If it works, it would be nice, but I'll wait and see what the ulterior motive really is. If it was to help sellers, there are a lot more important things they could do. My first reaction upon reading this was that it was more likely a way to see who still had active/current email addresses on file. That might be one motive, but I doubt it is the main one.

I believe the idea of promoting the good side of online activities is admirable and something more online companies should get behind - the scammers have been getting all the press! But the message needs to be a bit clearer. If you can't figure out the message even after the commercial is over, has it really done its job? This may be a case of "subtle to the extreme," where the message is so subtle that it simply gets lost.

My husband and I left Ebay not because we were affected by the billing snafus but because many of our friends (that we'd met through Ebay) were. And the billing incidents are still happening.

I for one would rather starve then go back to a company that doesn't seem to have any moral fiber.

The most irresponsible aspect of Ebay's administration is that they have the finances and the technical capability to make the "rules" explicit and prevent misunderstandings, but they don't. They abdicate and encourage this kind of vigilante ambush to unsuspecting folks.

How does Ebay reconcile "The Power of All of Us campaign helps us express our core belief that people are good," - that warm fuzzy community image when the Frik-n-Frak sequence is repeated frequently: Ebay user signs up and creates a reputable business, using a common sense balance of good products, good service and good marketing.

Someone reports the unsuspecting seller for an infraction of one of the many vague and less than specific fuzzy logic rules of the Ebay-is-a-community-selling-venue-not-a-responsible-business-entity-subject-to-reliable.

Seller is caught between shock and suspicion, but forges ahead with more common sense - only to find themselves, in another world, much like Alice in Wonderland's discovery "down in the rabbit hole" - where rules and games are played in caricature fashion.

My belief is that this kind of problem is secondary to the irresponsible technical and billing problems Ebay has created, but is likely one that will continue to erode the "trust community" base as more and more sellers realize how vulnerable they are to "off with your head" decisions.

I have received two erroneous trademark violations and several erroneous keyword spamming violations. It's like getting called to the principal's office because some other kid didn't do their homework. You don't know what the heck they are talking about, only that you are being personally attacked and chastised.

At least in the case of the trademark violations, I could contact the erroneous accuser and got profuse apologies. Do I know that VERO has taken those black marks off my record? No. Do I think that could be a problem. Yes.

In the case of the keyword spamming (for historical research kits in the genealogy category), I have theorized that the complaints came from someone shopping in the wrong aisle. For example, one case looks like that of a person who might have been looking for hockey player memorabilia for a Canadian with an unusual name, when that is also the name of priest who created the base works for French-Canadian genealogy records in the 1800s. However, there is no mechanism for responding to the individual and clarifying their perception or the misleading fuzzy logic of Ebay statements.

In several long email discussions with Ebay support, the road got even murkier. One support person's cut and paste errors likened my listings to jewelry and magazines (though I would question even those statements if they applied). Ebay support finally acknowledged that I was not misrepresenting my listings with extraneous terms, that I did have repeated "exactly as described" feedback and so on.

But when we got down to exactly what was excessive keyword use (ie I should tell the researchers they might get what they are looking for?) and I gave Ebay support more than half a dozen examples of other reputable sellers with detailed, well-described items, the response was to tell me how to report these sellers!

I flatly refused to play that game, and then proceeded to give them stats from Ebay's own affiliate/service provider for Ebay store search terms and page views showing that most folks were getting to my listings by browsing not by keyword searches. Only about 200 total (about 40 unique) searches were reported to lead folks to my listings (the highest keyword/search term count was genealogy) over the course of 7000 page views - so if I was spamming, I was clearly failing.

Then a new support person came into the picture and gave me the suggest@ebay.com contact so I could help them improve their search capabilities since I seemed to be complaining about the search features!

The point finally being that this discourse had drifted back into outer space, where it all began. They probably still have my account marked for suspension review.

Since I actually decided a year ago that Ebay is a Las-Vegas-loss-leader venue for my core business products and began developing other online venues, being suspended from Ebay has more of an impact on overall business credibility than actual Ebay revenue. After all, Ebay suspension news stories deal with bad business practices, so who wants to have to explain that you are not really a bad guy.

However, since I also provide Trading Assistant services as an accomodation to my bricknmortar customers, I asked Ebay support point blank if I should return all of the items that were scheduled for fall Ebay sales and tell my customers that I am restricted from properly describing their items. No response.

So I continue to list an assortment of items in other categories and have been surprised to learn that Ebay technical failures include the ability to "remember" such basics as the ISBN number on a book relist - sometimes or that their category revisions often defy logic. Paypal integration problems are escalating - combined shipping/multiple item overbilling, salestax errors, USPS postage integration errors, missing payment records/credits/notifications.

I wonder if Auctionbytes might point blank ask Ebay if they are going to be a "warm fuzzy fun community venue" or a reliable business environment when they grow up. I see this as an adolescent phase in Ebay's business development, clearly lacking in a mature sense of responsibility for their own actions, blithely removed from the large gaps between their marketing pitch, "democratic" administration and technical implementations.

Technically, the underscores aren't part of the web adresss, but from ebays point of view the policy stands because it is his url, and it is pointing people to his domain.

I cut n pasted the USER ID with underscores in it and put it into a new browser window , it goes to his ebay store.

I then tried cuting and pasted the url www.frik-n-frak.com into a browser and it took me to his web page.

I'm the last person to defend ebays customer service, but my point is he's not a wide eyed innocent who mistakenly chose the user id and now is getting blasted.

The only other place online that I found such a mentality was at Andale. I hope sellers find the other auction sites which are more user friendly and are gaining the support of customers. I say to all sellers. Try these other auction sites. There are a great many of them. You have nothing to lose as many of the sites are setting sellers up with credits so they can run FREE sales.

THEN, I began getting SPAM originating from the Overstock.com website by people who wanted to "be my network friend" with links to click on (which I did not do).