Some sellers are angry after eBay removed auctions whose titles contained the words "Fee Hike" because, according to eBay, they violated listing policies. A small number of sellers had posted the auctions in reaction to eBay's announcement last week that it would raise Store insertion and commission fees (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m07/i24/s01).

Jody, who owns an eBay Store called Beachcombers Bazaar, had posted a listing for "eBay Stores FEE HIKE spirit bangles." The auction had received 44 bids and was up to $160 by Sunday evening. On Monday, eBay removed the listing for keyword spamming (KWS).

Jody said, "The bangles are specifically created for the fee hike and to relieve fee hike frustration, so I don't know how that is KWS. We all know that is not why the fee hike auctions were removed."

When asked why she thought eBay had removed the protest auctions, she said, "Some of the fee hike auctions may have been inappropriate and some may have had violations, but overall eBay did what eBay does best. Shoot first and ask questions later. A low level Trust and Safety employee responded to received reports and rather than look at the auctions and use reason to determine if they should be removed or not, simply ended them. It makes eBay look petty. Censorship is never pretty."

Jody was not alone in questioning eBay's motives in taking down the listings. Another seller said, "I think, eBay pulled these auctions because they were MAD about it! They are a humorless bunch of money suckers!"

Yet another seller wrote, "This is the USA, not a communist country where censoring is a common occurence."

And on a discussion board thread, a seller posted, "It really ticks me off that they can police their site so efficiently because they have no sense of humor, but they can't pull listings of REPORTED bootleg dvds, .01 widgets with $99 shipping, or the buttloads of china fakes that are flodding the market."

And one seller wrote to AuctionBytes to say that, "Ebay is not only removing all auctions with the words "fee hike" in them, they are probing into the auctions and store listings of protesting sellers and removing items for sale that "violate" Ebay policy, as retaliation."

When contacted Monday about reports that some protest auctions had been removed, eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said he knew of an auction for an Apple core that had been removed because it violated eBay's "no item" policy.

"We know we have a passionate community and we ask them to let us know what they're thinking," Durzy said. "We are not afraid of criticism, we expect it and appreciate it." However, he said auctions that are in violation of eBay's listings policy would be removed, and eBay would not tolerate intentional policy violations.

When contacted a few hours later after many more auctions had disappeared, Durzy said in an email, "We will end listings for keyword spamming violations. Including a phrase like "fee hike" in an item title is a clear example of KWS. As I said before, we not only expect to hear criticism from some members of the eBay community from time to time, we give them several forums to be heard - the Discussion Boards among them. But listings that blatantly violate a clear policy will be ended as we come across them."

When contacted Tuesday after most of the auctions with the words "fee hike" in the description had been removed, Durzy said some people were coming to eBay and using the search box to find information about the recent eBay fee increases. (The main search box only brings back listings for sale, not eBay help files.) Sellers were putting "fee hike" in their auction titles to gain attention, a clear violation of the keyword spam policy, Durzy said.

"Listings are a place for commerce, not a place to use as a method for venting frustration or to protest," Durzy said. eBay has in the past pulled listings that made political statements.

"There's probably not a company out there that gives community members more public areas to give criticism, constructive or not so constructive. That's what the discussion boards are for," Durzy said. He made it clear that sellers who continued to relist protest auctions that eBay has pulled would face the consequences.