eBay Forcing you to give your checking account with routing number and Social Security number

[loriv8473]

Forcing you to give your checking account with routing number and Social Security number . I am not a big seller I just sold a few things I never used that I had then eBay locked my account AFTER selling some stuff saying I had to update my account. I refused to give my private information. I called eBay and of course I was tossed around from one person to another. I asked them why PayPal doesn’t ask you that kind of private information they allow you to use your bank card like a credit card and do two small deposits with one withdrawal to verify. If you are a business they only require your EIN number.  Never do they ask you for your private information. Brittany from eBay the last woman I was talking to said well PayPal is a Financial company and a eBay is a market place. Ok so that supposed to make me feel comfortable giving Them my private information? That is supposed to tell me it’s Secure to do so? I had to ship the stuff I sold to the people because I’m not a jerk but eBay won’t give me my money. I told Britney I was deleting my account she sent me the link. Once I know the people received what they purchased ( because I’m honest)  and want to make sure they got it even though it cost me money. I WAS a victim of fraud twice. My SS# was stolen and it ended up freezing my tax returns and the second time I had my bank account drained. I was told by the police to NEVER give your SS # out other than in person and never give your routing # out unless it’s in person or a government site which have very high security and Only if you need to exp: direct deposit tax return. I have never given it out since. There is NO good reason eBay needs that. They have documentation they took the sales tax out. Personally I think anyone that got ripped off by eBay and they will not give them their money back need to get together and sue eBay. 

[readabouthorses]

but if you change your bank information to a physical address that doesn't get mail and the bank needs to send you things like your 1099 INT or statements they might not get delivered.

I'm going to go check my Credit Union account information (I can't use it for Managed Payments so it won't matter what is in there) and see if there is an option to have both a mailing address AND a physical address in the bank accounting. However, if the bank mails bank statements they are going to go to a PO Box and that would show on the bank statement.

[lacemaker3]

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@hurryagain wrote:

@lacemaker3 

Thank you for your post.

I already have that and actually did use that for eBay's registration.  The problem is that it will not match up with my bank or any ID that I have b/c all of those are under my PO Box.

My PO Box address is:

PO Box XXXXX

City, State, Zip

My PO Box street addressing is:

XXX anyplace street unit #XXXXX

City, State, Zip

The two do not match up EXACTLY as MP wants them to do...

...so...IDK...

...sigh...😞

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OK ... well, I do have a suggestion that should work. It's a lot of work, but based on what payments_team@ebay has said, it appears to be your best option at this point if you want to continue to get paid for your sales once you are transitioned to MP.

You could change the address on your bank account (and your ID if that is needed as well; this may be quite difficult and take some time) to the Street Addressing version, so that you can have matching addresses with your eBay account that are acceptable to Managed Payments.

Last year, sellers were reporting that if they didn't sign up for MP, they were blocked from making new listings or editing existing ones, but any sales were still processed by PayPal as they had been set up to do. Recently, sellers are reporting that they have been transitioned into MP even if they didn't complete the registration, so if they make sales, the payments are processed by MP and they can't get access to the money. So if you can't find a way to get this straightened out, I don't recommend that you try to continue selling unless you're willing to give your items away for free. Some sellers have been told that eventually, the unclaimed MP funds will be sent to their state's office for unclaimed money ... I don't know how long it takes before funds are legally considered unclaimed, but I suspect it might be 5-10 years or more.

payments_team@ebay, I understand that there is a prohibition against PO boxes, but I have never seen a logical explanation for this. 

Especially since in practice, it is just a prohibition against the most common format for a PO Box address, not an actual prohibition against PO Boxes at all. So ... why?

[mam98031]

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@cocomoss wrote:

@mam98031, I was actually asking @mrdutch1001 a question about what small site they were using but thanks anyway.

I've looked into poshmark and etsy but am wondering what other sites people are using. Instagram seems too labor intensive with constantly having to answer questions since you can only post one photo per post...

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@cocomoss 

My responding to your post doesn't prevent anyone else from responding.

Etsy has the same money processor as Ebay does.  And I think Poshmark does too.  

[mam98031]

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@readabouthorses wrote:

but if you change your bank information to a physical address that doesn't get mail and the bank needs to send you things like your 1099 INT or statements they might not get delivered.

I'm going to go check my Credit Union account information (I can't use it for Managed Payments so it won't matter what is in there) and see if there is an option to have both a mailing address AND a physical address in the bank accounting. However, if the bank mails bank statements they are going to go to a PO Box and that would show on the bank statement.

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All TRUE!!  IDK  Guess we have to wait for the payment team to respond.

[divwido]

Do you know this time next year this will seem normal?  Or you will no longer exist on eBay?

[hurryagain]

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@readabouthorses wrote:

but if you change your bank information to a physical address that doesn't get mail and the bank needs to send you things like your 1099 INT or statements they might not get delivered.

I'm going to go check my Credit Union account information (I can't use it for Managed Payments so it won't matter what is in there) and see if there is an option to have both a mailing address AND a physical address in the bank accounting. However, if the bank mails bank statements they are going to go to a PO Box and that would show on the bank statement.

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@readabouthorses 

You are hitting the nail on the head!  Could you imagine like you say your bank or other government agencies need to send you some important documents and it does not get delivered to you because you changed your address with one company and this info gets "updated" into other agencies/companies systems because it is listed as a PRIMARY ADDRESS in one company's file and suddenly you are in big trouble due to your lack of response to documents sent?  Better yet, documents get returned to sender as undeliverable???  They really are going to think that you are a scam artist or worse. 

All because one company decided that this weird address thing should be your primary address which it is NOT!  That's scary!  My PO Box IS my primary address!

BTW...PayPal has my PO Box listed and they NEVER had a problem with it.  So I am thinking that the IRS or other agencies do not have a problem with it either or PayPal would have taken issue with this already.

[mam98031]

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@hurryagain wrote:

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@readabouthorses wrote:

but if you change your bank information to a physical address that doesn't get mail and the bank needs to send you things like your 1099 INT or statements they might not get delivered.

I'm going to go check my Credit Union account information (I can't use it for Managed Payments so it won't matter what is in there) and see if there is an option to have both a mailing address AND a physical address in the bank accounting. However, if the bank mails bank statements they are going to go to a PO Box and that would show on the bank statement.

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@readabouthorses 

You are hitting the nail on the head!  Could you imagine like you say your bank or other government agencies need to send you some important documents and it does not get delivered to you because you changed your address with one company and this info gets "updated" into other agencies/companies systems because it is listed as a PRIMARY ADDRESS in one company's file and suddenly you are in big trouble due to your lack of response to documents sent?  Better yet, documents get returned to sender as undeliverable???  They really are going to think that you are a scam artist or worse. 

All because one company decided that this weird address thing should be your primary address which it is NOT!  That's scary!  My PO Box IS my primary address!

BTW...PayPal has my PO Box listed and they NEVER had a problem with it.  So I am thinking that the IRS or other agencies do not have a problem with it either or PayPal would have taken issue with this already.

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While I understand that none of us really knows what the correct answer to this or the procedure to fix the issue is, you are ASSUMING that this is just a requirement Ebay has come up with and I don't think that is the case.  I think Ebay is trying to comply with Federal Anti Money Laundering laws.  I could be wrong, but I don't think this is just something Ebay dreamed up.

[hurryagain]

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@mam98031 wrote:

@hurryagain 

My take away is that you need to change your address on your bank account and then update your Ebay account with the same PHYSICAL address you put on your bank account.  

I've always been told and I've seen other Ebay Employees tell other sellers that PO boxes are not allowed period.  And IMHO that is due to Anti Money Laundering laws.  They have to know where you are and a PO box simply doesn't tell them that.  With a PO box you could actually be located anywhere.

Where we have an issue here is they are now saying that your Ebay account address has to match your Checking account address but if your checking account address is a PO box the first part of this sentence doesn't apply. 

My guess is that your address has to match your bank account address however your bank account address has to be a physical address as a physical address is required.   I'm getting dizzy!!

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@mam98031 

Thanks for the idea.  The problem is that then I would have to change my driver's license and every other document that is important? ...And pray that nothing gets screwed up in the process...   It is sounding like I will not be able to sell here anymore.  Even if I jumped through these difficult hoops (it is not easy to change info on my DL anymore with all the restrictions now-a-days).

The thing that I find interesting is that if this is all for anti money laundering etc... ...why did PayPal not take issue with my PO Box???  They never had a problem with my address as PO Box even with all of the sales that I made this past year - power seller and all that...

[lacemaker3]

@readabouthorses, @hurryagain, I've thought of something else that could be tried. I think this is a long shot, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

This is a way of writing the address that is sometimes used in Canada, where there are a lot of houses that don't get mail delivery to the door. In many towns, instead of mail delivery to the house, each house is assigned a PO box at the post office. In order to have a single address that can be used by couriers like UPS or FedEx as well as the post office, they include both addresses like this:

J. Doe 123 Main Street P.O. Box 4567 Town, State, Zip

the street address of the house (physical address) the PO Box # the location of the post office

Both USPS and Canada Post use automatic machines to sort and direct the mail, which work by reading the addresses automatically from digital images. They start at the bottom line and read upwards if necessary, and stop when they have enough information to send the item on the next step of its journey. In the USA, the zip+4 actually narrows the destination down to a very small area, usually half a dozen houses. In my own case, my very short street has only 3 zip+4 codes. One for the south side of the street and one for the north side, except for some reason, my neighbor across the street has his own zip+4 that is for one house only.

For a courier, they may use automated sorting to get packages to the right town, but after that, they can use the human-readable street address to deliver the package to the right house.

I believe that writing an address like this would work perfectly well in either country, but I think this is a longshot because I think that Managed Payments would probably reject it either because of the letters "PO Box" or because it doesn't match the bank account address down to each character.

[hurryagain]

@lacemaker3 

Interesting idea!  Thank you!  I guess we will have to wait on what @payments_team@ebay  says.  I would not want to change my address on anything other than eBay since my banking, my driver's license, social security situation all have my address as PO Box. 

I guess that it would be easier to just drop selling here instead.  Bummer.

It would be interesting to see what @disneyshopper would say about this.  I know that she sells on another site that also uses Ayden as a money processor - but then again, her address might be a street address to begin with so she might not know.

[mam98031]

@lacemaker3 

When did the PO change this method?  It use to be that the top line of the address is where they delivered in a case of a PO box and a physical address.

https://smartystreets.com/articles/is-there-any-preference-between-po-box-and-street-address

[mam98031]

@hurryagain 

Lacemaker inspired me to go out and do a little Googling on this.  Look what I found, maybe this will work.

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_040.htm

You use the street address of your PO box location followed by your PO box number.  Maybe this would work.

[lacemaker3]

@mam98031, as I said, this way of writing an address is used in Canada, so I think it would work in the USA, but I haven't tested it.

According to the USPS website, this way of formatting an address is acceptable, but not preferred. They call it "Dual Addresses". The zip code has to match the intended delivery address, which is on the 2nd line from the bottom. With dual addresses, this is normally the PO Box, and that means that the OCR machine-reading software will get the correct address for the automatic sorting.

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https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_005.htm

215 Dual Addresses

Eliminate dual addresses on the output mailpiece, if possible, although mailer files (shown below with dotted lines) may maintain both mailing and physical addresses. However, if dual addresses are used, place the intended delivery address on the line immediately above the city, state, and ZIP+4 Code. Normally, this is the Post Office Box address. The other address must be placed on a separate line above the Delivery Address Line. The ZIP+4 Code used must be the correct code for the delivery address on the line directly above the city, state, and ZIP Code.

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When I searched this time, I didn't find an explanation of how the machine-reading software processes the address. A few years ago, I found a website that explained that USPS software starts at the bottom and reads up.  

I know that the initial sorting depends on the zip code only. I once watched the tracking on a package, and watched it going to the post office in a town about half way across the state. Once it got there, it was scanned, and then started out again, and ended up at my post office, and then was delivered to my house. When I got it, I saw what had happened. 

The shipping label had been written correctly by hand, and the postal clerk had printed out a little label with the zip code and an Intelligent Mail barcode, but the clerk had transposed two digits in the zip code. So it was sent automatically to the post office in that zip code, and when they got it, they corrected the wrong zip code and barcode, and sent it on it's way to me.

[lacemaker3]

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@mam98031 wrote:

@hurryagain 

Lacemaker inspired me to go out and do a little Googling on this.  Look what I found, maybe this will work.

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_040.htm

You use the street address of your PO box location followed by your PO box number.  Maybe this would work.

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Yes, that's what I suggested first; Street Addressing. @hurryagain is already using that, but it didn't solve the problem. 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments/eBay-Forcing-you-to-give-your-checking-account-with-routing/m...

I checked out this link you provided

https://smartystreets.com/articles/is-there-any-preference-between-po-box-and-street-address

but it appears to be contradicting the information from the USPS, so I would go with what the USPS says instead:

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_005.htm 215 Dual Addresses

[loveyourimagination49]

Just tagging on:

Wondering if you can use a parcel number to get exemption from needing to provide a physical address?

Food for thought or irrelevant.