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eBay niggles that made me see RED today!
By DBL | January 12, 2010
Further to yesterday’s post regarding illegal business seller terms and eBay’s lack of care for the protection of its buyers, allowing its Top Rated Sellers (TRS) to display these terms, I questioned how easy it would be for eBay to stop this practice.
Today I found just how easy it could be and also, how the same easy remedy is so pathetic in it’s current use.
I had an email from one of my eBay for business clients, he’d been selling an item on a buy it now for a while and wanted to put it on auction too. Using the ‘Duplicate As’ function in Selling Manager Pro he just added the start price to the new auction listing and clicked to list … he got this message from eBay in RED:
The item cannot be listed or modified. The title and/or description may contain improper words, or the listing or seller may be in violation of eBay policy.
It turns out that on his buy it now listing the words ‘Make me an offer I can’t refuse’ were fine as it was referring to a Best Offer but in an auction it was a policy violation!
So now my client has a policy violation on his record for the next 3 months! Would not a warning be sufficient? He hadn’t noticed the wording or realised it would result in a violation as it was OK on the Buy It Now listing.
So, eBay, can someone explain to me how your bots can pick up the words ‘make me an offer I can’t refuse’ in a listing and give a violation and the illegal seller terms as mentioned here by business sellers and especially Top Rated Sellers are allowed through?
Anorak is off to let the steam out of her ears, can anyone add another example to this type of eBay double standard?
}:-)
Topics: General Observations, eBay | 4 Comments »
January 12th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Its going back a couple of years , but with one of our sites we once included the line “Make us an offer” on an FP listing to try and encourage the use of the Best Offer facility , and we were told to remove it or face a policy violation.
January 12th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
My client didn’t even get the chance to remove it though Fozz, although it was already on the Buy It Now listing that had been live for a good while, a bit unfair to say the least when there are so many business sellers not displaying their adresses, saying they are not responsible for items lost in the post etc
I’m a firm believer in helping people first, genuine mistakes are a learning experience but this is a little harsh when Top Rated Sellers are even let get away with breaking UK law! The same software could be used to warn sellers of their legal responsibilities.
I thought eBay was trying to clean up it’s act
January 12th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
My point was that we were including it on a FP listing in the first place , can’t see why it was an issue. We once had a listing for a piece of sheet music titled “Make me an Offer” pulled. But thats not the worst one , we had “The Three Musketeers” removed for violating firearms policy………
Yes , i’m in agreement with you DBL. It costs time , money and effort to make sure that you do comply. Frustrating to say the least that some of the biggest ebay sellers don’t comply , especially when it comes to returns policy.
March 21st, 2010 at 8:10 pm
My sister just had the same thing happen to her. This goes beyond frustrating. It’s ridiculous really! Like so many of their policies are. I must be getting really really old because I remember when ebay was fun. People loved shopping and selling on the site. It’s so different now. I actually had a customer ask me to sell her something outside of ebay recently she is so fed up. They think they are only losing sellers but they are sadly mistaken.