eBay rejects Western Union Man as a CD song

[michael_cullis]

eBay has long irritated me by rejecting Western Union as a song title on a record or CD. I never provide the company of the same name as a method of payment, the offending vwords are always in the track listing. I am forced to replace most of the letters with x's. Surely eBay's algorithms can be made more sophisticated so the only look for Western Union in the methods of payment section?

[padi*0409]

Maybe just use a "V" instead of the "W" and "U" ?

[michael_cullis]

Maybe I'll try that instead of using x's

[digital*ghost]

I wonder if some other characters would get it through - eg, using some ascii symbols, ⟒es†ern ∪nion

[imastawka]

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@michael_cullis wrote:

eBay has long irritated me by rejecting Western Union as a song title on a record or CD. I never provide the company of the same name as a method of payment, the offending vwords are always in the track listing. I am forced to replace most of the letters with x's. Surely eBay's algorithms can be made more sophisticated so the only look for Western Union in the methods of payment section?

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???

I see 54 listings for the record

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=western+union+man&_sacat=0

And one for a CD

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_odkw=western+union+man&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_n...

[heihachi_73]

I assure you that eBay's bots really are programmed to be that stupid and would love to remove everyone's "non-compliant" listings to make sellers cough up non-refundable insertion fees and/or FVFs.

I had a similar threat from eBay a couple of years ago when trying to sell a PS2 game called Rocket Power: Beach Bandits (based on a Nickelodeon kids show), eBay threatened to have it removed because it contained the word "Rocket" so I had it spelled as Rcket in the title and R0cket in the description. The word Rocket in the cartoons is actually the surname of the kids rather than of the explosive kind, and the cartoons doesn't even have anything to do with rocket building, fireworks etc. Maybe eBay is just trying to fund the DPRK via their best mate China through fees and doesn't want competition...

[heihachi_73]

Even if you hack around the spelling using Unicode symbols, chances are the listing won't be visible because of the intentional spelling error. The lowercase letters e and s are identical in Cyrillic (e.g. Russian), and the o in Cyrillic and Greek.

[purplemon18]

There certainly are listings already. Maybe the answer is as stupid as not making western union the start of the title, I notice they all have something like the artist first.

Or even sillier, maybe the bot only looks in the track listing for those words?

[digital*ghost]

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@heihachi_73 wrote:
Even if you hack around the spelling using Unicode symbols, chances are the listing won't be visible because of the intentional spelling error. The lowercase letters e and s are identical in Cyrillic (e.g. Russian), and the o in Cyrillic and Greek.

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It's a track title though, so it shouldn't affect search or visibiity unless someone searches for that while including the description. 

If eBay have the CD in their catalogue, though, surely the track listing would be accurate (or would they censor themseves I wonder... Probably  ). 

[purplemon18]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

It's a track title though, so it shouldn't affect search or visibiity unless someone searches for that while including the description. 

If eBay have the CD in their catalogue, though, surely the track listing would be accurate (or would they censor themseves I wonder... Probably  ). 

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Unsurprisingly, ebay's CD database is not great. I've had to do about 1/2 a dozen refunds for errors that were not spotted when we listed the item. Most often it says that the item is a 2 cd set when it only has 1 disc.