I have one ebay account with 400+ purchases using paypal and a 100% positve feedback record throughout. I opened another ebay account and used my existing paypal account to buy and pay for one item however the same night I also tried to buy another item but found I could not pay for it - 6 days on, after multiple phone calls and exchanges of emails, the item is still in my basket and I can not pay for it using any method - paypal, credit or debit card. I went back to my 400+ account and bought an item - a book - just to prove that there wasn't a problem with my paypal account (that uses my credit card). I phoned my credit card company several times when attempting to use it to pay for the items in my basket and they say they have authorised (and issued authorisation codes to ebay (which they have given me to pass back to ebay so they can trace the transactions)) - interestingly the CC company said the requests were for payments of £0.00 but the charge showing on the checkout basket is £10.99; ebay/paypal didn't seem interested in this detail. Ebay initially attempted to blame paypal even when I said I had tried paying direct using my credit card and with my debit card. Paypal said they have an ebay dashboard which they see internally and it was reporting that there is a widespread payment problem with some accounts - ebay initially said this was not true and tried to blame paypal. I did get both parties to talk to each other via my mobile and landline - that didn't help - they just flatly disagreed and contradicted each other; each keep telling me to contact the other. Ebay changed their tune when the problem was elevated(?) to 2nd level support (whatever that means - how many levels are there and how do you pass between them - none of this is explained anywhere). It seems that 2nd level support simply file a complaint to technical support and then they are as much in the dark as I am - there is no "status" they can look at to see if my reported problem has been looked at and no info on where it is in a queue or priority list; they can not tell me if the reported problem has been looked at or when it might be looked at - they say they don't even have a mechanism to ask about this. 6 days on and I am still completely in the dark and still can not pay using any means. Ebay say there is a widespread problem - normally when such a problem exists frustrated users take to social media to confirm that their problem is part of a wider problem - I have looked and can not see that that is the case. Ebay now say there is a widespread problem but they can not point to a source of publicly available information anywhere that I can look at to confirm that ebay acknowledge a widespread problem - normally when we have seen large numbers of customers affected my technical problems the problems are reported in the media at large, e.g. BBC - recent examples include a) the TSB and a failure of their online banking system during an upgrade, b) Tesco (O2) mobile phone network going down for many users all over the UK. But is the problem at ebay or paypal? Long strings of data are constructed and passed between browser windows so it is difficult for me to say atm although I am carefully comparing what I see in both the source code for web pages for my 2 ebay accounts and the strings in the edit windows. The problem I see is that when I attempt to pay using paypal using my new ebay account (remember I have successfully bought and paid for one item using this account already) I am repeatedly asked to supply full details of a credit or debit card - when I do so and click the "Add" button to add this card to my paypal account - the http://paypal window will not close. Remember - my CC has been linked to this paypal account for a decade and used to buy over 400 items already - and that I also conformed that they paypal account is still working by buying a book via my existing ebay account) . If I attempt to use a credit or debit card directly I get the error:-
Sorry, we can't process your payment. Here are your options:
- Use a different credit or debit card.
- Pay with a PayPal account.
I could not be more dissatisfied with the response I have had.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Are Ebay this bad normally? Are they even the right organisation to contact - maybe Paypal should be doing more.
How long might this take to resolve?
What else can I do?
Is there any other way to progress this?
It's unbelievable.
