In May, I wrote about a new service called AuctionContact. Unfortunately, it got some eBay members in hot water when they used a "Subscribe Now" form in their auctions.
AuctionContact was designed to allow auction sellers to promote their auctions to existing customers by collecting names and emailing them updates. This goes against eBay's philosophy, which is to limit sellers' relationships with customers won from the eBay site. "eBay removes any listing or may suspend any account that solicits email addresses," eBay spokesperson Kevin Pursglove explained.
"I thought Auction Contact was a great idea," AuctionBytes reader Marc wrote to me. "I signed up and before long I had more than 100 subscribers. Last week eBay ended all my auctions with the AuctionContact code in them stating it was a violation of eBay policy to collect email addresses of its members. I notified Alex at AuctionContact and had my account cancelled."
Alex Stankovic, who founded AuctionContact, confirmed the problem. "According to eBay policy, collection of user information from the view item page is a violation. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of that before. We have advised our members not to use the "Sign-Up" form until we sort this issue out." Thanks to Marc for letting me know about the problem.
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
