@maubrn wrote:lacemaker3, thanks that was very interesting! I felt a little wary by the two different ID's, eBay had one, she had one, she sent 2 different emails with possibly 2 different IDs, and I remember one had no feedback, then there was 4 feedbacks. I asked her what was the name on the account that wouldn't let her buy it. Her answer showed yet another user Id- screenshot enclosed. And the message giving her name that I asked for was very sweet, and almost too much info. For "not trading on eBay very often" she sure has a lot of user IDs. I'm not mailing it until I speak to eBay. Too many IDs, too little feedback, and a weird note from eBay. I'll ask if they sent it and post what they said. No I didn't click on that "unblock user" that seemed bizarre, and that weirdness fits the scam dynamic you shared about.
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I had Terapeak in the late 2000's and it was free or cheap. Now it's expensive but I miss it badly. Do you get your money's worth from it?
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@maubrn, thanks for letting us know that you didn't click the link!
I'm not certain that the one who bought the shirt in the end, was the same person who sent the phishing link. I can't see enough of the buyer's user ID to see if it is similar or not. The scammers are not really interested in buying anything at (or close to) full price. They may have been planning to steal something else that you had listed, they wouldn't necessarily contact you from the item they were planning to steal. Or they might have wanted to hack a selling account for other reasons.
Terapeak is now free for any account that is registered as a seller, so you should be able to use it again. It's in your Seller Hub, under the Research tab.
https://www.ebay.com/sh/research?marketplace=US
@maubrn while it's always good to keep an eye out for possible scams/phishing, from your reading your posts here I think it's at least possible you may be experiencing a technical issue I've seen a few other reports of as well.
There have been multiple reports from buyers receiving that message about being blocked because of supposedly having purchased from that seller in the last 10 days and saying that is an error because they had not made a purchase.
That should only be happening if the seller has that setting enabled in their Buyer requirements and the buyer actually made a purchase or was currently winning a bid on an auction, but that doesn't seem to be how it is working, at least for some buyers right now.
Most of the other reports I've seen were in a situation like yours where the buyer was attempting to make offers (you said your potential buyer had tried to make 7 offers that day).
https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Bugs-Bugs-Bugs/m-p/7600626#M311471
One buyer even posted on Twitter that they did not get the message on the first offer they tried to send, but when that offer was rejected, they then received the message when tried to make another offer.
That and some of the other reports make me think it's possible eBay may be experiencing a technical issue where rejected offers could be being considered by the system as that buyer "currently winning or having bought" the item, which could potentially then trigger that block.
eBay has been making a lot of changes to the Offers functionality to try to get rid of unpaid items, such as making it so an item remains active and available to be purchases unless/until a buyer who was sent an offer actually pays for it, so I'm wondering if something hasn't gone crosswise in their tweaking and testing that could be causing this kind of issue.
If someone is blocked from purchase due to those rules, their user ID won't appear in your block list - it's just programmatically done if eBay believes they meet whatever criteria is set for the block.
If that link in your message prompting you to "unblock" the user legitimately came from eBay, it may be a link to quickly add the person to your Buyer Requirements Exemption List so that the rule would not apply and they would be able to purchase.
I definitely understand your caution, especially with them using multiple IDs, and would not recommend clicking it without speaking to customer service first just to be safe, but I think it is at least possible this technical issue could be in play with what you are experiencing.
devon@ebay kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay just making you aware of this - are there any tickets open for issues with (possibly rejected) offers being treated as winning an item or making a purchase, possibly triggering buyer requirement blocks, and if not...can you get this reported to the appropriate team please?
Oh and also, can you confirm with the team who handles Messages if that warning and option to unblock is something that is legitimately added by eBay in some cases or if it would be a sign of possible phishing or scams?
