My Chemical Romance---"The Black Parade"
MoTW---"Everything is Illuminated"
Why, oh why was my Ebay account suspended. Why, why, why, why, why?
I went to Ebay to find out exactly why, and this is what I found when I
entered my user name and password:
"INS NOTICE: eBay Registration Suspended:
Trademark Misuse (=IS &12431 JM66658097)
Dear ********,
Unfortunately, your eBay account has been suspended for a minimum of
seven days due to a violation of the eBay Trademark Misuse policy.
A trademark is a unique sign (such as a name, word, phrase, logo, or
symbol) that identifies a company's products and services. eBay doesn't
permit sellers to use a trademark in a way that confuses or misleads
buyers about the source or affiliation of an item. Trademark
infringement is illegal and can include inappropriate comparisons to a
branded item, selling counterfeit or replica items, and keyword
spamming.
eBay will end a listing if we determine that it contains information
indicating that the item infringes intellectual property rights. We
review each situation carefully. However, due to security concerns, we
cannot give you any details about how we make our determination.
We suspended your account after carefully considering each violation and
verifying that the correct action was taken.
As a result of your suspension, all of your current listings have been
removed from eBay.
You are not permitted to use eBay in any way during your suspension.
You're also not allowed to register a new account or use another
existing account. Doing so may result in your permanent suspension.
During your suspension, you also won't be able to do any of the
following:
- Bid on items
- Sell items
- Leave or receive Feedback
- File for an Unpaid Item credit
***Note***
Any remaining fees that are on your account are due immediately. These
fees will be charged using the billing method that you currently have on
file.
To have your account considered for reinstatement, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/reinstfaq.html
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
eBay Trust & Safety
Learn how you can protect yourself from spoof (fake) emails at:
http://pages.ebay.com/education/spooftutorial
This administrative email was sent to ********@*****.com from eBay. Your
account is registered on www.ebay.com. As outlined in our User
Agreement, eBay will periodically send you information about site
changes and enhancements. If you would like to receive this email in
text format, change your notification preferences."
(Note ".com" at the end of the asterisked email address in the last
paragraph. This is of great importance, which you will learn of later.)
So I read this and thought that I had been suspended since my email
address is the name of my favorite MLB team so I thought this was kind
of petty, even for Ebay standards (yeah I know, it's supposed to be
"eBay" but fuck 'em, I've been using "Ebay" and will continue to use
"Ebay" since I don't respect them any longer. As a matter of fact, I
will not even bother using any upper case letters when I mention them,
so from now on the will be known as "ebay'. Fuck 'em again!).
So I fired a nice message off to ebay customer service asking why my
account had been suspended, what trademark infringement I had violated
and also mentioned that I had never used the account to sell anything,
only to buy an item a couple times a year. Hell, I even ended the
message with "Thank You". How professional was that?
After I had sent my message I noticed that I had some alerts. I went
ahead and clicked on the link and found I had some messages from ebay
about account suspension.
I accessed the first message and found that my account was going to be
suspended since I had listed quite a few pairs of Chanel sunglasses,
which would explain the trademark infringement thingy, but couldn't
explain the fact that I had never put any sort of item up for bid on
ebay. (Sadly, when I was copying info from ebay this past week, the
Chanel sunglass listings had been deleted from my account for some
reason. Our perusing loss I guess.)
Then I read the complete message posted above and noticed that they had
sent a suspension notice to "my" .com address. This got me giddy with
joy since I have always had a .net address and ebay would notice this
and discover that something fishy was going on and that it WASN'T me
that had listed those items, right? RIGHT??!!
Alas, this was the response I got:
"From: eBay Customer Support Expires: Nov-21-06
You responded to this message on Sep-27-06.
Dear ********,
I've looked at our records and see that eBay suspended your account due
to violations of the eBay User Agreement.
Our records do not show any evidence of any unauthorized access to your
account, so we can only recommend that you speak with anyone who may
have had access to your eBay account.
We've reviewed your suspension appeal and have decided that your eBay
account will remain suspended. Our decision is based on evidence from
our records as well as any additional information you've provided. Due
to eBay policy, we cannot provide you with more specific information.
***Note***
Although we will read any future appeals you send, we may not respond to
your inquiries.
Sincerely,
Nicholas
eBay Customer Support"
I went ahead with my "future appeal" and, true to their word, I didn't
get a response even though I mentioned the .com vs. .net discrepancy and
the fact that I had never put anything up for sale on their site.
So this it where my account currently stands:
Member since October '99
24 items bought
100% feedback from sellers (NOT buyers)
Suspended September '06
Um, anyone wanna take my case?
P.S. Remember my birthday this Black Friday!
COMING NEXT: Yep, I'll be waiting in line at Best Buy early on 11/24 and
I'll give an exclusive report on what happened! Anyone shot? Anyone
robbed? Oh wait, that's only for those waiting in line for a videogame
system. Still, someone might get angry over something so stay tuned!
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