remove contact from listings

[mongrelfishing]

My Message to Ebay

I just noticed 630 of my listings state that I need to remove my personal contact details. This is 2017 for people to be able to contact us as a business is a basic human right and you may be in breach of many laws including discrimination. Please Take this to management and have your legal people investigate. I think this action needs to be suspended while eBay investigate the matter. If Ebay want to grow and encourage more real businesses online this needs to be addressed. I look forward to your responses on this one and if I am wrong i will agree to disagree. Also if you proceed with this action I trust you will provide a tool to remove the personal details as you did with the active content. I am sure I speak for many busy sellers like me that we don't have the time to go through and change each listing. Thanks Brenton

[digital*ghost]

I'm not really sure what it is TBH, I was very careful with my phrasing and so forth after getting slapped for suggesting people contact me about custom orders (it's been a couple of years since I removed all traces of that, I also used to have a little bit in my TOS about messaging me via eBay - something along the lines of I'll reply ASAP, and if no reply is received within a certain timeframe to please message again as they can sometimes fail, but I got rid of that in my last template update).

I suspect it might be the link to the template site, which appears at the end. I removed the link from one, but I haven't been able to confirm if that's what the cause was, and I haven't done any more as the listing page became completely blank after the update for some reason (all the HTML etc was in place, bar the link I removed, but nothing was displaying in Firefox, so I'm wary of fiddling with any more until I can be sure it won't mess with things. 

I may have to just resign myself to no template at all. I expected I'd have to sooner or later, but I was hoping for later. 

[mongrelfishing]

Makes sense sellers should have to display their details to prevent fraud

[imastawka]

Just found this -

https://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html

Not allowed

Some examples of activities that aren't allowed include: Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any item outside of eBay Posting or displaying contact information in a listing, including email, phone number and mailing address, without the permission of eBay or except as required by law

[digital*ghost]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

I suspect it might be the link to the template site, which appears at the end. I removed the link from one, but I haven't been able to confirm if that's what the cause was, and I haven't done any more as the listing page became completely blank after the update for some reason (all the HTML etc was in place, bar the link I removed, but nothing was displaying in Firefox, so I'm wary of fiddling with any more until I can be sure it won't mess with things. 

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Just in case this is happening to others, I ran a couple of tests last night to try and determine if the weblink was the issue.

First, I selected 50 affected listings for a bulk edit, but only removed the weblink from one and then submitted the changes. The number of flagged listings dropped by one.

Then, as I had to revise several listings for quantity, I did those individually, and removed the weblink at the same time, and the number of flagged listings dropped each time, so I thought I had it all figured out...

But, I woke up this morning and found that the number had dropped another 10, so ultimately I'm still none the wiser. 

[digital*ghost]

My issues aside, which are probably a little unrelated to this thread in reality, I just thought I should add this..

If you do have actual contact info in your listings as clarified in stawka's post above, I would recommend you remove it as soon as possible. I know of sellers who had been dutifully removing the contact info as per eBay's new policies, but missed just a few in a couple of thousand.

eBay ended all of their listings, and the tools to detrmine which ones still had the contact info weren't working, so they had to go through every single one before they could relist. 😞 

[mongrelfishing]

Every one gets a business card and an invoice with every ourchase they make from me. However prior to many purhases I receive phone calls from customers asking questions etc. This gives me an oportunity to upsell and it is more convenient for the customer to see my contact information in front of them than to go chasing it. All my sales still go throgh eBay and I would say I am extrelely good at what I do.

I am more interested in giving my customers a good experience and not chasing around for my contact number is one of them. So just to clarify you asked why dont I send details when i sell my items the answer is I do twice(invoice and Card) and have done it the same way for around 8 years.

As far as free advertising, well I pay a lot of money to eBay each month and if its free for me is also advertising for eBay. We have a huge amount of repeat customers on eBay using eBay to make their purchases so we both benifit.

I like every thing else about eBay, it is how I make my living and have had a lot of input with Ebay over the years. This is the only thing I have disagreed with and I am in discussions once again with eBay to try and get it changed.

[imastawka]

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@mongrelfishing wrote:

Every one gets a business card and an invoice with every ourchase they make from me. However prior to many purhases I receive phone calls from customers asking questions etc. This gives me an oportunity to upsell and it is more convenient for the customer to see my contact information in front of them than to go chasing it. All my sales still go throgh eBay and I would say I am extrelely good at what I do.

I am more interested in giving my customers a good experience and not chasing around for my contact number is one of them. So just to clarify you asked why dont I send details when i sell my items the answer is I do twice(invoice and Card) and have done it the same way for around 8 years.

As far as free advertising, well I pay a lot of money to eBay each month and if its free for me is also advertising for eBay. We have a huge amount of repeat customers on eBay using eBay to make their purchases so we both benifit.

I like every thing else about eBay, it is how I make my living and have had a lot of input with Ebay over the years. This is the only thing I have disagreed with and I am in discussions once again with eBay to try and get it changed.

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That's why at the end of every listing it says  'ask a question'

Ebay have put that there for a reason.

Please be aware that ebay may end all your listings if you don't comply.

[mongrelfishing]

Thanks for sharing that gives me some ammunition that's 2 avenues we can explore

[gec2002]

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@digital*ghost wrote:

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@digital*ghost wrote:

I suspect it might be the link to the template site, which appears at the end. I removed the link from one, but I haven't been able to confirm if that's what the cause was, and I haven't done any more as the listing page became completely blank after the update for some reason (all the HTML etc was in place, bar the link I removed, but nothing was displaying in Firefox, so I'm wary of fiddling with any more until I can be sure it won't mess with things. 

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This a known issue the eBay validation is flagging any ANY link doesn't matter if its Http: or Https: and it doesn't matter that its an eBay approved Partner such as Auctiva.  Apparently the Bots are even seeing internal eBay links to your store etc as a problem.

eBay are aware of the issue and are "working on the problem"

In regard to your Firefox blank page issue try starting Firefox in "Safe" mode check if an extension or acceleration is the cause.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

Clear the cache and remove the cookies

Firefox/Options/Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Cached Web Content: "Clear Now"

Firefox/Options/Preferences -> Privacy -> "Use custom settings for history" -> Cookies: "Show Cookies"

You might also think about changing to the 64Bit version of Firefox if you have a 64bit system, definitely runs better.

[digital*ghost]

Cheers for that, seems to be all sorted now, though I'm going through and removing the links anyway as I can never quite trust eBay's word when it comes to things like this.