eBay UK Sellers Can't Add Bank Accounts If Registered In US
Some eBayUK sellers have been scratching their heads over an issue that appears to be blocking them from adding a UK bank account for payout if their accounts were at one time registered in the US.
Changing account registration to the UK would seem an obvious and easy fix, but that doesn't appear to be working for impacted sellers either.
In last week's eBayUK community chat, one seller said:
I am currently one of a number of Ebay UK users with existing accounts that are unable to add their UK bank account. I recently sold some items and cannot receive the funds to my bank account, I get an error message every time.
I, as have many of the users with the same issue that I have, have followed all steps suggested by the support team. This includes trying different bank accounts, checking all details are exact, waiting 48 hours, etc, etc. None of them work.
The common thread for all users with this problem, is that at some time they were registered on Ebay US, have now sold items on Ebay UK, and the add bank account process seems to follow a US user “journey” as opposed to a typical UK one (i.e. the micropayments interface). I’ve also noticed that the Location on Ebay says I am in the United States. I can no longer change this to United Kingdom. It is my opinion that the backend therefore thinks I’m a user of Ebay USA and tries to validate my UK bank account against a US system… so fails every time.
I have verified this is an issue by creating a brand new Ebay UK account with the same bank account and details, this works no problem.
Community staff member Kat answered:
For those experiencing this issue with not being able to add bank accounts it is due to the the site registration on your account being the US. If you have already updated your account registration address to the UK then the site registration part needs to be done by eBay. If this is not changed it will continue to cause the payments issue. Have you been in contact with customer support to request to have your site registration changed to the UK.
The seller then said:
I have spoken with many of the ebay support team over the last 2-3 weeks and not one has told me that this site registration part needs to be done by Ebay. It was my feeling that this was the underlying issue and I did ask for my account to be moved to the UK, but I was informed it was not possible?
Kat did not respond again during the chat, but did respond further in a thread about this issue going back to April. Sellers on that thread are indicating they've been unable to get eBay support to assist them in making the necessary registration changes - instead they're being told they must create a new eBayUK account, but they would then lose any feedback or selling history.
Customer service person is currently refusing to implement the solution (change account from .com to .co.uk account) suggested in the community thread.
She claims they're going to fix it. But can't offer an explanation, target resolution time, or other information on how or when that is going to happen.
I am so glad I found this thread. I have spent the last two weeks in multiple chats with eBay agents and not ONCE has one of them told me that there is an issue with US/UK accounts. They just keep me online for an hour trying lord knows what and then end the session by saying everything looks good and I should just wait 48 hours and try linking my account again.
Why aren't they telling people who registered in the US but how now live in the UK that they are simply out of luck instead of wasting our time? It's infuriating. Anyways, I feel slightly better knowing that this is a system wide problem and that I am not in fact the idiot that the agents assume me to be.
I just read through the transcript of today's chat and the agent keeps saying that the site registration needs to be moved to the UK. But I contacted an agent an hour ago about this and was told that you can't move the registration of a given account to a new region. Round and round in circles we go. At this point the only solution seems to be to open a new UK account, but then I lose all of my 123 blue stars.
I asked the CS agent today about the guidance to get the US account redesignated as an ebay.co.uk account, and sent them a direct link to the community thread from today where alyood10 raised the issue.
They wouldn't even acknowledge that their colleagues had given this as a solution. So clearly the CS people knew the solution given by their own colleagues didn't work, or knew they weren't permitted to implement it.
The only response given to me was that they had escalated it as far as possible, it was an "emergent technical issue" and they were going to fix it as soon as possible. But no estimated resolution time, confirmation as to how we would be informed or any of that useful stuff.
So is this just another case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing at eBay with community staff providing incorrect info or is it really a technical issue preventing the fix from being implemented that will be fixed "as soon as possible?"
I'll update as soon as more information is available. In the mean time, if you're a UK or other international eBay seller struggling with setting up payments and switching your registration country, let us know in the comments below!
