Topic: eBay shuts down our consignment store no warning at all

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Posted at October 17, 2005, 6:36 pm:

After spending a few years designing and implementing our ebay consignment / shipping center , we finally had it fine tuned. Ebay put a whammy on us this morning without so little as a phone call. We had been contemplating overstock.com and ebay made up our mind…. Here’s what happened.

The whole truth behind the ebay shutdown on our business:
At approximately 9am this morning, Oct 17th, 2005, the manager at the Shippin Shack called the owner and said she was lock out of our ebay account. We had an email stating we were suspended indefinitely for shilling, the practice of bidding on your own auctions to raise the final price. I immediately went to email to investigate. Ebay is accusing us of this because my wife has an ebay account and used this account from our home to buy me some bar signs that had been consigned to our store. She bid high and won all the auctions she bid on. Other ebayers bid against her, and she kept bidding until she won. Had she stopped and let others win, I would say this looks fishy, but she did not! She paid high prices, more than I would think they were worth, for a present to me.
In our shop we accept goods to sell for others. We do not own these goods, nor do we buy these goods for resale. We only post the auctions for the customer. My wife has every right just as anyone else to competitively bid on these items that we do not own. She could have just offered the customer money for them, but thought that it would be against the ebay rules. She thought we had to follow procedure and she thought SHE DID!
An email to ebays security team to explain what she had done only brought a stock email letter informing us that we were still shut down for a minimum of 7 days and we were to write a letter to them, of which they supplied a template, about how we have learned our lesson. They them may consider lifting the suspension. A little late as they already cancelled 87 of our auctions, as well as bids I had made on others items on ebay.
I finally found a phone number for the Powersellers support line and called to explain the situation and to ask why we were not informed of the suspected shilling before ruining all that we have worked so hard to build. I was basically told by an ebay drone that that was policy and when I asked for the evidence of our guilt, I was told the public was not allowed to know what evidence they had. It would allow everyone to know their secrets about how much they know about us. WOW! guilty without a trial, without a judge, and without anyone showing evidence that we are guilty. Now that's customer Service at its BEST.
In summary, Ebay basically closed our doors because of "suspected" shilling. No explanation, no warning, no reasoning, no calling on our retail storefront to ask us what was going on, NO NOTHIN! BYE BYE NOW EBAY..... thanks for allowing us to promote your company. Now I think we should repay your kindness and promote your special way of doing business with us!
Joel McDaniel, President
Shippin Shack / Grand Rapids, MN http://www.webayitforyou.com

Original of the message was taken from http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/

Replies:

Based on what you've described, eBay's assessment of shill bidding see...

Thanks for your reply.

> This is grey area as far as the "your items " is concerned.

I do understand their way of thinking.

This was written with the help of eBay's Safe Harbor team after my bus...

In my experience, Ebay has no gray areas.

> They use "policy" as a crutch.

True.

Sorry to hear about the store getting splatt'd.

More like Ebay uses "policy" to hide behind.

Have you seen the Government lately?

Well.

Ebay recently made it against their policy to accept cash as a form of...

One question I have always wondered about.

Couple things.

For eBay it was pretty a clear cut case for them, same IP bidder = shi...

I'm not advocating breaking rules or going against policy .

Why would anyone expect Ebay to follow any Guidelines? Our Governm...

Microsoft was started in 1975.

Same thing happen to me 'Suspended' without a proper reason, I probed ...

I am aware of shill bidding policy and ebay has misinterpreted the sit...

Well I've been there with ebay before.


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