I've been out of the game for a couple of years since I moved back to the US, but I have a Sega Saturn set I wanted to sell so I fired up eBay. And I thought to myself, "there's no way it's gotten worse since I last sold something." Yet here I am, ranting away....heh. Uh huh. I take the pictures. Upload them 3 times because their uploader is not working. I write the description. Look at all the settings. Hit the "start listing" button. Then I get this weird message: "Attention! To further enhance a safe trading environment, we require users who registered on overseas eBay sites or who modify their registration information to an overseas location to go through an additional verification step. You will need to provide eBay with further information to verify your registration information. Please contact your Customer Service for detailed information." Would have been nice to know that before I got the listing ready. OK. So despite having the same eBay and PayPal account for 14 years, I need to verify something. Not my email since they just did that. Not my mobile phone because they just sent me a text. Something else. Fine, I'll jump through the hoop. There is a link at the bottom of the message, one saying that this is the link for all Asian countries (I lived in Japan). I click on it. It takes me to eBay Hong Kong's login page. All in Chinese. So it's time to call eBay and figure out what's going on. Call eBay. First lady has no clue what the warning message is. Transfers me to the security team. Second lady tells me that I have to lift the hold by going through eBay Hong Kong. Any chance I can just work through eBay USA? No. She gives me an email address for Hong Kong. She tells me to contact them and ask them what I need to do to release the hold. I send the email. I get a message back saying the email address I used was no longer active for eBay. I reply to the message since the email address is different. I ask them about the hold. They reply by giving me a link to the support page on eBay Hong Kong. Where I'm supposed to start over. In Chinese. Time to call eBay again. First lady has no clue what the hold is. Get transferred to security. Second lady puts me on hold for 10 minutes. Comes back and says I need to verify my identity with a valid ID or utility bill statement. Should be cleared up in 10-14 days. eBay US will accept the fax from me, but they can't do anything until they get the OK from the Hong Kong office. Which I'm guessing they will forward my fax to. Which is just a guess. So after 14 years, over 10,000 transactions, 4200+ positive feedbacks and no negs, email and phone verified, using the same credit card and bank account, I have to sit here and wait until some Chinese guy in Hong Kong gets a fax of my car insurance statement before eBay will allow me to sell. In reality, I'm dealing with a company that is so big and spread out that no one knows anything comprehensive or where to even find the information that's not right in front of them, and my account is probably just going to slip through the cracks as a result.
Faceless companies are the worst case scenario you could deal with. But hey, do you want to read a nice comparison? Mercado Livre is the eBay here in Brazil. They don't have a phone number for you to call and they don't have any way to contact, no e-mail, no nothing. If you have a problem, you have a problem. At least you have an useless lady to keep you on hold for 10 minutes.
Fandango, that's the worst part. If I don't hear anything back I'll have to call back. With eBay, that means starting all over again. And each time you call back you have to get them up to speed on previous calls where you explained the same situation to the other people, except this time it's longer. Then they start the same process all over again.
Wow. I was going to say, don't bother selling, since eBay is a hassle anyways, but with your transaction history I'm shocked they are making you do this. (and that you're even bothering to deal with them.) If it makes you feel better I've had a Paypal account for 6+ years and just recently they've began to use similar confusing policy on sellers. Now, whenever I receive payment it's going to a "pending folder" that I don't have access to for 21 days until the item ships. Problem is... to the ship the item, I need to use the "pending" money I don't have access to in the paypal account. Consequently, I've ended up having to pay out of pocket to ship. (Which carries a lot of risk if the buyer decides he doesn't want/like my item anymore) I've had 150+ perfect transactions, not a single negative one, but because of new policy Paypal I've been screwed over.
Eric - there is a silver lining here and you're maybe seeing the genesis of it.....here's hoping... Large corps often eventually lose their focus....they sometimes bite the hand that feeds them....I've a friend who owns a smallish company <100 people, and he made the point that his company has grown such that he can no longer just change it to the way he wants at will.....he can only influence and hope it happens....this is how apparent madness in policy etc seeps in.... Ebay sound like they are grooming themselves for a new startup or even existing competitor in a related field to steal their business. As unlikely and unimaginable it seems, it happens as you know (you got grey hairs right?)....history is litered with them....AOL, DEC, Altavista, Yahoo etc... Once the frustration and anger fades you can sit back and smile an evil grin.......you could even cackle if no ones around....wouldn't do the last bit in the office though.....
That's really sad. And there's no way to fix it. The enterprises whose clients are responsible for a small part of a pulverized income like ebay are prone to that. The best thing to reach them are some kind of scandal, like bad food for a giant food company like Nestlé. But for a business like ebay, they don't care and will not get better. I'm tired of this shitty mercado livre (ebay from brasil). They change the things without homologating and is really hard to reach them with something. Bad decisions that piss people and that's it. You have to deal with that. I thought once, "It's something from a small company with bad working people.", but today I have a pathetic issue with the "BRAND NEW" Yahoo mail, and the shit doesnt work. Why did I had to change for the fuc&%¨$%&¨BRAND NEW SHITTY EMAIL if the F&*%¨&¨SH¨%$$ does not work. Crap.
eBay's support is horrible, if you email them you get copy and pasted replies. If you call them one rep will tell you one thing, and another rep will tell you something else. When I had a dispute last year, I had to call twice to get a different solution. It's just stupid. Faceless companies are the worst, the laws in Australia help a little but sellers can still be screwed over. Recently I sold an item on eBay, the stupid auto-added information about the item was there, and now I have a "not as described" problem with a buyer even though the title states what the damn listing was for. I've had plenty of good transactions with buyers, but sometimes it's a real pain the ass. eBay is starting to get annoying and I'm hearing a lot bad stories lately, I'm just getting to scared to sell on there any more.
I agree that email support is worthless. Phone support is better but they do tell you different things depending on the rep. I called to get my selling amounts increased and the first person I talked to told me that it was too late and that department is closed. I knew better and called back 15 minutes later and they were open. Working in retail for over 9 years, I know not to trust what people tell you.
Not to play devil's advocate but my guess is that it's in place to prevent money laundering or fraud. It would raise some eyebrows if you sold for years in Japan and the suddenly start selling in the USA - I'd say that was pretty obvious, no offense. They're looking at a seller appearing in two very different locations. Say it all works out okay - you may well have problems with PayPal (as I did) I moved to Italy, changed my bank address to Italy and my PayPal account was rendered inactive immediately. If your PayPal account was set up in Japan - you're going to be in the same situation I was in. I got around it by calling my bank and (falsely) telling them I had suddenly moved back to the UK and just gave them my brother's address - that fixed it. You may have to do the same when it comes to accepting payment for the Saturn when it sells. Just a heads up. It's a bitch, customer service rarely really know what's going on, etc... and I feel your pain - but that's my take on the situation. Different countries have a stack of different laws when it comes to these things. It isn't 'universal' - it's tied to lots (and lots) of different countries.
Now that would make sense if it was actually true. I started selling in the US since 1999 or something, then moved to Japan, started selling in Japan (used a Japanese address) and then moved back to the US. THENN I got the warning about the extra verification step saying that since I lived in Japan for a year, I had to verify that I lived in the address that I used since I registered on ebay...what?
If that's true, it might be worthwhile to have 2 eBay and 2 paypal accounts. One for each country. The process of owning and managing two accounts would be much easier than going through these verification loopholes that they are trying to enforce.
Completely understandable. Despite my long record of selling under the same account and using the same PayPal they probably would rather be safe than sorry. BUT PLEASE......don't set up a hurdle that's impossible for me to overcome. They two reps I talked to had no idea what I was talking about. The security rep gave me an email address that was no longer active. When I finally did get the address, I was told to log into a Hong Kong website where I was asked to start the same process over again....in Chinese. I asked if there was any way that eBay US could do all of the verification and they said NO. So now I'm waiting for some guy in Hong Kong to get a copy of my car insurance statement with my address so I can sell on eBay again in the United States. Make checks and balances if you want, but don't direct me to customer service agents who don't know what it is or how to handle it.
The part about mercadolibre is 100% true, they are from Argentina, have a bigass campus and everything but not one measly phone number for support. It sucks.
