Suspended from Ebay

scumbalina

I have a shop on Ebay, it's my only source of income. I've been suspended over breach of copyright. I've contacted the copyright owners to apologise and confirm that it was a genuine mistake. I've also appealed to have my account reinstated but Ebay won't. I've tried discussing it on the community boards on Ebay but the thrads get removed as you're not alowed to frequent Ebay if you've beeen naughty. I really need to get it sorted or I'm going to be very poor for a while, does anyone have any tips to how to speed up being reinstated?
They've also contacted all my buyers telling them to go and get refunds through Paypal, and it looks like they're going to keep all my fees for all the items that I had listed

frivolous_fay

Has this happened before? Did you get a warning?

Have ebay said they won't even consider your appeal, or just not YET? They usually suspend you for a certain length of time to teach you a lesson.

scumbalina

They've said "I have reviewed the matter and we have found that the suspension of your
account was appropriate."


It's for 7 days, then up to 10 days whilst they review my ID, which I have to post to them in Ireland.

I had breached other Vero rules before, yes.

frivolous_fay

The best you can do is send them everything they ask for and wait it out. It could have been a lot worse than 10 days.

soolin

Suspension is usually only the last resort, so I echo what fay says, did you get warnings previously?

Basically though all you can do is email ebay and ask them to reinstate you, then be patient until they respond giving you details of what you need to do, and what documents you need to produce to have your account ban lifted.

Posting on the ebay boards under a different id may well have made it worse as you are not supposed to use any ebay account once you are suspended.

The email you got should have given some slight indication as to the likely length of the ban, the lesser ban is usually for a period of not less than 7 days..but that means they will only start to work with you to reinstate you after 7 days, not that your ban lifts then. If it is just a blanket suspension, i.e, if you broke too many rules too quickly, then th eban may well be much longer, or even permanent.

Soo

raptorman

I don't want to sound all clever and pompous but if ebay is your main income then why jeopardise that by breaking vero rules. Surely you were aware of the consequences! You state in a post above that you have breached vero rules before!

I hate to say it but it sounds to me like you are complaining about being caught. As for what ebay do then thats upto the owners of the copyright that you have obviously infringed on, they may at worst insist that your account is banned/closed.

Basically you've bu$$ered it up for yourself and ebay will if your account is reinstated be keeping a very close eye on you.

Final thought: Why take the risk?

FamilyGuy_2

Agree with the person above.

Plus, if you are going to be naughty and risks are high, at least have a back up plan!

noyk

i agree too, you've been extremely stupid if this was your only income stream and sounds like you did it out of greed. There is a fine line between pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules and you pushed too far.
However, Ebay is a nightmare now for fees any sort of support for the average buyer and seller - i used to use it all the time (bi-weekly or more frequently) now i use it once a quarter if that.

stolt

agree with the others, although I've been all through it before as i have stated in other posts. I wouldnt even try to start another acct, i did and was caught and they banned me for 12 months. There are methods but as every one has said if it was your only source of income why woudl you risk it, you now the law of averages would mean that you would get caught sooner or later and especially that you state you have been warned before. From my experience, to be suspended is only on your third warning.

Once your account is suspended, when you do get back on ebay you are watched very carefully any slip up will lead to a ban. trust me.

Can i ask what you were selling? me personally it was replica watches and handbags, I was never too greedy and never once did i rip someone off by leading people to believe they were authentic and had a huge feedback of 99.5 % but it still didnt stop ebay banning me, dispute what others say that power sellers can get away with it.

scumbalina

Woah, hang on a minute, you're assuming that because I've had Vero claims made against me before they were correct and in the right, in my experiance ebay are a law unto themselves!

I was making items that had transfered images on them, that I had purchased and made into something else, for example in one case I bought a my Little pony transfer, sewed it onto a jacket with some beading etc and sold it. As far as I know, that's not against copyright.

soolin

scumbalina wrote:

I was making items that had transfered images on them, that I had purchased and made into something else, for example in one case I bought a my Little pony transfer, sewed it onto a jacket with some beading etc and sold it. As far as I know, that's not against copyright.

Depends...the image and name itself belongs to the original distributers or owning company. Some distributors, Disney for instance protect their image fiercely, otherwise every market stall in England would be selling 'Disney' branded T shirts and undercutting the Disney brand.

There is no difference between using a My Little Pony image on a T shirt and for someone to add a Chanel bag clasp to an ordinary bag and reselling it, for Zero purposes you would need to prove beyond doubt that you had the licensees permission to use their image and resell it. You would be allowed to use the image for yourself, it is the selling part that is the problem.
Soo