I’ve had an ebay account since it opened. I both buy and sell and have 10-15 transactions per week on average. Until today, I’ve never had an issue signing in. Today, ebay doesn’t know me, doesn’t want me, and will only sign me in if I register under another user name - thus losing all of my buyer and seller info, including who owes me and who I need to pay. Arrrrghh.
After literally a 2 hour wait to speak to a rep, they informed me that they would email me a temp password so I could get in.
I wait. Crickets.
I call back and wait another 40 minutes to tell them I didn’t get the email. They ask me to confirm my email addy. I do. They tell me that isn’t what they have on file and they can’t tell me what they do have on file. I ask if they can text it to me. Of course, they tell me, and again ask me to confirm my phone number. Again, they tell me it isn’t what they have on file.
Keep in mind that all of these years I have been receiving regular emails from customers, calls and customers, and both emails and calls from ebay itself.
I think back to the inception of my account and remember that I was using a hotmail address back then. I give that to the rep and she says “Yes, that’s what we have!” I inform her that hotmail account has been closed for years and that I have been using my current business email which is email@acct.com . She tells me that can’t be possible. I demur, but yes, it IS possible. I am unable to remember the phone number I had back then, so that is not a fertile avenue either.
Since I can’t prove who I am to ebay, they won’t reset my account over the phone, so I have to register for a new account and hope I can remember everyone I had an active transaction with under my old account.
I am NOT a happy camper.
I left a request that my transactions be released to me under the new account, but I’m betting the request went straight to the circular file after I hung up.
That must be pretty frustrating, and it’s annoying how little effort companies like eBay sometimes put into customer service, but i think you have to bear a good measure of the blame for this.
Just about every single online service that i’m a member of—things like eBay, Amazon, Netflix, AirBnB, Uber, Facebook, New York Times, internet service provider, gas and electric, various banks, and a whole bunch of others—all require me to have an active email address and/or an active phone number, often both, for security and contact purposes. This is something that everyone should realize by now, and that people should stay on top of.
If your membership in any online service is still tied to Hotmail accounts or phone numbers that you have not had for years, this is something you should have changed back when you started using a new email or got a new phone. I just logged into my eBay account, and there’s a place right there in the “Registered email” section that allows you to edit the email address.
Some time ago, i stopped using an old email account from grad school. I had hung onto it for a while out of inertia, but i figured that, as i no longer have any real relationship with that university except as an alumnus, there was no point having that university email address. I had that email address for most of the first decade that i spent online, and many of my subscriptions and memberships and online identities were tied to it, so before i ditched the email, i went through every single one of my accounts and changed my email address. I would recommend that you check out all of your own memberships, and make sure none of them are tied, like your eBay account, to your old contact details.
Yes, what you said is valid, but I HAD updated my info. For some reason the current email and phone number are not showing. I know this because I changed phone numbers about a year ago and made a point of updating the number so that customers and ebay could get it if needed.
I am no techie and don’t know why the account profile reverted to the original info. Ebay did have the current email and password. I have been using both successfully to log in almost daily, and ebay has emailed me many times based on my posted email.
I remain baffled, but I am confident I had done my due diligence regarding my account info.
Some online services allow you to have a login email address that is different from the email address that you actually use for communication. I guess i assume that eBay must have some sort of similar system, but in looking at my account, i see no evidence that they allow such a thing.
If you’ve been using your new email and phone number all along, and eBay has been contacting you using those details, it’s pretty crappy they they can’t now use those details to confirm your membership and let you back into your account.
How are you accessing ebay? If by pc have you tried clearing your cache/cookies? If by phone can you delete the ebay app, reinstall it and try your “new” email/PW?
You could also try the “forgot my password” and see if ebay sends you a temp PW to the “new” address.
eBay instituted a new policy a couple of years ago where your username couldn’t be similar to the part of your email address before the @. Mine was the same. Had been for years. I had to make up a new email just for eBay. Literally. The only time I check it is when I need to check on an eBay transaction. I sell maybe twice a year, and buy maybe once a month, so it doesn’t see much action, but still gets a ton of spam.
Rivka, you may have hit on the issue. I was never asked to change either username or email at the time they asked you andy user name and email use most of the same characters. Perhaps they caught up to that this week and blocked me. I will call them back tomorrow (thank God for bluetooth) and see if that is the problem.
Thanks! And I will report back if that works in case anyone else has an issue.
I rarely use eBay and can’t remember my password every time I want to use it, and I have PayPal associated with it. I think I’ve probably created four or so different accounts through the years.
Call a couple times because CS reps have different levels of knowledge and authority regarding what they can do, Write to facebook@ebay.com. If neither of those gets you any satisfaction, post on their Facebook page. The crew there are pretty responsive.
Good luck. I hope you don’t have to give up your user ID! That’s nuts.
After a great deal of push back, I was finally connected with a manager this morning who was able to get to the bottom of the issue. The fraud department had closed the account because someone had attempted to use it who was not me. When that happens, they consider the account to be irretrievably compromised and it cannot be recovered, so I did have to establish a new account. They let me have my user name again, but added a hyphen and a number after it.
This means I did lose all my thousand-plus feedback points (which if you know ebay, is how your honesty and reliability as a seller and buyer is rated) and my quarterly reward points (sigh - we are at the end of the quarter, so that was a fair amount), but they will still stand behind me if I need to make or fight any claims regarding recent transactions. I won’t be able to see them, but they will forward them to me. I guess I’ll have to be happy with that.
What I did get back was my purchase and sales histories - not on my account but via email - so I will be able to contact my best customers and favorite vendors to let them know of the account change.
Still a lot of work on my part, though, and a royal PITA.
What do meadow patties go far on ebay today?? Looks like about 7 hours of my time, which I usually bill out at $45/hr for small consulting jobs.
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and comments.
