21 year account 'seller verification' hellscape

After over a decade not selling on Ebay, I decided to declutter and want to list things. Upon trying to list, I got hit with a request for some form of ID. I googled and read some horror stories about verifying your account details and I figured I'd add to that with my own story.

I'm in Australia and the only two options provided were Passport or Drivers License. I don't have either. I read that you can put in a government ID card number in the drivers license area and it sometimes work. Well, it did, I was able to list my item. However I read that they then ask for scans of the ID after you actually sell the thing, which seems really deceptive. Which is exactly what happened.

After waiting a couple of weeks the item sold and within minutes of that, Ebay was asking for verification photos. Now the option also includes 'government ID' as a photo ID option, so I took photos on my phone of my Victorian Liquor Licensing Proof of Age card.

I sent this off and after waiting a day for a response, I got another email asking for verification again, so I contacted support. First they told me that they also needed some kind of supplementary proof of identity, such as a utility bill. Just to be nice I did a proper scan of my ID and after being told that I only needed to include the front of my ID and the utility as the 'back' of the card, I uploaded the scan of my front of ID and the utility bill. There's a 4MB limit per document so I made the resolution of the scan as high as possible.

Two days later after receiving more emails asking me to complete my verification, I called up again and was told that it's an 'automated process that emails every day to remind you verify' but that doesn't seem true, it seems like they email you when you are denied, since I get them at weird times and sometimes within hours of trying to verify. This time I was told (by the same support worker as last time) that I need to combine the front and back of my ID into a single PDF (not a JPG?!) and reupload again, with the utility bill, even though I'd been told I didn't need to upload the back of the card. No idea why they want an arbitrary PDF file instead of a JPG, just another hoop to jump through. They also stated to upload the 'photo' of my ID (not the scan) - not sure if that was a mistake or not but I put the photos in the PDF and uploaded that with the utility bill again.

Well surprise surprise, it once again failed. Three days later I called up after a weekend and now advised my photo ID DOB is 'not good enough' because there are some worn off areas on my day and month. It's 08 / 03, part of the edge of the 8 and some of the 0 are worn off - 8th day of the 3rd month. There's NO OTHER NUMBER that looks like the number 8, and it's obviously a 03 not a 13 - especially since there is literally no such thing as a 13th month of a year... but regardless, Ebay verification decided in their infinite wisdom that that's not good enough. It's a 22 year old ID, that's all I have for photo ID. So it is a little worn.. it works fine for everything else I ever use it for.. so now they ask me to upload my birth certificate. It's starting to get a bit weird, and a bit of a violation of my privacy, but I want to get this done so I jump through more hoops. I upload the PDF of my ID again along with a JPG of my birth cerificate.

Two days later and again of course I'm getting the emails to verify some more. By now it's becoming a cruel joke and I'm starting to get depressed and hate life based on the time I'm having wasted on this stupid and insulting process. I'm advised this time the 'bank form is blurry' - I ask what the heck they mean and apparently ID is a 'bank form'... thanks for making things even harder to understand support. My 22 year old photo on my photo ID is a little blurry I guess... it's a digital photo from 2003?! Maybe they mean that my photo of my ID is not as sharp as the scanned version I uploaded previously, so I made a new PDF file with the scanned copy of my ID in it (because they hate JPGs apparently even though it's allowed), once again along with my birth certificate. I was told if this didn't go through, to put the birth certificate in a PDF also because ... I don't know?! Of course they couldn't tell me why either... I asked to be escalated to a manager or superviser at this stage because I am getting a different story every time from every support worker. They told me they'd get back to me within 24-48 hours.

Of course, a couple of hours later, I got another email saying to verify again.

For my 6th verification submission I again uploaded the PDF of my photo ID and also a PDF of my birth certificate, rescanned to be at the highest resolution possible with the 4MB file size submission limit.

I received no new emails but upon refreshing my seller page tonight, it says to verify again.

I'm about to pull my freaking hair out at this stage. It feels like discrimination at this point to withhold my sale money.

It's now been 36 hours since asking to speak to a higher up and no contact.

What more can I even do?? Are they just going to keep denying me even though I'm providing high resolution scans of my 40+ year old birth certificate, photo ID, utility bills etc? I've offered my government medicare card etc.

How do I end this merry go round? Just give up and never use Ebay again? It's looking like they're going to do it to me regardless but is there some sort of way I can get them to be reasonable?

I'm getting so depressed about this whole matter.

At least I only have lost a few dollars selling something cheap, I decided to try with something low value because I read horror stories about people losing thousands of dollars because they couldn't get successful verification.

p.s. in Australia, a passport costs $412 AUD ($271 USD). I don't even have that much stuff to sell, to 'break even' with the cost of a passport I can't afford to use to actually travel with. And I never learned how to drive, and don't have a driver's license. My Proof of Age card is accepted anywhere proof of age / ID is required. This is the first company/time ever I've had issues with using it. Most companies have common sense when dealing with matters like these it seems.