Question about what's allowed and what's not in listing description

[southeme_63]

Hi all, new semi new seller here, coming up on a year now.

I know I read somewhere when I signed up a year ago that putting contact info in your Ebay listing to try and make sales outside of Ebay was not allowed..  

Are some sellers allowed to do it and others not?

I came across a seller who puts his Instagram name in every listing and says for  a better deal to contact him on there.. I let Ebay know about it a couple weeks ago but all his listings are still the same.. I mean if it's allowed I would certainly like to be able to do that too.

Just curous if if things have changed and I didn't catch it in an update

[itscalledapostingid]

Contact info is not allowed in the USA and it's a reportable violation that could be grounds for listing removal and other punishments.

[r_lresale]

No this is against policy and you can report the seller.

[rosachs]

You did the correct thing reporting the listing, but eBay likely didn't look at all the rest of their listings 'due to time constraints'.  You know... they don't hire/train enough staff to handle the workload, and then use 'excessive volume' as a reason to skip doing a complete review of the offending listing and seller, especially if the violation is blatant.

Not sure if reporting more of their listings would help or not.  Due to the extreme opaque nature of eBay's internal processes, it's impossible to tell if they've done anything or nothing.  But that's just my cynical side talking ... it likes to rip the curtains down and show the machines behind the wizard.

-Bob.

[southeme_63]

OK I wasn't sure, Item number 144688987453 is an example

I found it kind of comical that ever since I reported it and a few others that  I now get spammed with emails offering for me to buy them at a discount... 

[luckythewinner]

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@southeme_63 wrote:

Are some sellers allowed to do it and others not?

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eBay policy enforcement has never been comprehensive, accurate, or timely.

I googled 'eBay contact information policy' and this was the first page that came up:

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behaviour-policies/publishing-contact-information-policy?i...

[southeme_63]

It's apparent they don't care, in a chat I gave them several of the Ebay item ID's and they said yes it was a violation and they handled the issue but I just looked and it's been over a week and it still says it in all of his/her Ebay listings so I can only assume they no longer care about it or that particular seller has permission to do something everyone else doesn't... 

[bonjourami]

Never believe what a csr tells you, they are scripted and just want to go on to the next call, so they tell you what you want to hear to move things along.

[coolections]

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@southeme_63 wrote:

I found it kind of comical that ever since I reported it I now get spammed with emails offering for me to buy them at a discount... 

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Nope, reporting something has nothing to do with you getting offers. Looking at it was the reason; they track anything you look at. What you can do is clear your cache and cookies.

[southeme_63]

I've learned to open in private tabs now.. seems to solve that problem.

[southeme_63]

That's sad actually.. what a waste..

[mam98031]

These are some very valuable links and info.

https://academy.ebay.com/student/catalog?locale=en


https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling/selling?id=4081

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/get-started/seller-fees.html

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/service-and-payments/funds-availability.html

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/getting-paid/getting-paid-items-youve-sold/pending-payments?id=415...

https://www.ebay.com/help/listings/creating-managing-listings/creating-listing?id=4105

[baydistributionllc]

When someone inquires and then they take the item down rather than sell it through ebay, they will get suspended.

They probably won’t get suspended for providing the information but they will get suspended when someone uses it buy around ebay.

I had a situation where they thought I did that in 2016 and I almost got booted. Someone at ebay US called me and I had a lot of explaining to do. I almost got booted that day. I didn’t sell it to an ebay buyer around ebay but they were certain I had. Was a consignment and consignor sold it themselves right after a guy was asking a bunch of questions through ebay. Was $30,000 so that was probably a factor.

They are giving the guy your talking about enough rope to hang himself with.

[inhawaii]

Not allowed.

Ebay will eventually take those listings down and most likely punish the seller.

[onefootflipper]

Here is my take on this.

Don't do what they are doing and don't worry about what they are doing. Worrying about what they are doing will not increase YOUR sales one bit. It will eventually come back to bite them.

Also, what they are doing doesn't even make any sense. They are trying to avoid fees on low dollar listings, adding a labor intensive sales process in order to save what is going to likely amount to $1 after they pass on some sort of savings to the customer.