I sold my first eBay item on April 14th, 2002.  I was 16 at the time and started selling things around the house.  I slowly turned eBay into first a part-time business and now into my full-time business.  Thousands of sales later, its pretty safe to say that I don’t run into many new situations at this point.  But yesterday was a bit different.

I received an e-mail from Paypal stating that one of my items had sold.  I did not get an e-mail from eBay but they don’t always come in at exactly the same time so I didn’t really think anything of it.  Fast forward to this morning, I am doing my packages for the day and noticed that the item that I received the e-mail about the night before was not in my sold listings.  I then checked my active listings and there it sat ready to be sold.  Having never run into this problem before I started getting curious about the e-mail I had received and whether it was legitimate or not.  I log into my Paypal account and find the money is indeed in my account.  Complete with the buyers name, address, e-mail, eBay ID and the eBay item number.

At this point I figure eBay just glitched and that I could go ahead and print a label through Paypal and get this item on its way.  Before doing so, I let my curiosity get the best of me and I decided to give eBay a call to get an explanation for what happened with this item.  I explain the situation to the first customer service representative and am promptly put on hold.  When he comes back on the line he tells me he has never heard of this problem before and has to transfer me to another department.  Back on hold.  This time a lady answers the phone and of course she has no idea why I am on the line so I explain what happened again.  She informs me that she works in the buyers department and that I should of called for seller support.  I tell her that seller support transferred me to her.  She apologizes and I go back on hold.  Another lady then answers and I explain myself again.  Back on hold.  When she returns she says the item is active because I relisted it.  I try to explain to her that it is a GTC (Good ‘Til Cancelled) listing and that it may of reset recently but that I did not relist it and regardless of its current status the item is not showing up in my sold listings at all.  Back on hold.  The same lady returns and states that this is a problem with Paypal and not eBay (even though Paypal was the one who actually sent me the e-mail to begin with).  She told me that I need to contact Paypal and have them contact eBay and that all 3 parties need to have a conference call to figure out what happened.  She then transfers me to Paypal and back on hold.

After about 10 minutes of waiting for someone at Paypal to pick up the phone I decided the curious cat inside of me had exhausted all 9 of its lives.  I printed the Paypal label and ended the eBay listing and hopefully the item reaches the buyer without any further oddities.  Unfortunately I was unable to get any clarity on this situation.  However, on the bright side, I was able to avoid paying any final value fees on this sale.