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Final eBay Email


The following is eBay’s final email to me. I’m not going to respond, as the point is fair enough. I wasn’t really trying to circumvent fees, however it’s easy to see how it’d be interpreted in that manner.

Here’s the email:

Hello Jeremy,

Thank you for taking the time to write eBay with your concerns. I’m happy to help you further.

With regard to your request for a telephone call, please understand that since eBay is an online company, our focus is to provide support to our community through the use of email. Therefore, at this time we are unable to offer the option of phone support.

I have reviewed your account history and the action taken with regard to the auction listing in question. I have determined that while your auction was in violation, you were provided with the incorrect violation notice. Please accept our apologies for this mistake.

Your listing for “Blogger for Hire - Start or Improve Your Blog”, item number 5142129647, was actually in violation of our Circumventing Fees policy because of the following information in your listing:

“If it is a fit, the blogger is happy to negotiate a deal to make the position a more permanent contract position for a reasonable fee”

This information indicates that you are willing to offer additional services outside of the auction to interested buyers. This is not permitted and a violation of our Circumventing Fees policies. For more information on our Circumventing Fees policy, please visit the following
URL:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-circumventing.html

I have made an amendment to your account to remove the ‘No Item’ (User Agreement Section 5.1) violation from your account history and have replaced it with a Circumventing Fees violation.

For a better understanding of our listing guidelines and how they affect the way you list your items, please visit the following URL:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-ov.html

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing eBay.

Regards,

eBay Community Watch

This entry was posted on Friday, December 17th, 2004, 5:31 pm and is filed under Blogging, From My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  1. #1 by Laurie - December 17th, 2004 at 22:18

    Does that ‘pleasure to assist you’ quip remind anyone else of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation? :-)

  2. #2 by Seun Osewa - December 18th, 2004 at 09:22

    Considering the traffic you get on your weblog, ebay was probably not the right place to list this kind of auction. People don’t go to ebay to search for ‘bloggers for hire’, so the participating bidders probably went through blogs linked to your blog anyway. Too many people misuse ebay like this, but they shouldn’t mind since they get transaction fees they don’t really deserve.

  3. #3 by Tyme - December 18th, 2004 at 15:55

    So if you didn’t have the phrase on your listing, it would be okay to offer your services on eBay? Or is it that services should not be used period?

    Did Darren’s auction get the same red flag as your auction?

Comments are closed.