Ebay - Rules and listing issues

paulears

Free Member
Jan 7, 2015
5,669
1,670
Suffolk - UK
I'm not sure I have a total answer to provide here, but in the past few days I've had some listing removed. I thought it odd, because the product in question I have been importing and selling for two years with no issues.

For a long time now, you could not advertise say, a Fender guitar and add in the title, (Gibson, PRS, Rickenbacker) to catch those in a search - and fair enough, but you could include sub brands, where a single product is sold under a number of different 'brands' so an advert for a Pofung radio could have (Baofeng) added to the title because people searching would use either of those two brands. No more. You cannot do this - I did and got a removal, and a 'bad mark'. I resisted, grumpily, with just the one brand - and then got it removed again! This time because I had relisted it in the wrong category. Ham Radio - where practically all my buyers would be looking. Ebay say that it should be in Business Radio - decided by them, to be the correct home because the radio uses the android operating system making it a phone! it is not a phone. I spoke to Ebay and the conversation revealed a few things that could be useful to others. Ebay collate brand names from the boxes in the sales listing and now all listings - titles and the ad as a whole - are scanned for multiple brands. Again, keywords also flag up possible wrong categorisation, and then when reviewed by a non-expert, they remove them. They eventually agreed I could list in the right section and removed the strike, but they will not shift on multiple brand names, confirming that they are bad news, anywhere in the ad. Not ideal, but that's how it is. They are implanting this on every category. Worth knowing about!
 
Glad they are enforcing the 'brand rule'. Always frustrating for a particular brand and products that aren't the brand turn up. If I want a Gibson guitar I don't want Fender or PRS etc etc turning up in the search results.
 
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Jeez, why do they try to automate literally EVERYTHING? It just causes these stupid unnecessary issues. I'm sure they can afford the staff.
 
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It's the notion of selling these items at say 50p profit x 10,000 listings...volume rubbish. As humans we seem to continue to take the quality from all areas of life to save 1c. Idiotic business model unless you are a corporation IMO.
 
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You had quite an experience there. Sadly I don't think you are alone - eBay needs a lot of work!
 
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You had quite an experience there. Sadly I don't think you are alone - eBay needs a lot of work!

There are things that they could do better but on the whole.pretty good. I'd rather have them as they are as without we would lose a lot if income.
 
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A few bad eggs always dilute the integrity and professional standing of any platform. Mass consumerism is dictating the trends and that's the fault of all of us!
 
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I think with the mounting fees on amazon and ebay it's getting cheaper to run your own shop and market yourself- depending. You can always keep all options as well while you try. I think you can get a decent e-commerce solution with wordpress and woocomerce that will rank nicely over 8 months. No big expense like the old days.
 
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Jeez, why do they try to automate literally EVERYTHING? It just causes these stupid unnecessary issues. I'm sure they can afford the staff.

Yes indeed they can afford the staff. Can you afford them having more staff? As of course the company itself is not going to pay for anything as it has no money of its own.
So if they charge you extra to sell in order to pay for more staff you would be happy?
 
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I think with the mounting fees on amazon and ebay it's getting cheaper to run your own shop and market yourself- depending. You can always keep all options as well while you try. I think you can get a decent e-commerce solution with wordpress and woocomerce that will rank nicely over 8 months. No big expense like the old days.

Each occasionally increases their fees. You are aware that over time costs tend to go up?
Wages, fuel, utilities, phones etc tend to go up in price. So would be very surprised if any company you used long term kept its prices from going up.
 
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It's the notion of selling these items at say 50p profit x 10,000 listings...volume rubbish. As humans we seem to continue to take the quality from all areas of life to save 1c. Idiotic business model unless you are a corporation IMO.

What is wrong with 50p profit?

50p x 10,000 listings is £5k profit. There have been times in the past I would have almost killed for that much profit.

Now suppose for that 50p profit the cost in time was 15 seconds. Would that be a good use of time? Context matters too - a £5k profit over 3 years would be bad, a £5k profit a day may be good.
 
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Jeez, why do they try to automate literally EVERYTHING? It just causes these stupid unnecessary issues. I'm sure they can afford the staff.
The automate everything because they list millions of items. Most people have no issues with listings, I can find the stuff I want easily, most of the time I never even notice the categorisation.
 
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The automate everything because they list millions of items. Most people have no issues with listings, I can find the stuff I want easily, most of the time I never even notice the categorisation.

Oh yeah lol... Same actually, got weirdly worked up there...
 
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