anita@ebay- I don't wish to waste your time, time you could be spending helping other members with their issues, so I strongly recommend you scroll down to the paragraph starting "OK, I decided..." for the current state of affairs. Everything before that is 'archived' material, and not relevant to you. In fact, I can save you even more time by giving you the TL;DR version right now: It's sorted (finally, and with no small degree of difficulty). You were right, it was indeed an issue at Nectar's end, and they have now fixed it for me, so thank you for pointing me in their direction, and my apologies for my earlier scepticism.
@Everyone else - Please only read the following if you have a strong stomach (or even a fondness) for excruciating detail, lame attempts at humour, or if you just enjoy reading other people's accounts of their labyrinthine dealings with customer service agents. You have been warned!
First of all, I endured a rather torturous live chat session with Nectar. After 20 minutes or so, the agent (who had told me it would take 1 - 2 minutes to look into the problem) informed me I would need to phone Nectar because "due to some issue, Our back office team has changed the redemption rights to save your account." I'm glad he told me that there was an issue; I'd never have guessed. So that was a waste of time. But I've had worse live chats with Nectar. Much worse.
I then phoned and got completely conflicting information that made my head spin. I was told that my ability to spend Nectar points (not just on eBay as it turned out, but also in Sainsburys or anywhere else) had been deactivated due to suspicious activity on my account (which the agent would not specify). I asked why, if this was the case, Nectar had not contacted me to inform me of this. The agent responded that, if there had been any suspicious activity on my account, I would have been contacted immediately. But I hadn't been contacted because there had been no suspicious activity on my account - but I couldn't spend my points due to suspicious activity! Confused? Put yourself in my shoes!
Actually, I suspect that their software did pick up what might be construed as suspicious activity: my multiple attempts on 15 November to unlink and re-link my eBay and Nectar accounts when trying to resolve the voucher issue. But even this doesn't really make sense, because the 'Create voucher' button was greyed out before I unlinked and re-linked accounts several times - yet those un/re-linkings are the only thing I can think of that would have been flagged up as suspicious, leading to the removal of the option to spend points (but the removal had already occurred long before 15 November). What a mess. What an absolute mess.
Another possible explanation, very plausible in light of how many other people are reporting this problem, is that this was some error made by Nectar which they aren't admitting to. This explanation would do away with the chicken-and-egg conundrum above, and would also account for the fact that so many other people are affected, so the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it was a mistake by Nectar, and nothing to do with suspicious activity on my account.
Nothing the agent said during the call made much, if any, sense. She said I could collect, or be sent, a new Nectar card, and that I would then need to contact Nectar again (oh, joy!) and have my points transferred to this new one. I asked how that was any more secure a process than Nectar simply re-enabling the 'Spend points' option on my existing card, but the response was so garbled that I wished I hadn't asked!
She also said that she could (at a push) reactivate the ability to spend points on my existing Nectar card/account - which is what I'd been asking for all along - but that, if I lost my points due to unauthorized use/account access, this would be on my head, so to speak, and Nectar would not re-credit me. "Fair enough", says I, pointing out the obvious fact that this would still be the case if I was issued with a brand new card. So, I plumped for that option (partly due to my concern that something would go awry with the points transfer process if I got a new card).
There then ensued five agonising minutes of having to answer further security questions, the answers to which I'd pretty much forgotten. Second and third characters from my mother's maiden name - I got that one! Previous postcode - well, I've been at my current address for over a decade, and couldn't recall my previous postcode off the top of my head. I failed on that, so onto the next one: how long have I had my Nectar card, and how did I get it? For crying out loud! How many people - possibly excepting those who got their cards recently, or those with near-perfect recall - could reasonably be expected to remember something like that? I was floored by that question (or, rather, those two questions). We were at an impasse - if I couldn't answer these critical security questions (which, oddly, were not posed at the start of the call), I would have to get a new card after all. I mentioned that I'd previously told her my month of birth in answer to a security question. "That's not a security question!" she retorted. "Anybody could know when you were born!" (well, not quite, but I agree that it's not exactly watertight, someone could guess and have a 1 in 12 chance of being correct). In that case, however, why was I asked for my month of birth at the start of both the live chat and the phone call? If this is not a reliable method for establishing one's identity, then why even ask? No coherent response to this question was forthcoming. Thankfully, in the meantime, I'd managed to dredge up a couple more possible postcodes from my memory - and one of them was correct! Woo-hoo! Even the agent was relieved!
She then pressed a few magic Nectar buttons.
My eBay Nectar page now has a red banner at the top saying:
Your Nectar account has been temporarily disabled.
We cannot show you your points balance and account information.
Contact Nectar Customer Support
The agent told me to wait 24 hours, and I will once again be able to spend my points as well as collect them. I just hope she's right, otherwise I've lost nearly £60 worth of points (or more, if there's a double-up offer or similar). Part of the reason I'm worried is that she also said that, after 24 hours, I would be able to re-link my accounts - but my accounts haven't been unlinked, my Nectar account has been disabled, two very different things.
So, that's how things stand at present. I'll come back here to update after 24 hours. I need to wind down now, because the prospect of losing those points (which have taken me a long time to accrue) as a result of trying to rectify an error not of my own making makes me livid. And this after all the hassle with the un/re-linking the other night. I've had a rubbish morning (unrelated issues), and was at least hoping that resolving this voucher problem would be quick and straightforward. Stupid me.
But!
OK, I decided to refresh my eBay Nectar page before submitting this post. Lo and behold, the banner has gone, and 'Collecting' and 'Spending' are both ticked - and the 'Create voucher' button is now blue and clickable! The change took a few minutes, not 24 hours. I'm now just hoping that I haven't jinxed things by reporting this positive turn of events, and that no further issues will crop up, at least not in the near future!
I could just delete most of the aforegoing text, since it is now effectively redundant, but I'm going to leave it as is for several reasons: 1) because I spent a lot of time in typing it; 2) to illustrate just what a long-winded, confusing and convoluted issue this has been; and 3) to provide some "You are not alone"-type comfort to those unfortunate souls who, like me, have an utterly bewildering Kafka-esque experience almost every time they engage with a customer service department via phone or live chat, and end up deep down a rabbit hole from which it feels like they'll never emerge!
Oh, and 4) just in case anyone wants to have a chortle at me and my frustrating experiences. "Laugh it up, fuzzball!"
I hope that the rest of you with this 'Create voucher' problem fare better than I have in getting a successful resolution. I got there in the end, but, goodness me, did it really have to be so difficult?
Oh, and if you do have the 'Create voucher' button greyed out, you may wish to look into this even if you don't want to convert Nectar points into eBay vouchers (but then, why would you be reading this?), because it might be the case, as it was with me (at least, according to the agent), that you are also unable to redeem your Nectar points anywhere else.
