Getting yourself set up in a new country is a significant life change which takes time, effort, patience and a lot of learning.
I've been prepared for most of it, but just experienced a fun one that I didn't expect.
I've had an eBay account for about 25 years I think. I didn't use it a lot, because in New Zealand there is a dominant site called TradeMe which does the same thing. But eBay was good for certain unique gadgets, and especially for hard to find music and old radio shows.
Now that Bonnie and I are settled into our apartment and we're preparing to do the big things like get my studio set up again, there is a hard to find but important gadget I need to buy, since I'm using the one I have in my office at the NFB. A quick online search told me that eBay would be the quickest place to get it.
It was a smooth process. I use a unique password for every account I have, thanks to 1Password, so I logged into eBay and switched to passkey authentication for the future. Parenthetical tech tip, use passkeys wherever you can. They're more secure and convenient than passwords if you are using a password manager.
I also went through a verification process where they texted me at my New Zealand number, which I still have access to in addition to my US one.
Since I don't live in New Zealand anymore, I deleted my NZ address, changed to my US phone number so I won't get locked out in future if I lose my NZ number, and I added my US address so I can get the things I buy. All necessary steps when you've moved countries.
I then made my purchase and was impressed by how accessible and swift the process was. I made a mental note that I should mention on the old social media what a good experience I'd had. It is important to point out the good things as well as advocate for change when that's needed.
Well, I jinxed it with my optimism, that's what I did.
About an hour after I made my purchase, I received an email of doom from eBay informing me that my account had been suspended because it had been hacked and fraudulent activity had been detected. To some degree, I understand this. They had detected a log-in from a different country than the one I normally use, and a US credit card was used to make a purchase. Yet some of these changes involved two-factor authentication, which means that the hacker would have needed to have snatched my iPhone out of my hands in New Zealand and logged in from the USA. I do wonder now whether paying via PayPal may have avoided this problem because it would have been another service I would have logged into and demonstrated that I am me. I mean I think I am me, this is too big a philosophical question to break my brain with at the moment.
Anyway, while I was a bit perturbed, I thought it would be easily fixable if I got in touch with the nice eBay people and gave them reassurance that I am the genuine Jonathan Mosen, accept no imitations.
The email I received sent me to a page and told me to activate a link that did not exist on the page they directed me too. Great start there guys. Finally I found the appropriate contact section, and it invited me to sign into my account to proceed.
At this point, I was confronted by a captcha from HCaptcha. Yes, if this was audio, this is the bit you would hear dramatic doom music. I am afraid this never ends well, in my experience. Getting their accessibility cookie is a tedious, time-consuming process, and once you have it, I often find that it simply doesn't work when you try to solve their convoluted puzzles. I was unable to log in to try and recover my account on my own. I ended up having to delete the unfit-for-purpose accessibility cookie, and have Aira come to the rescue and solve the captcha for me.
Contending with HCaptcha took a while, but when I finally overcame it, I was able to have an eBay "customer support" person call me within a minute of submitting the form.
I was confident that I was about to get my account back, because surely there are eBay users who move countries from time to time? I explained the situation. She asked a few reasonable questions which I was able to answer without hesitation, and then she put me on hold. I've spent a lot of time on hold with eBay over the last few hours. They have this extraordinary little loop of classical music that cuts off abruptly and loops around. It's kind of like a broken tooth. Once you notice it, it's difficult to un-notice it.
Oh, for my family in New Zealand reading this, I have not actually broken a tooth. Chill.
Finally she came back and informed me that they couldn't get my account restored. I asked her why that was, and she said because too many changes had been made at once. I told her that while I appreciated that she was only the messenger here, it seemed pretty obvious to me that if you're living in a new country, you're going to have to change your phone number and your address. Surely people have done this before?
I asked her what she suggested I do next, and she said the only thing I could do was create a new eBay account. I asked her if she would please delete the suspended account, and she said she couldn't do that, because once the account was in this state, there was little they could do with it.
I said to her that she seemed to accept that I am me, and she seemed to accept that the algorithm that did this had done so in error, and yet she still couldn't delete an account so I could use my primary email account to set up a new one? She confirmed that my summary was indeed accurate and started saying "thank you for calling eBay Customer Service", which is corporate speak for "go away, you annoying little person".
I gently intervened and asked to talk to a supervisor. She said sure, a supervisor will call me back within 48 hours.
Well, a few hours later, a supervisor phoned me back. I appreciate that, I wasn't expecting the call to be returned. As is often the case with this sort of thing, I had to tell my story all over again, then either to further build my character, or to dispense further karma for when I should have been a better person, she put me on hold and gave me another broken tooth moment with that classical loop that ends abruptly in the middle and starts all over again.
She came back after some time, cautioned me that this would take a while and asked if I was sure I really wanted to do this? I could tell she was hoping I'd have something better to do, like, oh I don't know, break down another huge cardboard box from New Zealand or something. But hey, I'm tenacious. I told her sure, why not? Eventually she came back and told me she was going to transfer me to the person who could make all my dreams come true and get me back on eBay! "Great, hi I'm Jonathan. What's your name?" I said. Only to be responded to by "beep, beep, beep". "Beep beep beep?" I said. That's a great name. But then I realized that the call had been dropped in the transfer, and that's the last I've heard from eBay.
The work-around? I've created an account using my Apple Account, which uses my primary email. I used the hide my email feature, so as far as eBay is concerned, they are getting an email address that hasn't been used on eBay before.
Fun and games. But that hCaptcha issue is a real problem, and probably a topic for a different forum and time.
Hope you are rocking your weekend. And maybe I've put a Weird Al song in your head.
NationalFederationOfTheBlind
Josh S
JamesWNeal
AJ Sadauskas
Jonathan Mosen
