Wed July 16 2008 07:53:43 |
Mind Ps and Qs When Listing Hot Items on eBay
By: Ina Steiner
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A seller learned the hard way to be careful when listing hot items like Nintendo Wii consoles that might garner extra attention from eBay's Trust & Safety department. A seller wrote that she had listed some consoles with the title, "1 NEW NINTENDO Wii CONSOLE SYSTEM 5 GAMES 2 CONTROLLERS." eBay removed the auctions. eBay said the reason for the removal was the title, but she could not get them to be any more specific, so she modified the title slightly and relisted them. Big mistake - eBay took them down and gave her a 3-day suspension. (Lesson #1 - don't relist something unless you are sure of the T&S violation.) Here's what she said happened next: I finally tracked down a phone number to find out what is going on and got a got someone in store support on the phone, after 45 minutes of waiting mind you. He informed me that having 5 games in the listing was confusing buyers since the Wii Sports disc did have 5 games but buyers were expecting 5 separate disc and they were getting a lot of upset buyers. No warning no nothing. After having the rep talk to trust and safety they refused to remove my selling restriction and suggested that I spend my 3 day suspension reporting every seller who had a listing that had 5 games in the title so that they could get all those types of listings removed. The Wii comes with the Wii Sports Game Disc containing 5 games. From Nintendo press kit: "$249.99 (includes Wii Sports™, a collection of five games: baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing)." So lesson number 2, be careful how you present your information, even in the title. The point of this story is not to drum up sympathy for a seller who had a listing title that may have had the potential to mislead consumers. It's the fact that eBay's T&S department does an inadequate job explaining what policies sellers are violating when they take down listings - this is a story I have heard for years. Sellers need a way of communicating with eBay without having to wait hours on the phone in the hopes of getting an accurate answer. |
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