I don’t know a single eBay seller that doesn’t live in fear of their selling account being limited. It’s doubly worrying for consultants and developers as if their account is linked to a client account that’s limited it could affect all of their other clients too.
This week a developer gave me a call as their account had just that problem. Their eBay account was mysteriously linked to a recently NARU’d (No longer a registered user) eBay account. They had no knowledge of the account, didn’t understand why their account had been linked, and even worse than the selling restrictions placed on their account also had their developer API access cut off.
Having API access cut off for your developers is pretty serious stuff – it means that next time eBay make a change you can no longer update your software and it pretty much prevents you from making any changes or upgrades to your service. It’s not just your business that’s in peril, but it could potentially affect all of your customers and their eBay businesses too.
It turns out in this case it was a simple blunder by the developer, but one that’s not widely known. They used a fictitious email address for testing and that address is one that’s been used by hundreds of other eBay accounts including the NARU account they were linked to.
If you’re a developer make sure that you use your own real email addresses. If need be set up a string of test addresses that your dev team can make use of. Never ever ever use addresses such as [email protected] as it’s likely to have been used by others. Not everyone using fictitious email addresses necessarily has good intentions and if your account is linked with a more nefarious account via the email address, it could result in your account being limited or even closed.
