without any explicitly stated reason. The message said I could still sell and use all parts of eBay as normal, but the only think I could not do is withdraw money from it. The first thing I did was calling the eBay customer service. They couldn't help much, although they only thing they suggested was contacting eBay Italy as that account was opened in Italy and therefore linked to that particular department of eBay. After sending an email to eBay Italy, they said that to have the account restored I would need to solve all pending cases and ask each individual customer whether they received their parcels. At that time, indeed, I had two buyer cases due to delayed shipment which I had promptly resolved. I also had to contact each individual customer as at that time I was using the non-tracked shipment services provided by Royal Mail. The tracked ones, indeed, are generally a bit more expensive. After completing both actions and waiting for a couple of days so the customers could reply, I messaged eBay Italy back and they said that since not all customers replied to my message, I had to provide three documents: my passport, a proof of residence and a receipt displaying that the products I sold were actually mine. When messaging the customers, I had thought that if they left positive feedback or didn't come back to me it was safe to assume their parcel was correctly delivered, but apparently that's not the case.
I remember having carried out both my identity and address verification back in 2021, but I would have happily done it again if needed. I could obviously provide my passport and the receipts confirming the products I sold were mine (although the latter makes me wonder how that works with other kinds of product. For instance, if I get a gift or I sell something that was bought many years ago, how can I give a receipt?). The proof of residence, however, was trickier. Having moved from Italy to the UK, I clearly couldn't provide such a document. I explained to eBay Italy that I moved countries and all the rest exactly as I did in this post. They said, however, that they can't do anything as the residence document must display exactly the same address as on the eBay account. They also added that residence documents from overseas are not accepted. I tried then changing the residence on my account, but eBay doesn't allow to change the country, only the street number, address, city, county and postcode. The country, indeed, is set and fixed at the moment of registration. I called the eBay Customer Service twice as well and explained them everything from scratch, but they couldn't help with the address either.
One last try I gave was changing my bank details, as that automatically triggers both an identity verification and a bank confirmation via two microtransactions. I've done both successfully, but still no joy afterwards.
After this incident, my friend and I opened a UK-based account which is now successful. I will obviously not sell anything else on my previous account. The only reason I want to restore it is to withdraw about €350 (≈ £292), which is the money outstanding from the previous sales. I'm aware it's not much in the business world, but it's capital that doesn't belong to me and as such I need to retrieve it.
Has anyone experienced similar things? Is there any way to get it solved or escalate this matter to the higher parts of eBay?
Thank you very much.
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