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Comment by smithcoin | Hacker News Reader

I had the same thing happen to me. I signed up to ebay for the first time, sold a single item before I had everything filled out (I was surprised at how fast my inventory moved). I couldn't enter in my payment information (Chase Bank) and my SSN wouldn't validate on their website for whatever reason. In fact, it seems like I am in this predicament because the website wouldn't function properly. Now I am out the several thousand dollars for the inventory I moved and I have no course of reconciliation. Any attempts at customer service end up in useless call centers who "cannot help me as we need to reduce fraud in their marketplace". Fraud? I sold and shipped the item. They must need money so bad they took mine.

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Why would you list something before finishing setting up your bank account info?

Even worse, why would you ship something before that?

And why would you start on eBay with an item of several thousand dollars which is waaay higher than 99% of items? I'm surprised anyone would even consider buying something at that price when you had zero positive feedback or any reputation at all.

None of this makes any sense to me.

It seems reasonable to me. I've bought things on ebay many times but never sold anything. I was thinking about selling something recently and didn't even think that adding a bank account for payout would cause any problems (because why would it? I've never had any issues linking my bank account to venmo, paypal or any other third party)

It was their exact signup funnel.

- Sign up.

- List a product.

- Use seller hub (it’s free)!

- Enter in payment details (don’t worry you have until the end of the month!).

I was assuming my product would take a while to sell (used receipt printers). They sold almost instantly after I listed them so I had to catch up. I never made it to step 3. I didn’t want to cancel the order because it was my first one and oddly enough didn’t want that to be the reason my account got suspended.

There were so many problems in the eBay backend I encountered only after my items were in transit. I couldn’t add _any payment method_ until my order was received and then I was promptly suspended without warning (before the month they said I had was even up).

For what it's worth, the phrases …

> how fast my inventory moved

… and …

> for the inventory I moved and I have no course of reconciliation

… don't sound like an individual trying to yard sale a used item. They sound like a seasoned seller complaining about a channel.

First time seller listing a bunch of used receipt printers I had lying around that I couldn’t figure out how to ecycle.

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