E Bay Enforcement of Policy

[e600]

i have bid on a damaged item that the seller is inviting people to view before bidding. I contacted the seller asking for contact details, he informs me E Bay has stopped his e mail as it contains his contact details, I e mail him with my details and e bay bans me for a week.

Is this enforcement a new thing as I have previously given contact detail in the advert should people wish to view it prior to bidding.

E Bays response was bid on the item if you win and it arrives not as expected send it back for a refund.

A little difficult with a classic car chassis which is some 200+ miles away, as in my case.

I am now in the position I have several items for sale and can't respond to questions raised. Sometimes it just defies logic.

[CoolHands]

Yeah they've always taken that line but they've ramped it up in last year or so. You need the seller to put his number in the advert so you can text him. See if you can get another account or someone else you know to ask him a question to suggest that.

for example like in this advert you can see the seller has added his number. Most sellers don't do it, but it's possible. Or suggest to him that he 'revises' his item and adds it there.

Edited by CoolHands on Wednesday 23 August 00:09

[e600]

I think for items where e bay take their payment regardless of sale you can, this covers vehicles. For other items I think they now have a software fix to prevent it, probably in an effort to stop early ending the auction and selling with no commission payment to E Bay.

I have tried to contact him via another account and e bay prevents the message being sent, this covered a mobile number, in numbers, and a second one where the numbers were spelled out.

Perhaps for future listings include your tel number in a picture

[CoolHands]

I have done that before. Also you can send a message with a picture attachment but they give you lots of dire warnings when you do so! I risked it and got away with it. dheads.

[CoolHands]

Actually I've just thought - I should design a website that would convert a phone number into a random sentence, and thus can't be blocked by ebay. When the recipient of the message puts the message back into the website, it converts it to the phone number. I should do it just to fk them up.

[CoolHands]

Shut The Front Door!

I don't need to invent it, it was invented, errr, a long time ago.

put your number into this Morse Code translator. for example 07951232377

https://morsecode.scphillips.com/translator.html

and translate it into morse code. Eg ----- --... ----. ..... .---- ..--- ...-- ..--- ...-- --... --...

copy that into his message and ask him to put it into the site and translate

voila! and ebay can go fk themselves

I shall now patent that idea...

[foxsasha]

I've just had exactly the same thing and my account was put on hold for a week. I don't think it was an automated thing though, I think they actively went into my messages and a real person read them as there was nothing blatant for an autobot to pick up on.

[veevee]

CoolHands said:

Yeah they've always taken that line but they've ramped it up in last year or so. You need the seller to put his number in the advert so you can text him. See if you can get another account or someone else you know to ask him a question to suggest that.

for example like in this advert you can see the seller has added his number. Most sellers don't do it, but it's possible. Or suggest to him that he 'revises' his item and adds it there.

Edited by CoolHands on Wednesday 23 August 00:09

In the last month or so they are bang on it, seems to be their top priority at the moment, I know several people who've had accounts suspended for fairly innocent exchanges of contact info. They're also banning putting any kind of contact information in listings from October.

[Mudgey]

As mentioned above classified adds they don't care about as you pay upfront to advertise and there are no final value fee's to pay.

With regards to auctions and BIN's they are getting overly protective, I've found myself on the wrong side of them and had my account 'permanently' suspended which was then reinstated the same day.

All I see happening is customers getting pissed off because they can't speak to somebody to sort out any issues, especially so if you sell complex/expensive products.

eBay need to take a step back, at this rate genuine local sellers are going to back off and not put so much effort into selling on their platform. My bad experience has taught me not to rely on it and focus my efforts elsewhere to generate sales.