"Island South Of Usa" Ebay Lot

...also known as "Cuba."

LOL.

Jim

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Island-Sou...AOSw1LpfH21u

I was thinking of Australia...….

They are not using the word CUBA to avoid the ebay sensors blocking the sale.

Yup. Same reason you see lots of stamps from Iran described as "Persia" or "Middle East". ebay will auto-delist any lots sold by a U.S. seller that it believes contain Cuba or Iran stamps.

All sellers, actually!

Oh wow, first day in the forum and I learned something new. I didn't know that the word Cuba can trip ebay up. You would think that they 'd figure something out for that given that stamps is a large category for them.

Luckily this foolishness is not an issue on Hipstamp or Delcampe. Use the forbidden country names there to your heart's content.

I had heard awhile back that PayPal can lock your account though if it's found out you're violating embargo rules, regardless of ebay being the method of selling. Is there any validity to this?

Do not confuse use of the string "Cuba" with violation of US embargo rules. What if a seller is offering postal history from Cuba, New York? Left panel filters in the Stamps category on ebay are even more inept. The most common abbreviations used in the stamps marketplace do not match. Is ebay only using the most rudimentary string equality compare? Smaller players like HipStamp do a better job.

ebay is using a simple algorithm because it allows them to defend their business practices as doing the minimum (and least costly) amount due diligence for the legal compliance. Would it be better if ebay ramped up their compliance at increased cost which then get passed on?
Don

My question is specifically tailored to selling items from a country listed on the embargo lists. I recall researching a few years ago as I have a Persian collection (all pre-Iran) and was scared off from listing it after reading issues people had with Iran and Cuba listings (including a locked account, I just can't recall the details) because PayPal is located in the US. So even for us Canadian sellers, where we may not share the same embargo lists, there was risks if using PayPal. Even more frustrating is this is all pre-Iran. It's not like Iran is benefitting from selling 1920's Persian stamps. The same could be said with old Cuban stamps.

The whole thing is kind of silly, really. The use of common sense takes time, thus a blanket policy is just easier I guess. So in the meantime, the Persian book sits on my shelf and people will use creativity on ebay to bypass the keyword-hunting-bots.

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-c...rograms.aspx

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/...licy?id=4323

Don

Edit: Note that this is for US, ebay is a multinational company and has to navigate the laws of many different countries, not an easy or simple effort.

Also note that this community exists largely due to ebay and the affiliate program. Additionally many members here rely upon ebay sales income. Hipstamp does not support this community.

That piece I can definitely appreciate...a large feat for any big company traversing the many places of the world.

Thankfully it is only a few countries that are hard to buy and sell - probably a wee bit frustrating for collectors of those areas but such is the world.

There are 2 separate issues here:
- Responsibility to follow US laws (no matter how asinine) for a US-based company. On that, ebay is high profile enough they feel they need to comply to avoid negative political pressure. That's annoying for them certainly, but many other companies find themselves in the same situation. Hipstamp presumably feels they are small enough to just ignore it.
- How ebay tries to implement that US law. On this they fail, since using a simple word filter is like trying to hit a fly with a hammer. The vast majority of the Cuban/Iranian stamp material listed (on any of the online sites) is pre-revolution, and located in US/Canada/Europe already, so there's no actual violation of the US laws or benefit to the regimes that the US doesn't like. I'm sure ebay - if they actually wanted to - could develop more intelligent ways to keep the material - supposedly new issues for which the profits would accrue to the regimes - from their platform. Bu as Don mentions, they don't, so instead we have this situation of verboten words - that are of course easy enough to get around with a little creativity.

I'd like to see more creative names along the vein of "Island South of USA"

"Large Trapezoid to East of Iraq"?
"Is that a Hammerhead Shark in the Caribbean"?
"Hang a Left from Pakistan"?
Etc.

I would say that ebay does not implement laws nor are they responsible for enforcing the laws. But they certainly are responsible for complying with the laws. For the embargo laws they only have to be able to argue that they are in compliance by using algorithm to check for key words. (Given that ebay has over 1.3 billion listings, it is not feasible to even consider having humans review the new listings, it has to be a programic solution.)

ebay is also motivated to keep the algorithm as non-restrictive as possible; obviously the more listings the more money they make.
Don

ebay is "just a venue". Why should they start taking responsibility now? Don, you haven't addressed the issue of Cuba, New York or US Occupation stamps produced in the United States. It should be sufficient to fill in "Country/Region of Manufacture" or "Country of Origin" Item Specifics" to transfer responsibility from ebay to the seller.