New eBay Limit: Two Transactions per Day for Some People

Numerous people are getting limited by eBay with regards to the number of purchases we can make in a given time frame. Even non-gift card purchases are being limited. I bumped into this issue, along with  many DoC readers.

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After making some eBay purchases, the eBay system will stop you from buying more for a given amount of time. Sometimes it will stop you from adding the item to your cart and other times it will stop you when you click ‘Proceed to checkout.’

This restriction is different from previous eBay problems which exclusively revolved around Paypal, and usually revolved around buying e-gift cards from Paypal Digital Gifts. Our issue here is an eBay limitation.

Some people report being limited after two transactions, and that was my experience as well. In my case, one transaction was for a single $100 Staples gift card and the second transaction was for two $100 Staples gift cards. A friend got limited after one transaction for two $100 Staples gift cards and one transaction for three $100 Staples gift cards.

Once you are limited, you can’t buy ANYTHING on eBay, not even a $6 soap dish.

  • It seems that the limit is two separate checkout transactions, unrelated to the dollar amount of each transaction.
  • Unclear if buying multiple items in one checkout (e.g. a laptop and a soap dish) counts as two transactions or counts as one. But buying multiples of the same item (two soap dishes) appears to count as one.
  • It might be that buying e-gift cards gets you limited more than buying other stuff.
  • I imagine that not everyone is getting this max-2-transactions limit, YMMV. And some people may find their limit to be something else.
  • Unclear how long it takes until eBay lets you buy again – one reader says to give it until tomorrow to reset.

Most likely, this limitation is a temporary thing, but it’s worth keeping in mind and trying to buy as many things as you can in one transaction and not breaking them up into two. Also, if you want to buy a few things, be sure to first purchase the one you want most.

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Mike Shannon
Mike Shannon (@guest_263170)
May 28, 2016 02:53

Same issue some of you have been having. Ebay/PayPal just won’t let me buy any Staples GC. I’ve tried Everything, just wont’ go through, so I’m giving up on them. I don’t want to cripple my account again like I did last time.

Hank
Hank (@guest_261988)
May 24, 2016 16:13

If eBay keeps this up, going to short them into next quarterly earnings. This limitation got to hurt their revenue numbers.

jason
jason (@guest_261940)
May 24, 2016 12:53

I got this error 3-4 weeks ago and called ebay. they cleared it for me and I was able to complete the rest of the purchases I wanted that day (maybe 5 more). However, it could be completely unrelated, but I got a forever shutdown from Paypal that they will not reverse about 10 days later. Paypal says it is due to suspect activity, but there were no changes from my previous 9 months of activity, so who knows why paypal shut down my personal account, but I can’t help but wonder if for some odd reason it was related to ebay clearing this error code for me.

Coincidence, probably, but in the MS world, we look at everything bad that happens as intentionally linked!

Roger
Roger (@guest_261921)
May 24, 2016 11:18

Is the “limit of 3” for each individual gas card a per transaction limit, daily limit, or weekly limit?

Roger
Roger (@guest_261968)
May 24, 2016 14:38

Are the gift card sales refreshed once a week?

Dan
Dan (@guest_261896)
May 24, 2016 09:53

Not sure why, but my feedly feed only showed these posts today… as in a day too late. My email subscription as well… Is this a typical delay?

John K
John K (@guest_261871)
May 24, 2016 07:01

Made 3 ebay purchases yesterday without hitting a limit. I didn’t try for 4. Cheers

Mike
Mike (@guest_261831)
May 24, 2016 01:30

So basically eBay and PayPal are being crippled by fraud. There’s no other reason for a business to limit the amount of things people can buy unless the goods are limited.

Alternately I feel like fraud is going to limit how much further online shopping really can go. It’s literally impossible to safeguard from many of the technique the scammers are using now.

leithl
leithl (@guest_261808)
May 23, 2016 23:37

Been having a similar problem for a while where buying from PPDG triggers a fraud alert and shuts down my paypal account for hours.

I can try re-verifying my identity many times, but it will appear to succeed, then get locked with the next transaction. Multiple phone calls to try to fix this but they basically say, there is nothing that can be done–the fraud system is automated and it will let me back in “later”

Aaron
Aaron (@guest_261715)
May 23, 2016 18:54

Tis sounds like crappy news. I’m thankful I didn’t encounter this issue – today I’ve made 5 different ebay purchases. Four of the 5 were for gift cards. One thing to note is I made the purchases at different times in the day… some of them a few hours apart. That wasn’t intensional, it just happened because I kept getting distracted by various things and I needed to make a run to target to get some ebay gift cards.