Being pursued by Ebay for Debts not incurred by me

Bewildered_Mum_2

Hello, this is my first time on here and I am looking for some good advice. I have been an occasional user of Ebay for the last 4 years, using it infrequently to buy or sell the odd thing. The last thing I sold on Ebay was last October and the last thing I bought on Ebay was this Feb, this was also the last time I logged onto the site. I was very surprised to recieve a call from a debt collection agency on last Friday evening claiming they were pursuing a debt on behalf of Ebay. I was obviously rather suprised about this and refused to pay, telling them that I do not owe Ebay any money. They advised that I contact Ebay and take the matter up with them, but that they would continue to pursue the debt. I then tried to log into my Ebay account to check this out, only to find it has been suspended. The only thing I am permitted to do on the account is see messages apparently sent to me. I could see a message sent to me in Feburary detailing my last purchase, which had obviously also been sent to my home email account and then an message dated March informing me that an apparent advertisment of mine for some DVDs had been removed because it infringed copyrights, followed by a whole bunch on messages following that chasing me for payment for advertisments. I had received none of these messages in my home Email and more to the point had NEVER placed any ads or put any DVDs for sale on Ebay.
I sent messages to Ebay explaining this, and ticked the box marked send copy to my Email. Guess what, they never appeared in my email! Oh and Ebay did not reply.
On Tuesday I contacted the Debt collection agency again, and told them that I suspected that my account had been used fraudulently, they asked me to inform the police and to get a crime number, pass this onto them and they would pass it onto Ebay. So I went to the local police station, told them what had happened and they said I could not report a crime as no crime had been committed against me, the crime had been committed against Ebay and that they should report it. So I then went home and called the Debt collection agency who said that was wrong and that I had to have a crime number. In the mean time I have emailed Ebay twice more but they have not answered. The sum of money they are pursuing is currently small, under (£100), but I feel that this is wrong, I do not owe any money to EBAY and they are not providing me with any opportunity to discuss this with them. I am also being threatened that the sum may increase with interest the longer I do not pay.
Can anyone advise me as to what I should do, should I go back to the police and insist that they report this as a crime, or do I stand my ground with the debt collection agency? I have never been pursued for debt before, I owe nothing on any credit cards and have an excellent credit record, but I am very worried that this going to affect that and my future credit status, I do not want to end up with CCJs for something I have not done.

Any advice would be most appreciated

J

ClaireLR

My ebay account was hijacked before along with my hotmail account - the hijackers had put messages from ebay to be automatically deleted somehow. Is your email a hotmail account, if so I'll have a look and find out how to check for you

ClaireLR

Ok if it's hotmail,on the right hand side click option, then more options, then safe and blocked senders, then blocked senders. If any ebay addresses are in your blocked senders then its probable that you've had both your email and ebay accounts hijacked

ClaireLR

heres the link to the thread from when I was having problems - it will tell you how to contact ebay to hopefully get this resolved. Also remove ebay from your blocked senders if they are in there and change all your passwords for everything.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1199149&highlight=ebay

ClaireLR

Link halfway down this page to Ebay Livehelp where you will be able to talk to someone and explain that your account may have been hijacked - its a bit like an MSN chat and I found it really helpful!
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/account/securing-account.html

Bewildered_Mum_2

Claire Thank you so much you were right they were in my blocked account. Password being changed this very minute.
Off to have a look at your other link now.

J

ClaireLR

Just wondered if you'd managed to get this sorted out??

Bewildered_Mum_2

Hi, Just to let you know that after returning three emails from Ebay, all of which contained a cut and pasted 'standard' reply about contacting the debt collection agency, I finally got someone to read my email and they agreed that my account had been hijacked. They still claimed I owed them 66p however for another item, not wanting to quibble I paid that to get my account re-instated, and once I was online I could see that this debt was also clocked up by the hi-jackers, I have told Ebay this, but I guess they won't pursue it, and I have learned my lesson, I will in future check my blocked address list every week and log onto Ebay even when I am not selling just to check it has not happened again. Oh and I have changed all my passwords.

Many Many thanks again Claire, wthout you this could have gone on for ages, as between them it seemed that neither EBay and IQOR (the debt collection agency) were willing to help at all,:T

Thanks

Janet

soolin

I'm glad you got this sorted, can I also suggest that you go onto the techie board and get talked through a complete thorough clean of your PC. If you got your email and ebay accounts hacked you could have something nasty hidden on your PC.