2 days ago I received email notification from eBay that they had divulged my personal details to one of my previous buyers. Now that would be OK if they were currently involved in a transaction, but this particular buyer had purchased an item from me at the beginning of last month, immediately left me malicious and intentional negative feedback (which was later removed by eBay on appeal) and the transaction was concluded just on a month ago.
I immediately rang CS and was told that this shouldn't have been allowed to happen and the rep was horrified and apologised profusely. The rep then lodged a report and started an investigation into both the circumstances under which this had occurred, as well as the buyer concerned because under eBay's own User Agreement she had no right to be given my personal information. I was also told to report any form of harassment by this person, in which case further action would be taken.
I also wrote them a scathing complaint about their appalling lack of security and received this reply (salutations removed)...
Thanks for your email about the message that the buyer is asking for your contact details.
Buyer has the option to ask for your contact information if there's an existing transaction between you and your buyer. It is a common practice for your trading partner to ask for your information since this is an online business.
If you don't want to communicate with your buyer, you can just block the buyer and ignore their messages. If you will receive any harassing emails from the buyer, please don't hesitate to contact us and we can help you in investigating the buyers account for any eBay Policy violation.
I replied immediately, pointing out once again that the transaction had been concluded a month ago and that they had no right to pass out my personal details to somebody who clearly had no need for them, other than to harass me, and received the following virtually unintelligible response...
Thank you for your email. We make sure that We still be able to hold the request an secure your privacy. We immedeately (sic) take an action. We apologize for inconvenience.
"We apologize for inconvenience" indeed! Well that's pretty bloody big of them, don't you think? As you can imagine, I'm really angry with eBay at the moment and am very much inclined to take the matter further, but in the mean time, I think it's very important that all sellers out there should know that their privacy means absolutely nothing to eBay, and they're quite happy to breach both their own User Agreement and the Australian Privacy Laws.
