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How do they get away with it?
 

It has been touched upon, the subject of putting a website in your listing to getting around having to pay fees to ebay, but how does someone get away with this?

I was just looking through ebay motors and the first match has the phone# in the listing title. Why does EB tolerate this? Are there more lax rules for EB motors? I know the fee structure is different so maybe there are.

So many of these ads say that the car is for sale locally and they reserve the right to end the auction early. So guy lists his car on EB motors, buyer calls the phone # in the listing, guy sells it to buyer, guy ends auction early because it sold locally, guy saves ebay fees.

Considering how arbitrary EB is with suspensions something this blaltant just amazes me.

One might argue that the telephone number is for enquiries. If the seller just happens to have sold the car off eBay, so what? A phone number doesn't imply that it's there to get sales off eBay and I don't think they have a rule on numbers.

Your own ecommerce website on the otherhand is blatantly advertising a place to buy stuff off eBay and that's what they don't like.

If you want to put your own link on your auctions, you can't without risking auctions being pulled. You could put your contact email with your domain in it but you might get a lot of spam.

Otherwise, use the About Me feature.

isn't there some arrangement that businesses can make through ebay to use their own advertising? I thought I read that before.

Actually you can put your on website Link in your auctions as tcho" stated. I also read the policy rules and it said you could. But its a certain way to do it. For example you can link your website if it have more information about the product on the website..

Like you can say go to "..com" for more product information.

But I think the website you link to can't offer to sell. But there are ways around it. create a 1 page website with product information. Then post a big link that customers can't see to your main website...! Make sure the link is like a banner or something. It's tricky but it can be done!

eBay Auctions - The Linking Rules

Also tcho posted a link to ebay polices and rules regarding this in here somewhere.


If you get sneaky it can be done.

Right now I'm using my website email in my "⊗⊗⊗⊗ auctions". I say something like contact me at ...@.com for more information or any questions. Most users can figure out the website from my email. Or when they email me I respond back with a link to my website in the signutare

Putting your phone number on a listing isn't necessarily a bad thing, and is arguably encouraged by eBay. eBay wants to encourage as much communication between members, and if you're buying a CAR, chances are you want to talk directly to the seller, and probably even arrange a meeting to see the car in person. I really have no idea how people buy cars off eBay, but hey, some do. I'm sure lots of cars end up being sold off site, directly to the buyer, but what can you do. eBay Motors have higher listing fees than regular listings anyways, so ebay makes up the money that way. And there are enough cars that do sell on ebay that ebay can make a site dedicated to it.

As for putting your website on your listing, it's allowed, just as long as you're not soliciting off-site transactions through your website, and the website is related to your listing or business.

It just seems to me that the way to do it would be if you had questions to contact through my messages and then maybe give out a phone number.

With EB being so anal about so many things that letting something like this occur seems a little out of character