In order to make a totally new ebay userid you need to become a new person.
First, create a new name for yourself. Use your middle inital as your first name or maybe just first initials. Do not lie. Second, make a new address for yourself, like One One Nine Broadway, instead of 119 broadway. Check with your post office and make sure they will still deliver to your address. Next, make a new bank accout at your bank. Many banks offer free checking accounts so make one with your new name. Nothing illegal so far.

Now obtain a different computer. If you can somehow change your isp provider I think that is a good idea, but I also think using your present isp may work. If ebay challenges you with your new id, tell them that you are not related to Bob Smith and that your name is B J Smith (or whatever your new name is). It would even work better if you could use your spouses name. Just do not do anything illegal.

That will work. I understand why ebay is so cautious. They cannot tolerate dishonest or illegal activity on the ebay site….unless of course they are making money……that is a whole seperate discussion.

As for class action law suits, that is a joke. You have no grounds for a law suit and you do not have near the funds to pursue any. Forget it.

Until the BUYERS go to another site, ebay will hold a monopoly. In case you do not know it, if another site would happen to gain some market share, ebay would simply buy them out. That is what they did with paypal. In the beginning, Paypal was a good company providing a great service. Greedbay, I mean eBay, had their own CC site called Bidpay. People who used ebay hated ebay so much they refused to use Bidpay and Paypal grew and grew. So ebay simply bought out Paypal. End of competition.

Charles

Ten years ago I asked ebay to enforce some kind of proof of delivery and they have just implemented that in the past couple of years. Buyers can now get their money back for a misleading titled item or broken item. Why was I concerned about buyers? Because there were so many cheaters and liars selling on ebay it interfered with the honest sellers. Just look up C-6 Christmas lights and you will see half of them are not C-6 at all. I hope the buyers know they can return the item for a full refund.

Use your credit card when buying on ebay. That is just a little added protection. Paypal, AKA ebay, makes it very difficult to use your credit card when purchasing. Paypal automatically dips into your bank account for payment if you have no funds in paypal. That means that paypal has no credit card fees, but they do not give you a discount. In order to use your credit card you have to really look for the little blue line that says, other funding. I still miss it sometimes.

Of course ebay’s motive is clamping down on fee avoidance – but this is AFTER the transaction completed, so ebay have already charged the seller their FVF gouge, etc.

The extent to which ebay goes actually makes some transactions frustrating and really hard to complete, say if a collection is to be arranged.

Hard to reconcile this degree of interference with ebay’s claim that it isn’t the auctioneer, but merely is the person who “rents out the space” where the auction is conducted by the seller….

I also note ebay is no longer pretending that the “people” who write you emails are human. Some of us knew all along that Kev, Barbara, Ahmet and Co. were all just (incompetent) computer programs.

Ebay is a bully and there is nothing anyone can do about it except stop using ebay. But that is sort of like getting angry at your electric company and stop using their service.

I was principally a buyer on ebay, not a seller, so would the class action attorneys be interested in my case?

Charles – if I was confident one could make another ebay account and not have ebay link them (and then suspend the new one, and you forever), I wouldn’t counsel against it. People do not get more computer-competent than I am, and I am not sure I could get away with it (fuzzy logic to detect buy/sell patterns? Remember how sophisticated the ebay robot programs are, 99% who deal with them think they are dumb-ish humans). The average schmuck would have no hope and would get picked up by some ebay robot of the future. Better to convince ebay they are wrong.

Otherwise, we are generally in agreement. My bad experience with ebay did very significantly reduce my usage of the site.

I am active on eBay now and I use it regularly, but that does not mean I like them. My suspension was a misunderstanding that could have been resolved with a simple phone call. Since eBay has 20 million users I guess they cannot afford to call someone.

One last comment, if you are making money for eBay, like selling a lot, they will forgive you much quicker than if you are just a buyer.

I have asked eBay several times to implement some kind of standard for sellers. Ebay controls everything else on their site, why not make some standards for sellers? Like guaranteed delivery (insured), sh (and all costs) posted with the bid amount so you know what you are actually bidding on, and no exclusions allowed in the tos (like, not responsible for damage in shipping…if the seller is not responsible how can the buyer be respnsible?)