I over 500 items on eBay, many are bigger ticket items like heavy equipment and large trucks. eBay suspended my account last week and tried to do it again today. I had a very long talk twice today with an eBay rep.
When someone who is looking at a $25k-100k piece of equipment I have for sale the most times want to talk to an actual person on the phone. So we have our phone number on listings and will provide it in the messages sometimes.
We then can talk details about the equipment and such so the buyers can make a purchase based on the conversation through eBay.
Well ebay does not like this and I have been told not to do this but how am I supposed to talk to my customer base. We advertise in different areas and have walk in customers. Today for instance a buyer from Michigan wanted our number to talk about a skid steer. So we provided it and talked about the machine. A couple hours later a totally different customer stops by from Kentucky and buys the machine so we end the item on eBay. In the meantime eBay views this message and saw that I shared out my number then a couple hours later ended the listing so they think I am doing deals outside of eBay which I am not. It was sold to a different customer and I am trying to convey this to the eBay rep.
Last week a buyer in Canada wanted to talk about a pair of axles I had for sale but wanted to talk so he could make sure they would fit his needs and such. eBay against flags this and suspended my account even after the person purchased them through eBay.
So the rep tells me that the buyers need to commit to buy the item on eBay before we can share contact info. So I ask him would you just commit to a buy it now of say $50k without talking about something.... well no he said.
And I as a seller would be at a loss because while this person is trying to make his mind up for a week or two while we talk about the machine would be loosing potential buyers because it's off the market.
So he tells me just to take my phone numbers off the non eBay motors listings to comply, but it's ok on eBay motors because we sell on both sites.
But what bothers me is there is hundreds of thousands of listings with contact numbers and emails on them.
Another thing is we get 2-3 calls a month from people seeing some of our equipment for sale on stolen listings and pictures for half the price of what we are asking and they will buy them then ask us how they can pay for the item when we did not sell it. But the eBay guy today did not care about that stuff because it did not effect there bottom line.
I am very disappointed in some of there rules that just don't pertain to everybody or every deal
