eBay product purge has begun - no more contact information

[UK Printed Mugs]

I'm sure like us you may of just got an email from eBay saying your listing is now banned for containing links, email addresses or a telephone number. Wonderful news on a Friday for shops selling personalised items whereby you need to let the buyer know where to email the photo!

[webtrekker]

And add to that the forthcoming abolition of watermarks on your images. We've had competitors blatantly copying our listing product images and our descriptions, word for word. I had to design a whole new set of images to replace them and made sure they were watermarked.

Ebay is taking many backward steps now and are rapidly becoming even more seller-unfriendly.

[GoonerGary]

And add to that the forthcoming abolition of watermarks on your images. We've had competitors blatantly copying our listing product images and our descriptions, word for word. I had to design a whole new set of images to replace them and made sure they were watermarked.

Ebay is taking many backward steps now and are rapidly becoming even more seller-unfriendly.

You need vero membership; product descriptions and images are both protected by copyright.

[webtrekker]

Vero, as I understand it, only comes into effect once an infringement has taken place and you fax in a Vero form with an authentic signature. Watermarking pictures should stop 90% of people from copying your image in the first place and save the hassle of going through the Vero process. Admittedly, watermarking wouldn't work for ebay descriptions though.

[James990]

I have been putting an extra picture on my listings with my contatc details, so wonder if they try to get me to remove that?

[UK Printed Mugs]

That's an interesting idea. I wonder if the technology they use to determine a watermark would be used to read text and parse it for contact info. The eBay support guy we spoke with understood our reasoning and said the phone lines were at a 55 minute wait time as everyone was calling to complain.

[GoonerGary]

I would redirect all those calls to upper management and let them handle it. Ebay were warned in advance that it would affect personalised products. But hey, the arrogance of power.

[James990]

Interesting to note that out of all the listings they have told me to take the contact details out of, not one of them is the ones with the picture of my contact details!!

[Ian66]

The only workaround I can see, to the problem of telling customers where to send images is to put your contact details in the eBay confirmation email they receive after purchase. In the listing just state that they will receive the information they require, after purchase. Not ideal but a lot of sellers seem to be doing this.

[James990]

Hum, now all I need to do is to figure out how to do that!

On another note,me thinks that they are going along th elines of Amazon, whats the betting that they don't allow you to customise the layout etc, in otherwords just like Amazon, you don't have much choice of your layout, so they could end up as a mirrow image of Amazon!