A few days ago, I opened my mailbox to find an official looking letter from a company called I.C. System, Inc. They said they were a debt collector hired by eBay to begin debt collecting activity.

I first scoffed at this and assumed it was some type of scam. Then I began to become worried as I did some Google research and found this was a legit collections agency.

There were two major problems with this. First of all, while I use eBay occasionally, there is no way I sell enough to account for the $60 some dollars they claimed I owed them. I actually logged into my eBay account which showed a balance due of $0, with my last payment of $2.12. Secondly, my name was spelled with an “h”, as in “John” instead of “Jon”, which I haven’t used since fourth grade.

As the collections agency was closed over the weekend, I emailed eBay, after spending ten minutes searching for a way to contact them about this matter. I told them I had received a letter and was trying to find out why eBay claimed I owed them this money. Two days later I received a response, asking me to please send them the headers from the email.

That’s interesting, because last time I checked letters sent via the postal service don’t have headers. Customer support hadn’t even bothered to read my email enough to see that, in the very first sentence, I said I had received a letter in the mail.

I got in touch with the collection agency tonight, who were actually surprisingly helpful. They gave me more details on the account, including the email address and eBay user ID – neither of which belonged to me. They said now that the issue is under investigation my credit will not be effected, and that if I don’t hear back from them I can assume the issue has been resolved (though I can guarantee I will be calling back to confirm this).

I have been a loyal (albeit light) user of eBay since 2001. Now they have alienated a customer for life, and have motivated me to do everything I can to let everyone else know of what happened. Bravo!