posted on October 10, 2001 03:25:36 PM
Hey, I to come to AW with a gripe instead of a "cotton candy and good times report!"
As we know, eBay doesn't police its site. It relies on information from the Private Dick Squad to carry out site policy enforcement. Therefore, I must have pissed somebody off, or perhaps was lucky enough to have an auction viewed by one of the anointed [as if by divine intervention!] ones.
Anyway, the "linking" policy was violated[?]. I built a complete terms of service web site that was entirely, wholly, and completely related to eBay auctions. Absolutely no selling or promoting, period... The site has several informational pages for "during auction information," "end of auction information," "guarantee," "payment," "shipping," "about us," "chat," and "Gallery." I questioned eBay about the warning and they said [paraphrased] "we do allow links to terms; however, the page must be dead and not have links to other parts of your web site. [Keep in mind the ENTIRE web site was eBay auction related]. Also, the Gallery link in my auctions navigated to a special Gallery page my web site. [Kind of a welcome page, plus it enabled changing of the gallery link to sort items by ending day, price, etc.; which, cannot be facilitated if the actual link is on the auction page]. Anyway, that violated policy as well because "we would not permit the gallery link to go to your web site as an interim page." What does that matter? Is that policy written?
In a way this ordeal is funny because the stupid PD could have got me for another violation. I have an automatic HTML page forward on my ME page that directs to the TOS web site. He/she must have missed that one. I'll do a preemptive strike and move the entire site to the ME page. It won't be as professional, and I'll lose the frames, everything will be on the one page. But at least it will be there for people to see.
I know some of you are going to say "terms should be on the auction page," and I agree. My basic terms are on the auction page. The web site was for bidders that wanted more in-depth information. I felt it added professionalism...
There you have it!
You know, it ALMOST makes me want to become a Private Dick too! It's a bit unnerving to be singled out for a mild policy violation [?] when SOOOOOOOoooooo many others are blatantly ignoring link policy! Do a search for "visit our web store" and see the hits. That search phrase and others will pull hundreds if not thousands of auctions.
But I like to sleep at night...
Hey, sales were good though!! Just had to get something positive in here.
posted on October 10, 2001 04:06:03 PM
"It's a bit unnerving to be singled out for a mild policy violation [?] when SOOOOOOOoooooo many others are blatantly ignoring link policy! "
It's true, Ebay ignores the Big Boys who can have as many links in their description or on their other linked-to pages as they want. Welcome to "the two faces of ebay."
posted on October 10, 2001 04:35:27 PM
Hi Morgantown, just over to the links site on eBay. From what you state, looks like you did not violate the links policy. Here tis:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/rulesandsafety/42010011.html
Are you sure you didn't sneak something in?
If not, I would appeal this to safe harbor.
The fancier you get, the harder you fall.
[ edited by jeanyu on Oct 10, 2001 04:36 PM ]
posted on October 10, 2001 04:47:33 PM
Yea, I got a rash of their Dick Squad. Seems I was being reported every two seconds for some SMALL listing violation. I finally STERLIZED my auction listings until I felt like I should have used alcohol swabs.
Then, they finally stopped, after they saw I wasn't doing anything wrong.
Do they ever read this stuff before they start making changes and enforcing those changes?? eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 10, 2001 05:02:44 PM
If your listings was incorrectly flagged as violating a policy, it's important that you protest it so they clear it from your record. Otherwise, the next time someone turns you in, it will look like you have had multiple incidents and then they could suspend you. We have had several instances of CS people flagging listings that do not violate the policy and they do clear the warning on appeal. This has happened on occasion to several of our shops.
posted on October 10, 2001 05:23:06 PMRubylane and Jeanyu, if you have some spare time, eMail me at [email protected] and I'll give you the link to my auctions. Tell me what you think.
posted on October 10, 2001 05:28:30 PM
If they didn't end the auctions i wouldn't worry too much about it.
OK now for my book:
Ok everyone was up in arms a few months back when ebay said you can't link off site, yet there is one company that operates under several different names that claims to be the biggest seller on ebay that still has links back to their web page where they have stuff for sale on the first page which was always against ebay rules and for less than they sell it for on ebay, also always against eBay's rules.
They even advertise a store on their web site your taken to when you click on the link on ebay. Yep you can go over there and sent up a store and just forget about ever listing on ebay again. But for some reason this is not against ebays rules. They use every auction as a promotion for their other services and their web site.
This is the only company/seller that I have ever turned in for the links violations, I've turned them in a total of 6 times now and I will probably again tonight for a total of 7. It's not that I don't have anything better to do I'm just getting my ducks in order so to speak. I actually have a lot to do, I have a new web site that I have been working on and it has just over 1800 item that I have in stock. This next month I plan to launch my auctions with links from my auctions, on average we run 300 unique auctions at any given time. I'll also advertise the web site in every email that I send to MY buyers letting them know about the web site, also a violation of ebays rules.(actually I never stopped on the email)
So who am I talking about? [email protected] and [email protected] They are a publicly traded company and per AuctionWatch's rules you can post their selling names here, or at least you always have been able to in the past. They have always had links back to their web page from day one and it's no different today, though they are in violation of all the ebay link rules, both new and old.
I have all the emails from ebay saying that they have been warned and in one email it says that they have been given 10 days to make changes, hmmm for you and me we get 24 hours if your lucky 48 or the auctions get closed.
eBay has set a clear precedence that they don't enforce the rules equally, or that they don't care to enforce this one, they themselves have said that the same rules apply to all sellers, that there are no "special deals" when clearly there are, I don't know how else to explain it. In doing so they have opened the doors to all that want in this case to have links in their auctions, unless they start making these other companies do the same.
So here's the deal, who wants to stand together on this one? If there are sellers that want to stand together lets set a date and launch our auctions together. I'm sure that some of you have turned in the same seller or know of others that get away with doing stuff that would get us thrown out. If we work together we can spin support out of lots of other auction support sites, I've been interviewed 2 times about my auction business and you bet if they want shut me down I'll start making phone calls. Also there has to be someone that would love to go after ebay in court on something like this, you could actually get it to stick because you have the proof through the emails dates on the sellers ads. etc.
Boycotts will never work, I'll list in any and every boycott because I need the money but with something like this you list 5 times what you usually do, have a network of sellers all pointing back to the fact that this other seller has been aloud to thumb their nose at the rules and we are doing no less, or more, then they have.
Any takers? eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 10, 2001 05:43:30 PM
I also got nailed this week by the Dick Squad. Use of the Powerseller logo without a link back to the PS page. Now I feel really bad.
posted on October 10, 2001 05:54:02 PMjeanyu
why are you confused? the company I'm taking about is the biggest rip off on ebay, they take peoples money and if you check their listings they are often selling 5000 plus active auctions. Usually for all the auctions that are listed they are making good money from their users and yet they close hardly any auctions at all. Right now out of the 5000 listings 21 have bids. There isn't a single seller that could stay in business with those numbers unless your soaking your subscribers. There are dozens of people that have posted over on these boards how they have been ripped off by this company.
All their auctions are in violation of ebays rules, rules that you and I can't break without consequences but that they do all the time without consequences.
They even have store fronts that you can set up and sell through and they advertise those stores on the first screen after you click the ebay link. It costs you 100 to open a store, and they boast that they have opened 20,000 stores in 4 months that's 2 million dollars.
If you or I had a link from our auctions that took you to a site that said, "Hey we just made 2 million in the last 4 months signing up people to sell through a on line store that has nothing at all to do with ebay, sign up today!!" How long do you think it would take ebay to shut us down? They have not violated one of the reasons that ebay doesn't want off site links they have violated all of them.
But wait it will probably come out later to be something like the returnbuy stuff where ebay has a major stake in the company and that make it all better.
eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 10, 2001 06:33:49 PM
wranglers, I am confused because I never ever realized that an honest seller could be called on the rug for an infraction that has been addressed two entirely ways in the ebay policy. And this seller has only promoted eBay and their auctions.
I understand what you are saying and frankly, just want to be an ostrich and not deal with it.
I am reasonably successful on ebay and hope that it all goes away. But---at the same time realize that it is not going to go away. I am now competing with the big guys--but again--do the big guys have my one of a kind item?
And then I have to look over the last two weeks and say, does the ebay buyer want my one of a kind collectible item. There is a firm resounding NO! in the interest and bids I have received.
Do they want Walmart? Well, I am out of luck and eBay is not the eBay I first joined 2 1/2 years ago.
I will go to other sites, others will go to other sites, and eBay will become a Walmart.
Oh well.
It sucks. But the phoenix does rise from the ashes.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:10:47 PM
Wranglers said:
Any takers?
Sign me up. If we get enough takers out there, we MIGHT be able to make a difference. In the B&M world, if I give one of my customers PRIORITY treatment with regard to policies that I don't give to other customers, it is called DISCRIMINATION. I doubt seriously if every AW user banded together and tried to stop this, we'd be successful, but it is worth a try.
Any attorney's here????
If the usual arm chair EXPERTS to EVERY point of view would care to NOT EDUCATE ME on this one, I'd be very grateful (you know who you are....)
posted on October 10, 2001 08:12:33 PM[email protected] Now that is shocking! The brazen, flagrant, insolent audacity of massive link policy violations, and 5000 currently running auctions!
My site is strictly eBay informational, theirs is solely commercial. I never imagined that eBay was this ........... to the small-time seller.
posted on October 10, 2001 08:44:20 PMretailguy
well as I said I have all the emails from ebay saying that they have been warned but I've seen no change in the way they do business. There are several other companies that are just as large as they are, or that is to say they run over 5000 auctions at a pop and they had to drop the links.
makes you wonder who is the majority stockholder, maybe it's time to do a little digging on that one..............
I'm just waiting for the return of my D.B.A. to come back so I can set up my merchant account and the auction with the link is already to go. It's not animated like theirs but it is the same size in the same place.
At this point if they kill my auctions I will take them to court, I have the emails as documentation that they claim they are going to be in compliance but then they are not. Probably all that would happen is I, and everyone else, would be able to have the links until taketoauction removed theirs then we will all have to do without. Which is fine with me all I want is a level playing field. It would also be nice to funnel a million or so in sales from my ebay auctions that I don't have to pay anything to ebay for........
morgantown
Join the club!! I have 6 emails to safeharbor and power seller support, on this one dating from the middle of June. You are lucky they don't seem to want to end auctions as much as they use to, probably because if you get a hold of someone like me with the evidence than they don't enforce this rule equally that you could drag them over the coals in court.
Why does it make by blood boil and make me go off so much when I see this stuff? Try this one on. My wife is 9 months pregnant she gets a call on the phone, I am the person registered with ebay not her, a person named Anna(no last name if I have to remove the name let me know) from ebay calls and tells her that she has just ended all auctions with bids and have refunded the fee for those auctions.You have 24 hours to change the other 980 auctions you have running or they will be ended without refunds and you stand to be suspended if you don't make the changes. THIS IS WHAT WE LIVE ON FOLKS!! I call power seller support, the same people that had OK'ed the template I was using at the time just a month earlier. So I ask who is this person that just called and tore my wife a new one and could I talk to her.
No you can't talk with her, she shouldn't have ended the auctions don't worry about the other ones just let them run out, in the mean time we had started trying to make the changes and screwed them all up because as everyone knows you can't revise a auction on ebay.
Ultimately we had to have all the auctions ended with refunds, change one line that wasn't a problem before but was now, and we lost all the auctions with bidders and we also were down for 2 weeks making all the changes(we were not using software then today it would take me 20 minutes to make the changes and relist them all) so really when you count the time for monies to be sent and all we didn't have any real monies coming in for almost 4 weeks and through this time we had a baby.
Believe me I am so happy that we have our own sites and if ebay went away tomorrow we would only loose maybe 1/3rd of our income but with yahoo coming back maybe not even that much.
eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 10, 2001 08:59:57 PM
"At this point if they kill my auctions I will take them to court, I have the emails as documentation that they claim they are going to be in compliance but then they are not. Probably all that would happen is I, and everyone else, would be able to have the links until taketoauction removed theirs then we will all have to do without. Which is fine with me all I want is a level playing field. It would also be nice to funnel a million or so in sales from my ebay auctions that I don't have to pay anything to ebay for........ "
Wranglers,
I wish you well and will help you ANY way that I can. All I want is a level playing field too, and for those arm chairs out there THIS DOESN'T MEAN MONEY, JUST POLICY!
I just got one of those STUPID emails from safeharbor this week over my LOGO! I replaced the "location" with my logo, it was NON-CLICKABLE and some SOB with too much time on their hands complained and now because my LOGO has .com in it, it is NOT allowed. Yet any logo WITHOUT .com is fine..., so I guess I'm being PENALIZED because my business name has a DOT COM in it!
You can see the logo at my website, I'd post it here, but I'm AW challenged...
www.retailguy.com
The really funny part, is that I named my ebay store www.retailguy.com and that is FINE, but my logo isn't. I feel like I'm arguing with the GOVERNMENT. It's pointless, there is NO LOGIC, and no reasoning with anyone. It is probably because I can't get past the eight buck an hour workers that answer the safeharbor email....
posted on October 10, 2001 10:53:41 PM
What kills me is that 90% of the time these Private Dicks aren't. They are your competitors just trying to clear out the listings for themselves. I have caught several sellers trying this with me. Needless to say, I got them shutdown promptly by turning the tables, and then suddenly it all stopped.
Then introduce a new product, and it all starts up again.
I have had a few Private Dicks that thought I was a problem seller. Why? Because I had too good of offers, and so they decided to pick apart my auction listings.
Not to start a fight or to insult, but my first impression of your logo is someone HANGING themselves. Very clean design, and I like it, but the first impression is a bit strange for me. Second impression was a slave forsale.
Though, I am strange myself, so who listens to me?
Just a cheesy attempt to get people to remember me. Not sure I want anyone to remember that though... Bet I could make more money selling slaves though, instead of jewelry. (Did I say that???) <blush>
