Warning! Don't share your ebay account!

[mwooldri]

Oh, and also keep it only associated with only one Paypal account - yours. Never share it. Not even close family... and maybe not even life-couples.

We found out the hard way the last couple of weeks, and ebay don't make it easy on you.

Here's what happened. My wifes' aunt has had an ebay account. She let her son use it to buy some stuff. He won a few auctions but he did not pay for the goods. Therefore there were complaints and that ebay account got closed down. Fair enough, bad ebayer, byebye ebay account. Then my wife's ebay account got shut down. Why? Two connections 1) we live at her aunts' old place, and 2) her daughter (wife's cousin) has had us sell stuff for her and transfer money to her paypal account in relation to sold items for her. She at one point had her mother do this for her too, so ebay assumed both were linked together.

Ebay's rules say you can have more than one ebay account but if you get banned from one account you're banned from all of them.

And the cascade continues... my ebay account got banned - wife and I buy and sell together using each others' accounts but we actually only share one paypal (my name, her email address, all our accounts). My father-in-law got banned - yep, we used to live there, and we paid for things he bid on and won with our paypal account. And next... my mother in law... yep, father in law shares with mother in law too.

So because of one bad boy not paying his winning auctions, at least 5 ebay accounts got shut down, and at least 5 unhappy users.

So therefore: 1) keep your ebay account to yourself, list only the stuff you want to sell and only for you. If you list for others, handle it completely yourself. 2) If someone wants you to buy something for them from ebay and wants to use their paypal account to pay for it - don't! You bid on it, you buy it, you get it. At worst, have them send you the money to your paypal account and don't go via ebay. and 3) If you win an auction, pay for the goods!

This has been a public announcement from mwooldri, who is still slightly upset at his wife's cousin for ruining everyones' ebay experience.

Thank you for listening.