Ive fallen into the twilight zone here. I need some help.

[vectoraero]

So recently my ebay account was restricted, ive held this account since 1998. I buy mundane stuff like bike parts, spare electronic parts to fix my various things. Im not buying rocket launchers, military stuff or anything that could even remotely be construed as bizzare.

like literaly my last 10 transactions (about a years worth) have been an Iphone, a screen protector, a spray painting mask(turned out to be a scam), and a part to fix my tv. occulus rift controllers, laptop power supply, and a plethora of bicycle parts and some carb parts for my motorcycle.

Im set up as a seller, but have never once sold anything off of ebay. I think way back i tried to sell some piece of lab scrap i had but no takers.  I found the whole process too confusing and much easier to sell my stuff locally on kijiji and save the hassle.


so as of 2 days ago my account was restricted. They demanded proof of address, and a letter of employment. (bizzare) im semi retired/self employed, so i sent them my id, but inquired why on earth they needed proof of employment.

they fired back this completely bizzare response. I can only think its a bot loosing its mind do to its keepers being under isolation or something.

what the!?!

[esclyons]

sounds like perhaps someone is trying to hack, your account.. I would suggest a call into customer service and make sure everything is o.k.

[femmefan1946]

Did that come to your eBay Messages or to your email?

Because ocsnext.ebay doesn't sound right.

Send the email to spoof @ ebay.com.

But the embargo part might mean someone is hacking your account to sell stuff that the US government won't allow.

EBay being a US company and all.

Among those countries are Iran and Cuba, which are not embargoed by Canada, but are by the USA.

Are you able to buy? You are able to post from the account, which is a hopeful sign.

a spray painting mask(turned out to be a scam)

That might come under "restricted items" but those are on sellers not buyers.

[vectoraero]

no.. no hack. its legit, i thought it was a scam at first too but its in my ebay messages when i log in.  this is 100% legit from ebay, but ebay has lost its dang mind.

i was getting less and less dependent on ebay, i used to buy a **bleep**-ton of stuff, but they are making themselves irrelevant with stupid stuff like this.  I'll just buy my chinese stuff directly from ali-express for now on.

[vectoraero]

nothing in my history for selling anything. zip nada. if someone had hacked me i would at least see some activity.

the only activity is stuff i recognize, and its all buying. All stuff that there is no way its embargoed unless the USA suddenly feels triathlon bikes are the tools of terrorists /s

i cannot buy, i havent tried selling but ive never really sold anything. tried it once, was a pain is the butt, and just cost me money. not interested in selling at all anymore. I'll sell my stuff on kijiji which doesn't have such byzantine things going on.

spray painting mask was something i was buying, so thats on ebay if they didn't filter the sellers properly. how the heck am i supposed to know the banned items of the day?

[femmefan1946]

tyler@ebay 

How does he get out of this?

And what do those of us who are not employed provide this kind of ID?  I still have my ID badge from Indian Affairs which has been inoperative since 2014.

[vectoraero]

nothing but crickets in 24h. Fortunately I have a friend i went to school with at the CBC who says she is interested in this story. Going national in 3...2..

[femmefan1946]

I called in tyler at 8:30pm Eastern Time.  He might have gone home. (I'm not sure if he works from Toronto or Seattle, because he is assigned to the US Boards as well as here.)

The usual reasons why a member can't buy are that the seller doesn't ship here or that the member has Strikes for unpaid transactions.

Some Auction sellers will monitor their auctions and cancel bids from unwanted customers for their own reasons (often paranoid). Cancelling a purchase is a whole different thing and usually leads to Defects on a seller's account.

[vectoraero]

thanks for the help and the ideas.
I have a perfect record. Never a strike and the only complaint I've ever made was a legit one where the seller didn't ship the product.

I did have one seller cancel but that was because they wanted extra money to ship (after stating free worldwide shipping in the auction) after the purchase was made. it was mutually acceptable and due to covid, seller was genuinely in a bind and i let them off the hook no fault.

Ive got a history going back to 1998, not one strike in that time.

[tyler@ebay]

Thanks for the tag @femmefan1946, and apologies for the delay in my reply. 

@vectoraero - there are types of restrictions where we request proof of employment, identity, merchandise, etc. These restrictions are only able to be resolved by the team that placed them, so the only course of action at this point in time is to reply to the message you received and explain why you aren't able to provide what is being requested. 

Thanks!

[vectoraero]

how does buying relate to my employment? The canadian privacy act states that any private information used or requested by a business must be directly relatable to such transactions. (and because ebay is doing business in Canada they must abide by the rules)

Im pretty sure based on other caselaw, the privacy commissioner would take a rather dim view to this. Identity verification sure. But Ebay has no operational need to know who i work for. Nor do they state how that information will be used, or how it will be stored.

I think its time i proceed to a complaint with the Privacy commissioner against ebay.