Bidding restrictions with no message or email explaining?

[salhy62]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to bid on an item and have been trying for days now. Each time I attempt to place a bid I've been met with the same message.

"Attention Buyer: You’ve reached a temporary buying restriction.

You can only buy items where you can pay immediately at checkout. To continue, find an item with an immediate payment method and click on the “Add to Cart” button in the listing."

Similarly, when attempting to access the "help" page, a message is listed at the top of the screen reading:

"We've restricted your account from bidding on items or making offers because we've seen activity that doesn't follow our policies. You can still buy items on eBay if you use Buy It Now and pay promptly."

This literally makes no sense to me. I have done nothing against the policies.

I have completed various things that I thought would help my account be more secure, but it seems to be ineffective. I cannot think of any reasons for the restriction, and any time I have attempted to contact customer service in the past few days, it has simply referred me to "check my messages or emails." I have received absolutely none since the creation of my account regarding any kind of account restriction.

My account is not new, I made it in 2023. I had never purchased anything before yesterday so I couldn't have had any unpaid transactions. Then, I did complete a purchase yesterday, and my payment has cleared and the purchase is considered complete. Still no luck. I've added multiple forms of payment to my account. Nothing I do seems to work. I fear I am sadly about to miss out on a chance to grab a rare item.

Customer service seems to be down right now, in various ways. The automated chat bot has been unhelpful, contacting a live agent has not been an option for the past couple days, and any time I click to "send an email," I am taken to an error page stating the servers are down.

Am I just out of luck for now? I will attempt to get in contact with an agent via phone call at some point today but that hasn't been very successful for me either thus far. If anybody else has been having similar issues (and better yet, managed to get them resolved!) I would very much appreciate your insight.

Thanks!

[woodland_gnome]

That error message seems to be associated with running into your Open Transaction Limits. To get below your limits you need to pay for the outstanding unpaid items that now count towards your limits, but that might not be immediately possible because eBay counts items that you committed to buy but cannot pay for at this time against your limits:

1. At least some active auctions that you have bid on (including the one you are trying to rebid on). Originally only those you were in the lead on counted, but it is very likely that the rules have changed since they were last made public to include your outbid bids on running auctions and also any pending Best Offer. To minimize the effect of these wait until near the end of the auction to bid only one time at your TRUE maximum you are willing to pay for the item, and then pay immediately after it ends, to minimize the time it counts towards your limit. You can't pay until you win, so don't use up your open transactions on bids you can't pay for until hours or days later. Waiting to bid also keeps your options open (once you bid you are committed to that auction and can win and have to pay even if you are outbid during the auction--exception if it is still "Reserve not met" after you bid) so you can safely bid on an auction that ends earlier or jump on a great Buy It Now price that gets listed in the interim.

2. Transactions cancelled at your request (or due to problems with your address). Note that these also can result in lowering the limit, so make sure you are going to buy (and CAN buy, that the item ships to your location) BEFORE you commit to buying.

3. Unpaid Item Strikes. Again, don't bid/commit to buy unless you KNOW you can and will pay for every item.

To get these and other buying limits raised or removed in the long run you need to establish a pattern of reliably paying for what you commit to buy.