Why Am I Blocked From Bidding?

Twice in the last 24 hours I've been blocked from bidding on ebay items offered by two different sellers, both located in the US.

In both cases, I wanted the item very much and would have paid much more than the going bid for it.

The message I get reads:

'This seller has set buyer requirements for this item and only sells to buyers who meet those requirements.

You are unable to bid on or buy this item because:

You either don't have a PayPal account or your PayPal account is not linked to your ebay account.'

But I do have a Paypal account and it is linked to my ebay account.

Even worse, I am blocked from contacting the seller to ask a question about this matter.

Does anyone know what's going on here?

Has this happened to anyone else?

Jimjamtwo, I have no idea why you are experiencing a problem. I just put in a bid on an item with a US seller and it was accepted.
Have you gone into your PayPal account and verified that it is still valid? Has your credit card expired?

I get that from alot of overseas auctions that just don't set the shipping parameters properly. Doesn't make sense from a US seller to block a US bidder though. Possible that the seller is not actually in the US. I also collect gems and have uncovered and reported several scam artist with accounts that were totally misrepresented. This type of stuff is running rampid throughout ebay and they don't seem to care.

jimjamtwo is in Australia, not US

Yes, this is a problem I have all the time. Very frustrating, especially when you find something you really want.

Sellers who will not send outside their own country or to certain countries are losing many bids from me ! As Jimjam stated, you can't even email them to negotiate.
In the past, I have asked friends in those countries to bid for me if it's something I really want.

But very frustrating.

Londonbus1

It used to be that in your PayPal account you had to have the ebay info (password / username) correct and if you changed it in ebay it also had to be changed in PayPal. Not sure if this still holds sway though.

Is the seller accepting the currency that you are set to pay with, that is if you have only certain currencies set to pay with?

Does the seller have bidders from Australia blocked maybe? (shown as does not ship to Australia.)

In a sense, I'm relieved to find out that others have experienced the same problem. I guess otherwise I'd feel like they have blocked me personally for some mysterious reason.

Anyway, what I suspect is that some sellers have excluded foreign bidders by accident. It's difficult when I'm not even allowed to write to them to ask them if they have done this intentionally.

Who is the seller and I will look see what they have going on or write them for you.
Doug

Thanks for the offer, Puzzler. In one case the auction has closed, so there's no point, but in the other case, it's still going. I'll send you a message with the seller's name.

Smauggie should be blocked from anything Rod222 wants.

Could someone point out valid reasons for blocking a buyer. I suppose an excessive number of returns might be a valid reason. What are some others?

Another reason a seller might block a bidder is if he has bid on items and never paid for them. We had one of these ages ago when a guy "bought" a piece of porcelain my wife was selling on. After he had won the auction we heard nothing for a week, then he sent an e-mail saying he had changed his mind! He was the only bidder so we couldn't "second chance " the item. I did block him from any more bids on our items, he was just a time-waster.

Its not relevant to JimJams case, but another reason some sellers automatically block bidding is if a buyer has zero feedback, or keeps their feedback private.

The way .com sets up the mailing system with the tick the box answers are only for the mailing types inside USA. There is no way that I as an Australian user can use Australia Post as an option the way the listing works. It has created a confusion for our Australian buyers. For some strange reason our listings at times on .com have stopped anybody other than USA bidders on the lot. But the "not able to bid countries" people have been able to contact us and we have been able to reset the mailing which has changed by itself. .com seems to want us to be USA users only.

I've never understood any seller, in any country, refusing to post to other countries (excluding the well-known "problem" countries). I subscribe to another site where many US sellers think the world stops at their borders. They seem amazed that anyone ELSE would buy their goods, and they have to amend their listings to sell to we heathens.

No offence intended, but all of these issues that I have come across have come from US sellers.