posted on January 28, 2001 08:28:41 PM
My husband and I are finally getting around to filing our 1999 taxes. (short, uninteresting story) I clicked on to the "entire account" under my ebay on all of our id's, and found to my dismay that a large portion of our accounts have gone missing. They all start in September of 1999. We started selling in January of 99. Through emails to a great guy at vrane, it's been determined that he can't access the information either. Where o where have my account histories gone? I don't remember getting any notification that they were going to delete my history. What worries me is what if the IRS can get this information, but I can't? Pretty scary. I've emailed ebay, but haven't heard back yet.
posted on January 28, 2001 08:43:01 PM
Did you delete all of the monthly emails from eBay that contain the transaction fee information? If you did not, some email programs have a Find or Search feature. You can do a search, find the monthly emails and go from there.
You can post a topic and ask this forum for bookkeeping advice, so this doesn't happen to you again. I bet there are dozens of sellers who would love to tell you how they keep their records, myself included.
posted on January 28, 2001 08:48:01 PM
My computer crashed last october, so all the information I would need is lost. The bookkeeping aspect isn't really the point here. I have it all written down somewhere. The point is that ebay has deleted my account history without my knowledge. The tab on my ebay says ENTIRE account, not partial account. Doesn't anybody care about this but me?
posted on January 28, 2001 09:08:51 PM
Maybe you are the only one who cares. Myself, I can't see why I would need 1999 data. I have it all duplicated on printouts. I record everything to my accounting software. I keep backups of the accounting data. I closed my 1999 books last March. My boxes of 1999 eBay records are residing in the basement.
Even if the year 2000 data was wiped out I still wouldn't need to look at it. If a fire destroyed my home, computer and records, my eBay income and expenses can be retrieved from my business bank account statements. Deposits are income, checks are cost of goods and expenses, ebay monthly fees are debited electronically.
Darcy
[edited typo]
[ edited by darcyw on Jan 28, 2001 09:09 PM ]
posted on January 28, 2001 09:25:32 PM
same with my account! It was there just a few weeks ago.
darcyw
the point is that if eBay does something like that they should at least let the users know in advance. Or they should just say the account after sep 1999 instead of entire account. eBay just enjoys abusing its users and because of some user's apathy they get away with it every single time.
Let's look at this way. You work for a company and you want your full employment record for some important reason such as scholarship etc. Your employer conveniently throws away your record before sept 1999 and say 'tough luck! who needs record before sept 1999?'. How do you feel? Isn't it as if you did not exist before sept 1999.
I won't be so outraged if eBay warns its users beforehand or if the link does not say 'Entire Account'. Entire Account means ENTIRE ACCOUNT. GDI!
I can understand that others might need the data. Myself, I don't need it and I can see why eBay would want to purge data. There are millions of sellers and lots of data. It all takes up room on the eBay computers. If eBay purges my data I am indifferent.
Your employee record analogy isn't quite the same. There are federal and state labor laws that define the records a company has to maintain and for how many years. If you pull out the statutes for your state you will see you can go to small claims court and sue for penalties for not getting access to employee records.
On the other hand, I know of no federal or California laws requiring eBay to maintain transaction fee data from day one on each and every seller.
As you suggested, however, eBay should probably reword it to say Partial records.
