5051 Brush fire 6 - eBay

Sunday, January 31, 2016

"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."

-- Josh Billings --

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I have no idea what was going on with the laptop yesterday, but when I started it up this morning, it was perfectly fine.  All my icons and widgets and bookmarks are present and functional. Google, Feedly, and Firefox all recognize me.  Everything was exactly as it should be.

I'm not going to question it.  Just accept and tiptoe away.

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EBay has this new thing where they want you to link your eBay account and your PayPal account.  I ignored it and didn't do it, because I don't like the idea of eBay knowing my PayPal password, but now I'm beginning to see sellers who won't allow bidders whose accounts are not linked.  So finally I gave up and attempted to link them.

Nope.  For some reason, eBay refuses to believe I even HAVE a PayPal account, and wants me to open a new one.  After multiple attempts, I went to eBay help chat, and was told that it's a bug that some people are hitting, and they're working on it.  Another eBayer (a seller) told me that many people are hitting that wall, and there doesn't seem to be a fix.

I'm starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to go ahead and open another PayPal account, and never use it for anything other than eBay.  That way, eBay would have a password only for the new account, and if anything gets screwed up, I still have the "real" account for other online shopping.  (Yes, I do use it everywhere shops will accept it, because that way I can pay for stuff without giving credit card or bank account info to strangers.)

So, that was another brush fire because it consumed time, energy, and emotional reserves.

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 It isn't that I don't trust eBay with my PayPal password.  Well, actually, I don't, but not because I doubt their honesty --- I doubt their ability to protect it.  Their coders are a bunch of incompetent screw-ups.

There have been a lot of small changes in the checkout procedures lately.  One is that they will fill in your eBay userid and your PayPal userid on the form (yes, they know my PayPal userid, the one they claim I don't have when I try to link it, you know, that one...).  I don't remember when eBay started, but Jay jumped right in from the start, so it must have been the late '90s.  After he died, I took over the eBay account, and I changed the userid.  That has to be at least 13 years ago, probably more.  That old userid has not been used in like 13 years, and yet, sometimes, not every time, but sometimes, eBay fills in the checkout form with that old userid.

I'm thinking that when I attempt to link the accounts, the code is using that old userid instead of the current one, and that's why they don't see a PayPal verification.  PayPal didn't exist back then.

Shall I tell them?  Sellers are starting to get angry because they are missing bids from people who are unable to link the accounts.  Maybe if they get angry enough to revolt, eBay will give up on this "link" idea?
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