I had an old chair taking up space, so I decided to list it on Marketplace. Photos, measurements, description. Almost an hour of work. I hit publish, and a line appeared saying my account showed suspicious activity and could not post right now.
I looked at the chair for a while. It is a normal chair. I am a normal person. What is suspicious about that?
First I blamed the listing
New photos, living room instead of a white wall. Removed the words "need gone fast." Dropped the price from 40 to 35. Tried again. Same line.
Then I wondered if the word "chair" was the problem. Renamed it "wooden backrest chair." Still no. Changed the category. No.
The chair was never the issue
I read the help center and a few forum posts and got the rough idea. Marketplace cares about the account itself, especially new ones, or accounts that are inactive and suddenly start selling. It is not worried about the chair. It is worried about an account that appeared out of nowhere to sell something.
My account was new, barely used, and I had signed up through a proxy on a datacenter IP. The IP lookup showed a location that did not match the address I had entered. Put together, that reads as suspicious activity.
Things that did not work
- Deleted and reposted four times. Blocked every time.
- Swapped three sets of photos. Nothing.
- Lowered the price to 20. Nothing.
- Changed categories. Same message.
All of that was fiddling with the content while the account state was the actual gate. Wrong direction, wasted effort.
How it finally posted
I stopped clicking publish for two days. I used the account normally: browsed, read posts, joined a couple of local groups, posted nothing.
Then I moved to a clean network exit whose location matched the city on the account. On day three I uploaded the same chair, same description, same photo, and it went through.
After that I did not dump ten listings at once. Two in a week. Slow.
My order of checks now
Account age, normal activity, and whether the current IP matches the city on the profile. The first two take time. The third takes two minutes.
I use the IP lookup for location and the proxy check for proxy traits. If the exit is in a city I have never been to, I do not post. I change it first.
How it felt
It is just a chair, so not a big deal. But "I did nothing wrong and I am still not allowed" is an unpleasant feeling. Later I understood: it was not targeting me. It simply did not know me.
Getting it to know you takes time and patience. You cannot rush it.