Sunny-boy.Sunny-boy.
As you recognized, eBay holds the power.
I think Rick and R2(d2) here have pretty much snuffed this out for you, but let me give that butt one last squash with my foot.
eBay does funny sh - stuff. I have another account whereby we sell cars and parts on eBay. Not my favorite place to do it, we have had VERY limited success, but for certain makes/models, it works.
When we first got started, since I am part dyslexic (and the rest, well, stupid), and don't like to read, I just jumped in head-first into eBay selling cars. I know you might say, what about getting some on-line help? Well, I can't STAND those on-line chat-things, back & forth, back & forth, worthless things take an HOUR to get an answer (if your lucky) to something that would take 5 min on the phone to get, you have to persevere some of the worst grammar, and of course, dodge a bunch of sales come-ons. Course, could be worse, might have to actually smell their foul B.O. and see their dental disorders as they give you a toothy grin.
Anyway, everything was great for us, had listings going, buyers interested, asking questions, bidding, suddenly, I get a notice from eBay that all my auctions are cancelled, we were shut down, and they told us if we DARED to create another account and re-list our cars, we'd be crushed like the vermin-scum we are, remember, we are "used car dealers", worst-of-the-worst, well, ok, there are a few worse, like Time-share sales, Jewelry (retail or wholesale, doesn't matter), Home Improvement, Mortgage Brokers, then come car sales, but we are right in there as having some of the worst business reputations, and rightfully so, there are SO many scum-bags in the industry, they'd screw their own dying grandma for a nickel.
Anyway, eBay slams the door on us. The initial claim was that it appeared someone "hacked out account" and was using it without our consent. Like you, I am pretty savvy on the computer, I am an ex-computer geek, I had a frontal lobotomy done so I could forget that side of my brain entirely and stop counting in Hex. Binary digits are no longer my late-night companions.
Anyway, like you, I smelled manure on that claim.
Digging a bit further, it turns out eBay assumed we were illegally selling cars. Of course, once they asked, I gladly provided our license, insurance, etc as proof we were legit, but that is eBay's "shoot first and ask questions later" policy, I think they have that printed right over the door.
The difference for us is, it took DAYS to get back on-line, not an hour such as yours. We had to go through an appeals process that took over 3 days to even hear back that they couldn't read any of the faxed paper work we sent (again, manure wafted heavily, the documents were sent at "fine" setting on a new fax machine, they expected us to believe they couldn't read a single word of the 24 pages of documents we sent!) So, that took another 4 days to hear back that we seemed OK, then another 3 days or so to get the final answer, so, 11 days in total, completely shut down, unable to do anything about it. If I lived in California, I think I would have gotten out a 30-ought-six, a high-powered site, found a well-positioned grassy knoll out front of their building and settled in for a day of target practice!
FYI - during this ENTIRE time frame, there was NO person I could physically talk to on the phone, other than the eBay operator, who seemed empathetic to my situation, but continuously put me into phone transfer hell, which if you've never been, is an endless loop of dead extensions, automated answering systems with no voice mail capability, or just plain busy-signals. Repeatedly, I was told by the less-than-minimum-waged Hin-dudes that answer the "on-line chat" lines that the "Trust & Security" unit (or do you say "Trust & Safety"?, I don't know, I don't care either) was way overwhelmed with work, that if I sent something to them more than once, it would just put me further behind, that they could confirm that T&S received my docs, but not when they would actually look at them, and that it was impossible to speak to anyone in T&S on the phone or leave a message, EVERYTHING they touched was by email. I need a job like that where I can just hide all day and not be responsible for producing anything.
Anyway, the fact that you would have even gotten to speak to someone from T&S, let alone get a resolution in an hour tells me that, if it really did go down that way, eBay realized they made a BIG mistake turning off your account, which is of course easy for us to recognize, 26 seller auctions closing? Holy Sh... Are you one of the success stories those late-night infomercials talks about of people who don't touch, inventory or actually buy anything, they just somehow magically make money on eBay, or do you have an actual business that for one reason or another prospered on eBay? Just curious, I like to know who I am talking to.
So, sorry for the drawn-out details, thought you might get a kick out of our story. But, I think you have snuffed this butt out pretty well, eBay is kind of fickle, and if your account suddenly goes from a comatose state to something that resembles a frenzied school girl jacked out of her mind on Mr. Pib and diet pills who finds her Mom's Platinum card on the bureau, you solved your own Nancy Drew here, you probably tripped more red-flags than a hot, sexy 21 year-old "adult" entertainer's tax-return in the IRS Mainframe.
Well, good luck to you SK, keep the "sunny side" up and the "greasy side" down!!! Keep your nose between the ditches and the (eBay) smokies out of your britches! I'll catch you on the flip-flop, we gone bye bye!
AS-Attack
The newest, (and stupidest) success story to hit AS! Stupid, like a fox, well, maybe a fox who got hit by a car, but survived. Wait, I think the saying is "Crazy like a fox". Never mind.