AC Dickson: eBay Power Seller

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Y'all gonna to make me lose my mind
by acdickson

If you read my last post you know that Mr. AC Dickson tied the knot with his sweetheart susanstars a few weeks back.

Our wedding was a blast. The next day was not. Without getting too specific, the fallout from the wedding in regards to the venue was messy. But AC, Susan, and crew made lemon out of lemonades and took care of business.

Many, many hours of errands and cleaning later, the PowerSelling husband and wife were poised to open our litany of generous gifts and cards. Then I made the mistake of getting online.

I got a very official email that looked to be from eBay saying my account had been terminated. Okay, no need to panic. I get, on average, 10 emails a week from "PayPal" and "eBay" with all kinds of claims trying to get me to enter my account and password information onto a fake mirror site (not to mention emails from many credit cards I've never had and many banks I've never stepped foot in). ((quick aside, AC gets a special thrill out of going to those fake mirror sites and entering my user name as "You're" and my password as "going to hell". I figure every now and then it might kind of freak the pathetic perp out for a moment.)) So I figured this was along the same lines. Except there was no need to click on a link and type my information in, this was a TKO notice telling me eBay had severed ties with ole AC.

So I tried to access my account. Nothing doing. My password wasn't working. Panic was now setting in. Quickly I used Susan's account to sign in and search for acdickson's auctions. She/I was told that AC was no longer a member. Oh $%*#!

So here it was, not 24 hours even into my honeymoon and I'm unceremoniously bounced from the very company whose name I've sung from every mountaintop.

Of course eBay is not reachable on the phone. Same goes for PayPal, hotmail, yahoo and so forth. 1-800-555-1212 does not have anything on them. In this brave new economy they have figured out to save hundreds of thousands of dollars a years by not having customer service representatives standing by. Instead they have (and only recently have they had) eBay Live Help (find it on the eBay homepage).

Long story short. An hour and three transfers to better trained agents later, I'm told my account was hacked, and I'm reinstated after answering such questions as my street address 4 years ago and every email address I've had.

All in all, not too hard--just time-consuming--to get my account back up. But I do have a bad taste in my mouth. There were no warning shots from eBay, no heads up that my account was violated, nor that I was going to be shut down unless I cleaned things up. eBay just went ahead and canceled me. That is just not cool.

After spending a half hour internet session per day during most of my honeymoon I even got my new password and was able to enter my own account! Hallelujah!

But I still have no idea how my account was hacked, what the hackers did (I think they sent second chance offers for invented items to people from me, but I'm only guessing) and whether or not there are eBay members who've been taken by crooks using AC's good name, credit, and 1530 positive feedbacks.

Nor have I gotten from eBay any kind of apology or attempt to make sure my reinstatement went smoothly. It did not. I had to reopen my store and relist the entire contents of its shelf. All is all, not a pleasant experience.

And this isn't the first time. Susan got hacked last fall (on Election Night no less) and had a $5000 buy it now video camera posted under her username. The hacker required the unsuspecting buyer to wire transfer the money to the Philippines. If the thieves hadn't also hacked her yahoo account and diverted her incoming mail to a hotmail account she might not have noticed and several of the saps who emailed her in the next week (after she regained control of her account and ended the auction) offering $4500 for the camera might have found themselves $4500 lighter in the pants. Again, eBay was none too easy to get ahold of and not inclined to go out of their way to make things right.

Simply put, eBay talks a good game on being anti-fraud, but it's a one-way street down a narrow alley where they're speeding in a Trans Am and regular people like us are walking on crutches. WHAM, BAM, what just happened?!

Yes, they take care of business in the end, but how 'bout working with the person whose account was taken over or frozen? I'd like to tie up any loose ends, but that would of course necessitate eBay telling which ends are loose.

Now don't get me wrong, AC bleeds eBay red, blue green and yellow, but he's not above a transfusion. There are a number of competitors making noise these days, and we'd be a fool not to at least look into them.

Here's hoping that someone at eBay HQ reads this and takes the time out of their day to do some 'splaining and let me know what the hell happened.

P.S. Alphanumeric passwords are a damn good idea.

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