OK, this has officially gone from Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact this morning. I nearly didn't get the Kaypro.
Rememeber I loaded up 2.5 x Osborne's into multiple orders? Which they combined and shipped together? It would probably have hurt Ebay financially if they didn't send them, since they would have had a poor resale value based on the product descriptions.
Here's what happened as a result of that. Ebay has now banned me from receiving large packages through ANY of their shipping programs including domestic... And they've done it all behind my back without telling me.
Normal stuff I order goes through Ebay just fine, but the Kaypro triggered the ban, and the seller was prevented from using ebay to book the transfer of the item through Sendle as would normally happen domestically in Australia - At the same time Ebay are telling them that they are "Looking into the problem" as to how my address shows up as prohibited for large items, they are telling the seller that the seller has an obligation to cancel the order even though it's already paid for. In full.
Hmmm... It gets better... So the seller sends me some messages through the Ebay system that they can't ship to my address as the Ebay system no longer recognizes my address for shipping of large items, and that it's specifically my address and do I have another address, eg a friend or a relative, that Ebay can ship to? Otherwise he has to cancel the order. So even Ebay Australia don't seem to understand why my mail address is banned from receiving large items through their system.
I don't see the messages as I'm unwell at the moment, and Ebay is not notifying me that there's a problem but is sending me messages telling me everything is on the way. I eventually (post incident ) find these - and recently JUST these emails in my SPAM folder. Ebay's emails to notify me the seller is trying to contact me contain the phrase "money back" - which is a well known SPAM filter trigger, so all the email notices they send to me are being filtered by my SPAM. Clever.... I'm suspecting that's not a coincidence but there's no further evidence of that.
Fortunately the seller has enough of my details, and is a bit of a sleuth, and tracks down my cell number and messages me to ask if I saw his messages on Ebay... So I log in, and no, I hadn't been notified and wasn't expecting any messages either - I sort things out directly with him, and he goes back to the same dropoff location and ships, this time *without* ebay involved in the booking, and now I have a shipping number, and it's enroute with the national carrier - though at a much higher price for shipping...
And he sends me the screenshots and tells me details from his screen of what is going on with Ebay behind my back.
That's the message he's seeing, and he contacted ebay and they tell him it's a problem with my *specific* address... Ebay has literally banned me from receiving large items by blocking the sellers from shipping them in the first place. It's a normal household urban address with a road and a single-story house, just like any other urban house, in case you're wondering, although it *is* in the world's most isolated city, and it is expensive to ship things here - even domestically. All the other stuff I order through ebay ships to me just fine. I get huge boxes of stuff from Amazon every other week. It all gets delivered no problem. The rest of the page and details he sent show me that it has to do with the size of the package that appears to trigger the problem. It's within all of their other constraints - but Ebay tell him my address is banned.
So it seems that Ebay has personally targetted me, just like they targetted other victims over time. Though it's worse since I imagine it's most likely automatically triggered by the number of items I have bought from them which it is probably not profitable to send to me with their current shipping programs rather than me directly offending their executive, but who knows. Now they just intercede directly with the sellers to prevent them from shipping in the first place. I imagine this tactic is going to affect other collectors too, since other buyers who buy a lot of large packages might also trigger the same issue.
Had the seller not directly tracked me down and contacted me outside of ebay to alert me, I might never know. And I would have lost the Kaypro as well.
I'm pretty aghast at this... Words do not describe what I think about Ebay at this moment, not ones that can be said in polite company anyway. It may be a stretch to think Ebay is targetting me specifically because I posted complaints and warning here, but then again, that's exactly what they have been convicted of doing multiple times of late.
ie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
Looks like I need to start organizing people to ship outside of Ebay now for anything large.... Small stuff stuff still comes through just fine, and people have no trouble sending small overpriced items through Ebay's normal shipping systems, so it's not like they banned me as a customer... They just found a way to stop me buying large bulky items, which, as a collector, I would do way more than usual.
I don't know what will happen about the ban in the future. If I get an opportunity to have someone send me an item through the Ebay system in the future, I might test this further, but computers are an expensive way to test this and 2.5 Osborne's is not something I would normally buy just to prove a theory... I'll look into ways to find out more if I can. Otherwise, I'd really like to hear from others if you have had issues getting large heavy bulky items shipped of late.