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Why would you want to have multiple accounts on eBay?
Here are at least 5 good reasons.
1- Protect your eBay feedback.
You can protect your feedback rating by separating your buying and selling into different accounts. Then, when
you buy something from a scammer (you notice I said when not if), you can slam them with negative feedback without
worrying about their retaliation with negative feedback toward you (and most scammers will really slander your
account). Having a little negative feedback on your eBay buyer account is not that critical, but having negative
feedback as a seller can do some real damage to your bottom line!
2- Establish a different theme with each account.
You can gain many benefits by establishing a general theme in your eBay selling account. Your account name, the
items you sell, the contents of your about me page, and the "back-end" or "upsell" items you
should be offering can all be created to revolve around that same theme. You'll appear as much more of an expert
instead of an eBay junk dealer. There are many ways to increase your income when you have a theme...
3- Protection against having to "start from scratch".
EBay reserves the right to shut anyone down at any time for little or no cause, and they sometimes exercise this
power relentlessly. Ebay has eDetectives scoping the auctions day and night looking for users that abuse the rules.
This is good, and eBay has shown this keeps their auction marketplace a more wholesome place to shop. The problem
is, they have employee turnover just like everyone else. Sometimes it appears that they hire a new e-policeman
and give them the "power" right away. You could accidentally violate an eBay policy (their rules are
voluminous and sometimes very confusing) with your only account and be shut down without warning. Usually they
will just cancel that auction and send you a warning, but one time I had the same auction running and ending for
10 days in a row. They determined that it was "in the wrong" category, cancelled it, and sent the warning
letter. They then found the next days ad and threatened me with further action. Finally, they found the third days
ad and BOOM! As you all should know, trying to contact, confer, or negotiate with eBay is a one in a million shot.
I was stuck with the gloomy task of waiting 90 days or having to establish a brand new account with NO FEEDBACK.
I chose the latter, but established twp new accounts that time. It unfortunately happens all the time... even to
perfectly honest sellers! Even if eBay doesn't shut you down, they can impose the dreaded "temporary"
black out on an account that violates certain policies. If you have more than one account, you can at least keep
rolling along if one account gets in trouble.
4- Sell your account?????
Currently eBay prohibits the reselling of accounts from
one "registered user" to another. Early on in the eBay life, before they had all their systems in place,
some folks signed up for hundreds of "neat" and "recognizeable" eBay User IDs, expecting to
sell them for big bucks in the future like the domain name brokers used to do. That didn't happen big time, but
who knows what the future may hold (and there are ways!) As "credibility" continues to be more of a
required (yet rare) asset on the internet, an eBay account with a lot of positive feedback could be worth its weight
in gold!
5- Participate in eBay chats anonymously!
If you like to chat and haven't visited any eBay chat rooms, you may want to check them out. You'll find people
helpful and full of good tips, and you can ask just about any question you would like. Unfortunately, you can also
attract unwanted attention from eBay "predators" or even from eBay
police who have even started monitoring the conversations on the chat boards and punishing those that violate chat
policies (and who knows what those policies are from day to day). There have even been
instances of eBay suspending the accounts of those that spoke too negatively about other eBayers, or God forbid...
spoke negatively about eBay. It's best to have an eBay account set up JUST for chatting! I do!
Open a new eBay account now. Remember it's free!
Note: Current eBay policy DOES allow you to have more than one eBay ID. You'll have to use a unique email address
for each account, but you can get around this small detail by signing up for a free yahoo or hotmail account. If
you don't want to monitor multiple email accounts have your mail forwarded from your multiple email accounts to
your primary email account.
WARNING: Lots of people do it, but using one of your eBay accounts to "bid up" or "shill"
an auction in one of your other eBay accounts is a major violation of eBay policies. Although that action is hard
to police, be assured that eBay watches it all the time. If you get caught "shilling", you WILL be suspended
immediately.
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