As you may or may not know, my eBay account was suspended over 1 1/2 months ago for the vague reason of being “associated with a previously suspended user”. I was given that users name, and that is it. This user hadn’t used his account in 5 years, and so I thought it was strange that somehow I (and my mom, and my dad) were randomly selected to have their accounts suspended. Here is an update of my struggle to get my account reinstated.
The first steps I took were, of course, to reply to accusations and dispute them. I was sent a form letter saying I should reply to the form letter and restate my disputes and they may or may not reply, depending on whether they think my arguments are good enough or not. So I responded to the form letter. I then received another form letter telling me to fill out a form and fax/mail it in to eBay’s INV Appeals. I quickly did this, spending some money and some gas to get the fax out quickly, and then waited for the reply.
And waited.
And waited.
It has now been nearly a month since I sent in the fax, and still no reply. So today I decided to be a little more proactive.
I found eBay’s 1-888 number and gave them a call. I was promptly told to hang up the phone, and go use their online customer service. Jeesh. Retarded.
So I go and use their live help, and select the topic closest to “my account was suspended for no good reason and I want it back but you are dragging your feet”, which happened to be “Other”.
And I waited.
Finally “Benie T.” came on to help me with my problem. I was directed to a contact form. The page came up 404. Hmm. That’s useful. So he gave me another link which actually did lead me to a contact form. I was promised I would receive an actual response and not a form letter. I highly doubt that I will, but we’ll see.
What makes this all even worse is that eBay has $14 of my dollars sitting in my account that I can’t spend or withdrawal. After about 45 minutes of being bounced around customer service someone finally directed me to the request a refund page, which says it may take up to a month before they get around to sending me my money. Jeesh. Freaking monopolistic eBay.
As if it isn’t bad enough that 90% of the items on eBay are spam that blatantly violate eBay policies (search for “runescape”), but to top it off they can suspend you for any reason or no reason, and take no effort on their part to help you get it resolved.
Bottom line: I hate eBay.