Told to remove contact info

[oscodapete]

Ebay has sent me messages so far to remove "contact info" in 3 of my listings. I don't have any "contact info" in them. I need eBay's phone #. All I get is click here, click there and back again. TIA. 

[tenbigdogs · Accepted solution]

Hi @oscodapete, You're a successful eBay seller with over 1,200 active listings. If eBay has a problem with 3 of them, if you haven't already, just take them down while you figure out what's triggering the security filters.

After years of abuse, eBay is cracking down on sellers finding their customers on eBay but conducting those sales outside of eBay and denying eBay any profits.  They're not afraid of losing sellers who have been costing them money.

Unfortunately, the filter bots are a little over eager and tagging listings that contain even the faintest hint of contact information that might lead to an off-eBay transaction.  What they picked up in your 3 listings might be things as innocuous as a word end in the letters com or any sequence of numbers that might be a phone number.   If you can figure it out, you can revise or relist, but if you're still not sure you can post them here and others can take a look for you. 

As to customer sevice, the Contact Us phone button is almost always at the very bottom of the page. It always pops up for problems with your seller invoice, so if you still want to call them, use that option. Good luck!

[penguins_dont_fly]

@oscodapete

Where are you hosting your pictures?

Any links that lead off-site are being tagged ... including your Auctiva gallery and links.

Just as an aside ... your listings are not "mobile friendly" ... my kindle had a hard time loading your listings. And when it finally loaded it took 4 full scrolls to get from the top of the Description to the bottom, with just the empty brown background for the last 3 😞

[lure-voldemort]

All of my listings are being flagged as they relist. I found it was a link to inkfrog.com (my picture host and listing service) that has been added automatically to my listings for years. I removed the HTML associated with the link, and behold... eBay was happy again. To verifiy this, I also updated sever soon-to-end listings. None of these were flagged when they relisted. Not sure if I'll have to do that 700 more times or not..... 

[dtexley3]

Currently the validation routine (bot) that is being used to look for contact info and offsite links is still detecting and flagging a bunch of "allowed" links.  

Per other threads this is being worked on.  Unfortunately they did not  turn off the bot in the meantime.

Once this is fixed the listings will no longer trigger a message.   You can choose to fix this by removing all links to Auctiva, Inkfrog, etc from your listing.  The best way to do this is to end the listing, sell similar and re-enter the description without using your 3rd party listing tools.

[musicmanhs]

This has happened to me, but in a message to a potential buyer. They requested information on a shipping company. I gave the name, address, phone, and e-mail. Is it the e-mail that is setting off the bot? Thank you!

[k-mansparts]

Apparently a link to within Ebay sets it off too. CS was useless went contacted.

[cynthealee2]

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@k-mansparts wrote:

Apparently a link to within Ebay sets it off too. CS was useless went contacted.

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Any links to eBay need _blank for it to work.  It's why all of mine are being flagged.

[fashunu4eeuh]

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@musicmanhs wrote:
This has happened to me, but in a message to a potential buyer. They requested information on a shipping company. I gave the name, address, phone, and e-mail. Is it the e-mail that is setting off the bot? Thank you!

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Hi. It is likely both the phone number and email that is triggering it.