Ebay Ended One Of My Auction Listings - Why?

Drewm,
And when you get a phone # you have to listen to crap music as the lines are busy. Yea, sure. Because they only have one clueless underpaid person in a call centre answering calls for multiple companies and not knowing enough to help anybody with the right information. And all they have is a guide book containing useless bunk information that has you going around in circles. Enough said.

ebay actually has financial motivation to allow every listing that is submitted. But ebay has to deal with different laws in hundreds of countries. They have to be able to show that they have done their own due diligence in complying with the laws. ebay achieves this by relying upon word filtering algorithms. Having these in place gives them a legal justification in any court case that they trying to comply with the local laws. But mistake no mistake about it, ebay would rather not be dealing with any of this either; they would rather blindly accept every listing.

The algorithms runs the same way every time so it is impossible for it to filter seller A's listing but not seller B's. If the word 'Russia' was being filtered than every single listing with the word 'Russia' in it would be flagged. So we can be 100% sure that this listing was not flagged by their algorithms.

Something kicked this particular listing into the realm of human intervention. And this intervention had nothing to do with any software programmer. This was some employee responsible for reviewing listings that had it land on their desk. And like any company, ebay has plenty of employees who make mistakes on a daily basis.

Imagine sitting in dialysis watching employees (who get paid far less than ebay employees) make mistakes that literally put lives in danger every week. We did not hear much about it but a John Hopkins study found that 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Or next time you walk onto a plane think about how many possible mistakes might be made with dire results. Having every employee perform at 100% is simply not realistic.

But I do not think that the removing of Battle's listing was some corporate conspiracy nor was it a programming 'bug'. The most likely reasons include; a new employee, an employee who lacked training, or an employee who does not care.
Don

Don,

Sellers should post the country name as the value of the ebay Item Specific "Country/Region of Manufacture". If not populated, ebay may search the title and listing for key words. I don't know if ebay pays attention to the country Item Specific or not. The problem with randomly searching titles is that sellers can omit the country of origin. Requiring the country Item Specific forces potential violators to lie by commission instead of omission. If ebay supported in-period country names, a more refined approach to determining if a rule violation might have occurred.

Finally, if ebay is a venue as they sometimes assert, then ebay is not responsible for banning the sale of prohibited items. If they are responsible, then they also have an obligation to get it right instead of assuming that sellers are always wrong.

Hi Clark,
Understood but 'which' country of origin? Just let the user pick one? Obviously this would not work since people would just game the system by picking a favorable country. (This would be the same as the 'location' field in the listings.)
If you tried to base it off IP address or the account location then people would just game it by using remailers or VPN services. It does not take much to make it look like you are operating from virtually any country in the world.

I am the first person in the world to support additional vetting of ebay accounts. The issue is cost; vetting can be extremely costly.

ebay is a for-profit company and from my chair everything they do has nothing to do with favoring buyers or assuming sellers are wrong. In my opinion everything they do is based upon profitability. So when they look at things like this issue; they only see profit and loss. What is the least costly way to deal with the myriad of legal regulations across every country in the world? What is the best way to avoid any costly law suits? Simply add filtering algorithms which allows them to walk into court and argue they have done their due diligence.

The fact that ebay allows 'Persia' is a good example of their desire to allow every listing over supporting local laws. No one thinks that ebay is so stupid that they have not figured out the people are working around the algorithm. ebay does not care a wit about vetting or adhering to local laws, they only care about legal exposure and costs.

I do not know the laws in various countries well enough to argue how much ebay is legally culpable in following the local sales regulations. But I am 100% sure that the floors full of lawyers that ebay has on staff all over the world have discussed this issue and ebay has put the current solution in place because it mitigates the most risk vs. the cost.
Don