eBay is an international auction website.
eBay Inc. is an online auction and shopping website based in San Jose, California. Through feedback mechanisms, buyers and sellers can rate one another to keep the community honest and occasionally, sellers may get banned for failure to ship items, selling counterfeit items, or not following eBay policies. Buyers may get banned for not paying for items purchased.
eBay Information
eBay is an online auction company as well as a shopping website that began in 1995. In 2009 it had revenues of $8.727 billion. It rapidly expanded and purchased PayPal, a credit card payment system, in 2002. Each day millions of collectibles, electronics, furniture, vehicles, and hundreds of other types of products are listed and sold across a global platform. Much of the success of eBay is that it works on the honor system, although there is a feedback mechanism to make sure that sellers and buyers are honest.
Seller Ratings
One of the key elements of eBay is that buyers and sellers can leave feedback for each other. In 2007 eBay began using detailed seller ratings using a star system for four categories including shipping, communication and accurate descriptions. If a seller gets too many negative feedbacks, or if his or her star listing falls below a given point, the seller may be banned.
Prohibited Items
A seller may be banned for selling prohibited or restricted items. Some of these include tobacco, alcohol, drugs and drug paraphernalia, Nazi-related objects, counterfeit recordings, firearms and guns, including parts that could be used to assemble a gun, used underwear, human parts and remains, most live animals, and human parts and remains, among many other things designed to make eBay in compliance with local, state and federal laws.
Getting Reinstated
Much of eBay's processes are automated, so you may get a red flag placed on your account. This means that a human will then evaluate your account to make sure that you are in compliance with eBay policies. Creating a new account will generally be unsuccessful because your account is connected to information like your name, address, network service provider, and bank account information. You can contact eBay via the contact page where you can ask for someone to contact you about the problem. eBay will then require you to remedy the problem including payment of seller fees, resolving outstanding problems, providing proof of identity, and even promising in writing to not violate rules.
At eBay's Discretion
A frustrating part of the process is that it is both time consuming and entirely at eBay's discretion. eBay generally allows sellers to reinstate once, but each subsequent time it is more difficult. However, eBay has an incentive to keep active sellers on its site and as such, generally works to try to reinstate its customers. Repeated suspensions for the same violation will likely cause you to be added to a blacklist and prevent you from future use of eBay.
