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Like everything else in life, ebay isn't infallible, but at the same time it's pretty annoying when things go wrong and YOU are the victim.

Recently I've been lucky with ebay. I've bought the things I want and they have been just as described, and on one occasion when a skirt I bought did not fit, the seller readily agreed that I could return the item and she would refund my money. The only problem I ever had with ebay was not with the buyers and sellers, who on the whole are just ordinary decent people who love a bargain, but with ebay themselves.

It has been a couple of years ago now, and I vowed at the time that I would never bother with ebay again, but luckily my present experiences with them have been positive ones. I was in the middle of a bidding war with someone for a signed photograph of my favourite actor. It was a fantastic photograph and one that was quite rare. There were just a few hours to go before bidding ended and I went on to the site to try to outbid my rival. I found that I could not bid, I could do not do anything - my account had been suspended. I had no idea why this was. I racked my brain to try to think what I may have done to be treated in this way. I knew I had always paid on time, and left feedback. People had been pleased with the service I gave to them when selling and I had never used offensive language or had anyone complain about me.

I tried to contact ebay it wasn't easy and to be honest it's been some time now and I have forgotten what I had to do but somehow I managed to get an email address from the website after much searching and I asked why my account had been suspended.

The worst thing was that this took time quite a few days in fact, and during that time I lost the item I was bidding on, which was very upsetting.

Eventually I received an email telling me that my account had been suspended because records show that you have links with a user called yellowdog'.

I had never heard of yellowdog and sent back a long email informing ebay of this.

They said they wanted to investigate.

I was furious, I felt that this had either been a case of mistaken identity or was just a silly error but all the same it was maddening to be banned from something when you are totally innocent and also to lose an item that you badly wanted.

Eventually I was re-instated and received an email telling me that I did not in fact have connections with yellowdog' but the damage was done. I no longer trusted ebay and was afraid to bid for anything in case I lost it again.

However, a few years down the line, my daughter spoke so highly of ebay and also managed to obtain some fantastic bargains from some lovely people, that I decided to give ebay a second chance and .so far so good.

Learn more about this author, Janet Harris.
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