Has anybody had a similar issue before?
To cut a long story short I’ve just sold one of my watches on eBay, since eBay brought in the authentication system I’ve sold maybe 4/5 watches, never had a problem always been authenticated no issues, always had positive feedback. Had a this account for more than a decade and I’m sat on 100% positive feedback.
This time, granted it’s pretty much double any previous sale, I’ve had nothing but issues. I used Malca Amit to ship the watch to ensure it was full insured whilst in transit. Previously I’ve used Royal Mail and Sercurus but switched after finding out Sercurus don’t actually insurance parcels to third parties.
Anyway Malca Amit picked up my parcel last Thursday (16/07), and from Friday (17/07) onwards it showed as delivered on Malca Amit and eBay’s tracking, but took ages to show as arrived at hub, little known to me the eBay hub had actually rejected the parcel on the Friday and subsequently the Monday (20/07) too, because they said the EVTN number wasn’t on the label (it was, and always was just written on there but in pen not on the label text). Because I didn’t know eBay hadn’t actually taken delivery of it I contacted their customer services and asked if it had been delivered and was told about it being rejected at around 12:30 on Monday. I then managed to sort out the EVTN issue and Malca Amit delivered the watch on the Tuesday (21/07), this was then authenticated and has since been received by the buyer who was really pleased and left really good feedback.
Then on Tuesday after the item was authenticated but before it was delivered I had two emails (in the attached images) one saying my account had been temporarily restricted and one saying my payouts had been paused. I think understandably, I’m quite pissed off that eBay are now holding my £16k for at least five business days. The only action I was given was to upload tracking for items sold in the last 30 days, that had already been done and I always upload tracking for both mine and the buyers peace of mind. So I replied directly to the email and let them know I had already provided the tracking number and always do.
I’ve called eBay numerous times and had numerous different answers I was told yesterday that my funds would be released between 24 and 48 hours, today I was told I had to reply to the message directly in the app and couldn’t reply by email (the email literally says reply by email and it’ll be received) and that I couldn’t possibly speak to the appeals team as their an ‘offline team’. Then finally I was told by somebody else that the appeals team would contact me by tomorrow at the latest, and that the funds would automatically be released to me after five business days, which makes you wonder what needs to be investigated if the funds get released after five days regardless. The last guy I spoke to tried to help but he just kept going round in circles and couldn’t really answer anything and I’m not massively hopeful I’ll get my payout on Tuesday.
Has anybody else had a similar experience? I’ve been told the tracking is no longer an issue as the buyer already has the item and has left positive feedback, but the funds have been held as it’s a spike in average selling price, again I completely get that and completely get anti money laundering checks or identity checks or whatever but I haven’t been asked to prove my ID or my original purchase for the watch or anything. From reading other users experiences I have a feeling my account is going to be permanently banned, for no reason, and I’m going to be sat waiting on a pretty substantial amount of money for up to 190 days. Really not impressed and it’s the last time I’ll be using eBay to sell anything remotely valuable.