eBay.ie / eBay Ireland - does it even exist, really?

iRant;

I've been a member of eBay Ireland since 25th July 2004 (according to my profile), but as I haven't had money or a credit card, I haven't bought or sold anything. I originally signed up to sell something, but discovered that you actually needed a credit card to set up a seller account, so no luck there.

Well, my situation is a little bit different, nowadays, so I thought I'd give it a go again, since there's something I want to sell.

I started with reading all their selling info first, reopened & verified my PayPal account, etc. I'd taken good pictures of the item(s) I wanted to sell (='goody bag' of papercraft materials), I'd packed it all ready to be posted, should someone actually want to buy it, and I'd found postage fees to Ireland and abroad. I was ready to list my first item(s).

The Selling Basics page seemed the best way to start with, so there I went, and clicked on the Seller's Account link first, thinking it might be handy to set it up first, before listing anything. However, the link just goes to their Help page about setting up a seller's account, so there's no actual link to DO it.

I returned to the Selling Basics page, and went with the Sell page link.

This seemed fine. I spent a long time on finding the correct category for my listing, thinking of a good title, making sure I'd describe it clearly and thoroughly, including all the important info, selecting the best general photo of the stuff, mentioning that I could be contacted for more photos (seeing as only the first photo is free, and you need to pay 15c for additional photos - if my goody bag was worth more, it wouldn't be a problem, but I didn't want to blow the whole potential price on adding extra photos of a cheap listing)..

Everything looked fine on the preview, so I submitted my listing.

I was then asked to set up a seller's account, and told that I'd only have to do it once. (This suggested to me, that you'd actually need to list something first, to even get the option to set up that seller's account?)

OK, no problem, I thought. I went with the process, entered my debitcard info for the seller fees, and then I was asked for my phone number, so that they could send me a 4 digit number that I would then need to enter somewhere for verification.

This was where I remembered having a similar problem on their site before.

And there it was again.

eBay Ireland had thrown me to the international / American eBay, at some point - probably when asking me to set up a seller account.

Because I was trying to enter an Irish phone number, the site wasn't accepting it, and I could not get through the process of setting up a seller's account. I do not have an American phone number - I live in Ireland.

Now, I know that there are lots of people in Ireland, selling stuff on eBay, through eBay.ie ... So, it HAD TO be possible to set a seller's account on eBay.ie, I thought, and went looking for customer support.

I must have hit the support button on the American eBay (still being on the seller's account set up pages, where the Irish version had thrown me), since I ended up in live support chat with an American support person, James.

He tried his best, but the fact is that he was on eBay.com, and my issue was with eBay.ie, so eventually, all he could do was to suggest that I log in to the Irish version and contact their support.

Well, that's what I did, but guess what - there is no Customer Support on eBay.ie / eBay Ireland.

Yes, they do have a Customer Support button on top right, but that just takes you to the help pages where you'll find good instructions on what you need to do (like, "set up a seller's account"), but no links to where you could DO it.

There's also a Contact Us button, I was relieved to find out, but when you click on it, you'll actually find yourself on eBay.co.uk / eBay UK!

You're then asked to log in to eBay UK, but as I'm not a  member there, and there's no reason why I'd want to become a member there (not living in the UK), I couldn't go any further, and now there seems to be no one to even ask about this issue.

So, what I'm wondering here, is.. Does eBay.ie even exist? I mean, do they employ anyone at all, in Ireland? Trying to set up a seller's account, takes you to the American eBay.. Trying to contact eBay Ireland, takes you to eBay UK..

If anyone has actually managed to set up a seller's account on eBay Ireland, would you please leave a comment and tell me how you managed to do it? (Mainly, since it looks like the only way to do it is through the American version, how did you get past that phone number verification???)

Also, after all this, I actually discovered that my item listing is gone. Probably because I wasn't able to set up that seller's account. Not even a draft anywhere to be found.. Nice.. All that time and effort, for nothing.

I'm going to explore the PayPal options next, so I could maybe sell the craft materials through my blog or Facebook, and just sort payment over PayPal (now that I've verified that, after all), but I'm sort of determined to set up that eBay thing, anyway, so I'm not giving up on it just yet..