Heavy handed Ebay (I think)

I have for sale on Ebay a Sony Alpha A700.
In the title I put Sony A700 not a200 or a300 mint condition
It was up for 2 days then had an email from ebay saying it had been removed for 'Spamming' apparenty the offending words were A200 A300.Had to relist and wont get credit for relisting fee.
I have emailed them the following.

I have been selling and buying on Ebay now for Seven years and have 100% positive feedback on over 600 sales and purchases.I am very disappointed that you have decided to cancel one of my auctions for "Spamming" i didnt realise that what i had put was even classed as spamming and i certainly didnt see it as that.
I believe that you should first of all send an alert regarding the offending auction asking that it be altered,NOT removing the listing and re-charging insertion fees.I would have definately altered it had the rules been pointed out to me in that fashion.
I know i am just a small fish in a large sea,but am considering cancelling my account and using some other auction house.
Roy

Am i wrong?

eBay have been harsh by not giving you a chance to revise your listing before it was removed, but you were out of order by putting "not xyz" in the title. It is annoying to those searching eBay to get results for items that they are not looking for.

Threatening to swap to another auction house is no good because there aren't any other online auction houses that are popular enough. eBay know you'll be sticking with them.

Yes I can see i was wrong now having read the rules!!...but i should have been advised first as i lost 4 "watchers"
Roy

I'm a little surprised that they didn't warn you, but only a little - and only because there are hordes of listings for generic items, usually from far eastern sellers, with any number of cameras listed in either the title or sub-title (the ones I see say things like K20D K10D K100D - usually for things like wrist straps).

Maybe it's the difference between the title and the sub-title, but I had no idea that there were rules governing what you can put in them, let alone what the rules were.

So their action seems a bit harsh, if this is the only reason they've acted - especially if this is a first offence.

That said, it is best if the title says what the item is, not what it isn't. I do get sick of having to be increasingly creative in my eBay searches, to pull back the stuff I want, and exclude the crap I don't.

Either way, it's completely pointless to threaten eBay with the cancellation of your account.

They won't give a damn, and might even laugh.

perhaps it's time we used other auction houses such as ebid.
roy

That depends on which auction house gets the best results and the highest bids.

There are a few pitfalls in descriptions on eBay - "as new" is another of them. It seems innocent enough if accurate as a description, but it's a banned phrase in titles.

All in all though it ain't too bad and it does do the job.

Had a poke about in the eBay help pages.

This one was quite illuminating:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/keyword-spam.html

How about less than 1 day to go and 84 watchers?
That happened to me 2 months ago, Why? because I mentioned that the item was also being advertised locally. (against EBay rules)
They do not care, I'm sure this is true.
However if you were a "powerseller" I'm sure it would of been very different.

Well, we've just had our company account suspended because we had the audacity to put our company details in our listings! Only been doing that for 4 years, some people do like to use the phone you know, but because eBay cannot listen into phone calls unlike the integrated Skype, they won't even let you put a phone number in the listings. A lot of the things they do are just pathetic ways of trying to protect their income, and then have the cheek to bang on about the community etc.

Their front page even now (finally!) warns you about counterfeit goods, but only after being fined over £30 million by the EU for not doing anything about it!

I just think they have got too large and perhaps people should start using the smaller ones which after all will grow if they are used more.

In both the previous postings Ebay should have advised them to alter the auction not arbitrarily remove their listings.

As for putting the company telephone number on there are numerous auctions listing those details.
Roy

People aren't going to waste their time and money with small auction houses while they wait for them to grow.

I've had an eBay listing removed as well for a rule break. I felt angry at the time, but I learnt my lesson and I try and follow the rules better now. Overall, eBay has been very good for me, both as a seller and a buyer.

Just about everything thats been mentioned here, I have done at some time or another, and I have never been questioned for it.
I must watch my Ps and Qs from now on.

They make allowances for Australians.

Actually, I think they simply react when people complain (we called them "sneaks" at school!).

Ebay is a natural monopoly, so it will be hard to dislodge them. But equally, like all monopolists, they tend to abuse their power, and the OFT needs to keep them in their sights.

If they get too bad, people WILL seek alternatives.

G

And so they should