Cannot register as a seller on eBay – text of exchanges with dumb customer support!

I`ve been trying to sell a few items on Ebay and have been unable to do so for more than a month as eBay does not allow me to pay my seller fees. I searched a lot of forums and was unable to find a solution. However, I discovered that this problem was very common, and had people speculating if eBay was intentionally doing this to reduce the number of sellers (dont ask why)
Anyway after trying all options to pay including Paypal, credit card, debit card and direct debit, I hit a stone wall with it refusing to allow me to pay after giving me blatant lies such as –technical difficulties or invalid card! (hell it worked as a buyer on ebay itself!)
So I fnally got in touch with their customer support. Here`s what ensued. The blue text is my mail, the green text is their reply!
 
Message: Hi,
I`ve been trying to register as a seller for the past One month. But 
everytime, i get to the payment page and try to make payment by Paypal 
it gives me this message:
Sorry. We're currently experiencing technical difficulties and are 
unable to complete the process at this time. 
(for 1 month?!!)
So I try to pay with a credit card and it says:
This is an unsupported card brand. Please try another card brand.
(Mastercard is unsupported?)
I`ve checked the internet and I`m not the only one having such issues.
Please help.

 

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for your email regarding the issue you are facing while 
setting up a seller account.

Based on the error message yu've received, it seems that you are using a
prepaid or cash cards (Duh! i clearly mentioned it was a Mastercard!). For your reference, eBay's Seller Verification 
System requires all users who wish to sell on eBay.co.uk to enter:

- credit (Visa/MasterCard) or debit (Switch/Solo/Visa Delta/Visa 
electron) card details and
- current bank account details.

For further investigations, kindly write back to us with the information
below:

- Kind of card you are using
- Logo of your card
- Exact error message you've received
(all of which as you can read I already mentioned!!!)
Thank you again for your cooperation. We look forward to hearing back 
from you.

Kind regards,

Mary Dunne
eBay Customer Support

anyway, I replied again:

 

Hi,
You have obviously failed to read my mail with attention. I have already
mentioned all the information you have asked for! Anyway, here it is 
again.
I am not using a prepaid card. My card is a credit card. It is a 
Mastercard.
The exact error message is " This is an unsupported card brand. Please 
try
another card brand." 
I tried another brand and that doesn't work either.
I tried using paypal and this is the exact error message : " Sorry. 
We're
currently experiencing technical difficulties and are 
unable to complete the process at this time."
I know its not a temporary hitch because I have been trying for a month 
now.
Please help with this.

 

and the stupid morons reply thus:

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for getting in touch about setting up your credit card for 
automatic monthly billing on eBay.

Credit card companies don't tell us why cards are declined, so I'm 
afraid I can't tell you why the authorization failed. But there are some
things you can do now. 

First of all, there are a few things you should check - for some of 
these, you'll need to contact your credit card company. If you find the 
problem, re-submit your details. I've included the instructions further 
down.

1) Are you entering your billing address exactly as it appears on your 
credit card statement? You have to enter it exactly the same, including 
capital letters, periods and spaces.

2) Are you entering the exact same ZIP or postal code as the one on your
credit card statement? For better verification, enter your nine-digit 
ZIP code - you can get it here: 

 http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.htm 

3) Are the number and expiration date on your credit card valid? 

4) Is your account in good standing? 

5) Is there enough credit available on your account to cover a $1.00 
authorization hold? We charge a temporary $1.00 'hold' to your account 
to verify that the card is valid. (If you don't have at least $1.00 
available credit, your card will be declined). The hold charge is 
removed by your bank or credit card company within 5-7 business days.

6) Does your account have a block on Internet and phone orders? 

7) If it's a new credit card, has the account been activated? 

8) Are you using a debit card instead of a credit card? A debit card 
isn't a credit card, even when it has a credit card logo on it. Debit 
cards may have daily and/or transaction limits. Contact your bank to ask
if there are daily and/or transaction limits or any other restrictions 
that may be causing your card to decline.) 

9) Also make sure you enter only the numbers without any dashes ("-"), 
slashes("/") or spaces while entering your credit card number.

Here's how to re-submit your credit card information:

1. Go to My Account > Payment Information.
2. Click 'Edit Payment Information'. You'll need to enter your password.
3. Type in your details carefully. You need to make sure they're exactly
the same as how they appear on your statement, including capital 
letters, periods and spaces.

The change will take effect on your account within 24 hours. 


I hope this information helps you find the problem and set up your 
credit card for automatic payment. If there's anything else we can help 
with, please get in touch.

Kind regards,

Yan Pommel
eBay Customer Support 

 

Are the customer support people illiterate or just pure morons! This was really getting to me, so I replied again:

I am not asking why my credit card was declined. For your information, 
it
was NOT declined! My card works fine on every other site including as an
ebay buyer. Please read through my original message. My problem is that 
I
cannot register as a seller. Please stop sending me irrelevant 
information
and help me register as a seller.

 

Finally someone decides its time to stop toying with me and acknowledges that theres a real problem:

Hello,

Thank you for your email about creating a seller?s account.

We have received similar reports and have now managed to identify the 
issue. Based from our investigation, this problem is caused by the old 
PayPal verification process that members are getting when creating a 
seller's account. 

To resolve this, you will have to select Direct Debit or credit card as 
your automatic payment method instead of PayPal for eBay fees. 

I fully understand your frustration and I apologise for any distress or 
inconvenience that this matter may have caused you. If you need any more
information please get in touch.

Kind regards,

Maurice Trent
eBay Customer Support 

whew, I head back to the site and this time Paypal is not a payment option. I use a credit card and it appears to let me through. Finally!!!

How to get feeds for sites that do not have RSS feeds or customize existing site feeds.

I love the Google reader and I subscribe to all my favourite websites through RSS feeds. However, some sites do not offer full feed function and I often just get a preview of the content in my reader. For example a website may not offer images in its feed and it may be annoying to click through to get its full content. Worse still some websites dont have an RSS feed. How do you get RSS feeds from a site that doesnt offer RSS feeds? I was looking for a solution and found Dapper.

Using Dapper you can make feeds for feedless web sites or customise existing feeds. It may be a little confusing at first but they offer step by step instructions and tutorials as you go along.

But heres a few of mine to help you get started.

1. First click on create a new dapp link at the bottom of the search box.

2.  Paste the address of the website whose feed you want. Either use an existing feed or start with the website itself. You can choose the Dapp XML to start with.

when  you click “Next”, the Dapp engine finds and loads your site.

3. now, instead of loading the home page, click on a post to get the page for that individual post. When that loads, click “add to basket”.

Now, go back to the home page using the green arrows next to the URL and click on another post and load that to the basket. Repeat that for a few pages. What we are trying to do is add many representative pages for the engine to find similarities.

4. In the next step, the engine analyses your pages and finds similar bocks such as titles, images, posts, ads etc.

Now as you move the cursor over the page you will see boxes, select a box and allot a name to it. If you select title, the engine will recognize the same thing in all the pages you added. Similarly you can add images  and text. Include only the content you will need to receive in your final feed.

5. In the next step, you need to group all the above step. For instance, in my feed title, image and text compose a single feed, so I group them as a post. As you select groups, u get an instant preview of what the resulting feed will look like.

 

6. Save your Dapp . You have the option of making it private.

Once saved, you get the result as a Dapp feed. You then have the option to convert it as any type of RSS or Atom feed;

which then gives you an option to choose what to put as your feed title and what to put in the feed text and previews the feed. It also gives you the feed address:

which you can then add to your feede reader to get the customised feed:

In my case I have successfully customised my feed to include pictures where the original feed came without images or detailed text.

How to customize the right click (context) menu in Firefox

After using Google chrome for a while, where drag and drop links were not yet available, I returned to Firefox and found myself using right click followed by “open in new tab” in the right click menu to open links in new tabs. However, unlike chrome, where that is the first option, I found myself unwittingly clicking on the first option in the right click menu of  Firefox which was to “open in new window”. Thats really annoying when you don’t want multiple windows open.

Furthermore, a lot of firefox plugins add unwanted selections to the menu and it becomes a pain in the  ~’@? to find what you actually need.

So , i decided to find something to customise my right click menu.

Thats how I found the Menu Editor plugin:

After install, you may access the options through the addon options from the addon menu, or simply press ctrl+shift+s to bring it up.

Simply choose the mu you want to edit and untick, those option you do not wish to appear. As you can see below, I`ve unticked “open link in new window”

…and hey presto, the link is gone from the context menu , and the first option is “open link in new tab”, just like I wanted it.

This is one reason I keep coming back to Firefox, Chrome just doesnt allow a similar degree of customisation just as yet.

Install multiple freeware applications with a single installer - Ninite

 

Ever had to install many applications one after the other on a PC? Maybe when you re-installed Windows or shifted to a new laptop. Then you would know how time and labour consuming it is.

Now there’s a solution – a website called Ninite. It lists some of the most commonly used freeware applications on a well designed page, including web browsers, Instant messaging applications, media players, image and document editors and viewers, runtime and antivirus software, file sharing and other utilities. All you have to do is select all the programs you wish to install and click on the “Get Installer”  button at the bottom.

You will then get a single installer, for all the applications you chose. Simple but oh so useful! Brilliant.

How to download and keep BBC iplayer video files DRM free

As you may be aware BBC iplayer is a fantastic way to catch up on programmes that have already been shown on any of the BBC channels. However, the video files will disappear from the player days after you first watch it. In short they are DRM files and it doesn’t allow you to save the files.

I may often like a program but be unable to watch it for a long time and by the time I get around to it, it may no longer be available to watch. I was thus looking for a solution to download the files and keep it for as long as I want and I came across this great solution. Its called as ipdl.exe and according to a video on youtube comes from Paul Battley from www.po-ru.com. So all credits to him.

All you got to do is download   and double click it to run. It presents you with an interface which asks you for the program ID. Now head over to the BBC iplayer and navigate to the program you wish to download.

Now copy the address as seen in the URL bar:

and paste it in the ipdl program ID box and click download. It then asks you where to save the video and gives it the default name of the programme. Once thats done, you are on..it downloads it..and its fast.

The file is saved as a quicktime (.MOV) file which you may then view with Quicktime or another media player such as VLC video player.

Fantastic, works like a dream !!Thanks Paul Battley .