Try going on the alt.for sale newsgroups

--
" Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. "
"Dan Conti" wrote in message
...


This seems to be the best info on the eBay rules for posting on Usenet
newsgroups:



"eBay users may not post on Usenet groups (Internet newsgroups) to
advertise eBay or an eBay listing that is inappropriate or
violates the Usenet board policy. If Usenet abuse is reported to
eBay, we may among other remedies remove the listing, issue a
warning, or suspend the user's eBay account.

Please note that eBay can only take action in cases where it's
clear it was an eBay member who posted to the Usenet group
inappropriately."

As you can see.. It is permitted by eBay to post a link to your
eBay auction listing IF and only IF it is appropriate for that
newsgroup. If the newsgroup permits it, then go for it if you
want... If it is against the policy of that newsgroup, then it can
be reported to eBay and your ISP who each may take actions.

Who determines what can be posted on WHAT newsgroup?

Where can these rules be found?

Who decides what is appropriate?

My rantings aside, this entire episode will be a good learning experience
for us all.

Apparently, if I go to eBay with a FA posting and tell them it's against
the newsgroup rules, that person is in violation and subject to all kinds
of actions...

Dan

Dan here is what you do....
Grab some Ebay logo, and take a picture of it, Post it in the auction like
you would any item with photos not forgetting to put the Registered sign
next to the Ebay logo.
Just entitle it " EBAY ARE TYRANTS " and explain your case in the
description and put a 0.01 cent value on the ad.
I'll bet you it wont take a minute before they get back to you.
Furthermore, any emaikl you send to Ebay should be accompanied with a CC: to
your local consumer advocacy group, any Newsnet service you like and even
the newspapers if you have too.
It's by rattling the cage that you awake the animal.
Let us know how you make out.

--
" Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. "
"Dan Conti" wrote in message
...

Sorry for budding in Dan, But what you say is very true about Ebay. I
recently posted a switch key for sale and the bids were going great until
Ebay pulled the rug from under me removing the add saying that the key I
was selling received complaints from "certain " people and that it was
still in use today...blah blah blah. Who the hell does Ebay think they
are ? The authorities watch dog ?

Sorry to hear about it. Isn't it a sick, sinking feeling when an auction
you are running is suddenly yanked?

At least you were given a reason.

I have now sent in THREE inquiries asking why the listing was removed,
with NO response from eBay.

Apparently they are arrogant now that they remove your auction and don't
even tell you why.

Christ I pay at least 200$ a month in advertising not to mention the
substantial "cuts" Paypal takes off MY earnings.
Needless to say that I for one am very ****ed also and especially
sickened by the abusive Capitalistic Tyrant ways Ebay demonstrates. TOO
BAD we dont have other options as popular as FleaBay.

Someone else will invent a better mousetrap, make a billion bucks and get
as big and arrogant as ePAY. It's a vicious cycle.

Dan

Dan , Forgot to mention, I had a BOSS once who ****ed me off so bad I wanted
to Kill him.
Instead, what I did was PURCHASE a YEARS SUBSCRIPTION to some hardcore GAY
S&M MAGAZINE ( paid cash off course ). And what I did was On the
APPLICATION, I WROTE HIS NAME, BUT his 3 rd door NEIGHBOR'S ADDRESS......
So guess what, the guy who received it made it a point to deliver it to MY
BOSS in person.
I would have loved to be there when he handed the S&M Gay magazine to him.
Sometimes it costs very little to get even with people and all along giving
you the satisfaction of a job well done.....( I still rejoice today just
thinking about it )....ha ha ha

--
" Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. "
"Dan Conti" wrote in message
...

Sorry for budding in Dan, But what you say is very true about Ebay. I
recently posted a switch key for sale and the bids were going great until
Ebay pulled the rug from under me removing the add saying that the key I
was selling received complaints from "certain " people and that it was
still in use today...blah blah blah. Who the hell does Ebay think they
are ? The authorities watch dog ?

Sorry to hear about it. Isn't it a sick, sinking feeling when an auction
you are running is suddenly yanked?

At least you were given a reason.

I have now sent in THREE inquiries asking why the listing was removed,
with NO response from eBay.

Apparently they are arrogant now that they remove your auction and don't
even tell you why.

Christ I pay at least 200$ a month in advertising not to mention the
substantial "cuts" Paypal takes off MY earnings.
Needless to say that I for one am very ****ed also and especially
sickened by the abusive Capitalistic Tyrant ways Ebay demonstrates. TOO
BAD we dont have other options as popular as FleaBay.

Someone else will invent a better mousetrap, make a billion bucks and get
as big and arrogant as ePAY. It's a vicious cycle.

Dan

Dan here is what you do....
Grab some Ebay logo, and take a picture of it, Post it in the auction like
you would any item with photos not forgetting to put the Registered sign
next to the Ebay logo.
Just entitle it " EBAY ARE TYRANTS " and explain your case in the
description and put a 0.01 cent value on the ad.
I'll bet you it wont take a minute before they get back to you.
Furthermore, any emaikl you send to Ebay should be accompanied with a CC: to
your local consumer advocacy group, any Newsnet service you like and even
the newspapers if you have too.
It's by rattling the cage that you awake the animal.
Let us know how you make out.


I was very upset at first, as these threads indicate.

I have cooled off now, and learned a bit along the way as well.

Much of this problem I brought upon myself. I can learn from it and
move on. I may NEVER get an answer from eBay. So be it.

I've been on these groups for years, and should have known the the type
of folks who lurk here.

I didn't do anything underhanded or deceitful in my initial actions, and
I don't plan on starting now.

Dan

Dan , Forgot to mention, I had a BOSS once who ****ed me off so bad I wanted
to Kill him.
Instead, what I did was PURCHASE a YEARS SUBSCRIPTION to some hardcore GAY
S&M MAGAZINE ( paid cash off course ). And what I did was On the
APPLICATION, I WROTE HIS NAME, BUT his 3 rd door NEIGHBOR'S ADDRESS......
So guess what, the guy who received it made it a point to deliver it to MY
BOSS in person.
I would have loved to be there when he handed the S&M Gay magazine to him.
Sometimes it costs very little to get even with people and all along giving
you the satisfaction of a job well done.....( I still rejoice today just
thinking about it )....ha ha ha


Very funny stuff indeed, but despite what most think of me here, I am
not that type of person.

Once again...

I didn't do anything underhanded or deceitful in my initial actions, and
I don't plan on starting now.

Dan

Evan Platt wrote in
:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/newtoebay/usenet-policy.html


Thanks, Evan, but that only points to a violation of a newsgroup policy.
According to the policy you cited above, EBay itself does not have a
problem with newsgroup postings unless the policy of the newgroup itself is
violated.... which leads to... is there an "official" policy of
rec.radio.swap prohibiting the posting of auction items.... and more
particularly, those EBay items available for sale as a "Buy it Now" item?


Ed

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 05:13:23 GMT, Dan Conti wrote:

This seems to be the best info on the eBay rules for posting on Usenet
newsgroups:

"eBay users may not post on Usenet groups (Internet newsgroups) to
advertise eBay or an eBay listing that is inappropriate or
violates the Usenet board policy. If Usenet abuse is reported to
eBay, we may among other remedies remove the listing, issue a
warning, or suspend the user's eBay account.

Please note that eBay can only take action in cases where it's
clear it was an eBay member who posted to the Usenet group
inappropriately."

As you can see.. It is permitted by eBay to post a link to your
eBay auction listing IF and only IF it is appropriate for that
newsgroup. If the newsgroup permits it, then go for it if you
want... If it is against the policy of that newsgroup, then it can
be reported to eBay and your ISP who each may take actions.

Who determines what can be posted on WHAT newsgroup?

The answer to this kind of depends on the newsgroup hierarchy.

For an alt.* group (such as alt.radio.scanner), practically anyone
with sufficient knowledge of usenet to send out a control message to
newgroup the group can create a new alt.* group - the trick is
convincing news admin on various servers to carry the group on their
servers. The alt.* hierarchy is an ALTernative to the mainstream
(comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, soc.*, sci.*, etc.) hierarchy. It's
basically a refuge from the mainstream newsgroup guidelines.

The catch here is that sometimes alt.* groups are eventually moved to
the mainstream hierarchy. This is exactly what happened to
alt.radio.scanner which was moved to the rec.* hierarchy - and was
replaced by rec.radio.scanner. Now, the alt.radio.scanner group was
never removed from the alt.* hierarchy (primarily because news server
software is usually set up to ignore "remove group" messages - once an
alt.* group is successfully created and carried on mainstream Usenet
servers it pretty much exists forever)...but it was indeed replaced by
rec.radio.scanner, and you (and everyone else on Usenet) technically
are supposed to use rec.radio.scanner instead.

As for who determines what can be posted to rec.radio.scanner, that's
what the newsgroup's charter and FAQ is for. Which brings us to your
next question:

Where can these rules be found?

The charter and FAQs for most newsgroups in the mainstream hierarchy
can be found on the World Wide Web by searching for them using a
search engine. The one for rec.radio.scanner reads as follows:

"rec.radio.scanner is a newsgroup for discussion about "utility"
traffic above 30 MHz. FM & TV-broadcasting, shortwave, amateur radio
and broadcast satellite-related material doesn't belong to
rec.radio.scanner because they have their own newsgroups. This
newsgroup replaces alt.radio.scanner. In addition, the
rec.radio.scanner will be gatewayed to a mailing list which will be
created as soon as possible after newsgroup creation, as there are
many who do not have access to USENET news."

http://open-systems.ufl.edu/mirrors/....radio.scanner
has the complete archive of the entire process of rec.radio.scanner's
creation from the first proposal through the voting process. Including
the charter quoted above.

Who decides what is appropriate?

If the group is moderated, as many are, this decision is made by the
group's moderator(s). As an unmoderated newsgroup, rec.radio.scanner
(like any other unmoderated group) depends on users and news
administrators whose servers carry the group to voluntarily comply
with the written charter as well as written and unwritten rules
(netiquette). These are generally established over time, and is a big
reason why most Usenet FAQs advise newcomers to "lurk" for awhile and
observe how things are done in a group before they begin posting to
the group - in unmoderated groups, the question of what is and is not
appropriate for posting to a particular group is largely decided by
convention among the users who read and post to the group.

Judging from the responses you've gotten thus far in this and the two
other threads spawned on this subject, I'd say it would appear the
majority of users in alt.radio.scanner and rec.radio.scanner, at
least, who've expressed an opinion on the matter would seem to
consider your FA: postings inappropriate. Remember that in the
beginning, Usenet was largely confined to educational institutions,
governmental agencies, research companies and other commercial
enterprises with UNIX machines on site. It has now grown to include
millions of users at commercial sites such as AOL and at companies
around the world involved in every sort of business imaginable.
Nevertheless, many of the customs found on Usenet today have their
origins in the days when Usenet was very small and most Usenet sites
were universities. That these customs and traditions began when Usenet
was much smaller and quite different in nature in no way lessens the
anger many users feel when these customs and traditions are violated.
One such custom is the tradition and belief that it is rude to
advertise for profit in Usenet newsgroups. Advertising is widely seen
as an "off-topic" intrusion into the discussions of any particular
newsgroup.

Due to the decentralized nature of Usenet, there is no one person or
body which can "enforce" the custom of staying on-topic. It falls on
each user to help preserve the culture of open discussion and free
speech that Usenet has come to embody by not posting off-topic
material. This, of course, includes advertising. Advertising is by far
the most pervasive form of off-topic posting, and therefore, gets most
of the heat.

My rantings aside, this entire episode will be a good learning
experience for us all.

Apparently, if I go to eBay with a FA posting and tell them it's against
the newsgroup rules, that person is in violation and subject to all
kinds of actions...

This applies not only to E-Bay, but also to Internet Service
Providers. In my opinion, a responsible response to a complaint would
be to examine the material that was posted and is the subject of
complaint, compare to the group's charter and FAQ (if available) to
see if the complaint is well-founded or not, and go from there.
Unfortunately, most network administrators simply don't have time to
do all that, especially with a large outfit like AOL or E-Bay or
Google, etc. - and in cases where the matter of whether a post is
appropriate or not depends more on user convention in the group, it
may be almost impossible for a net admin to determine unless he/she
happens to read the group regularly - so either they ignore complaints
until they get served with legal papers, OR they take action on
complaints that are not well-founded, allowing an innocent victim to
maybe get his/her account yanked based on a complaint someone else
filed purely as a form of harassment. Which of these is the worst
extreme depends, I suppose, on one's point of view. Suffice to say,
though, that anyone who continues to post material that he *knows* is
considered inappropriate by most of the users in a newsgroup, should
not be angry at anyone but himself if the consequences turn out to be
rather unpleasant.

Again, all of this applies mainly to the two scanner newsgroups. The
rec.radio.swap newsgroup was *created* for the purpose of advertising
radio equipment for sale, auction, or trade.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/radio/swap-guide/

....has the FAQ for this newsgroup, which happens to contain the
following paragraph:

"It has become common practice to append "FS" ("For Sale"), "WTB"
("Want To Buy"), or "WTT" ("Want To Trade") to the subject line of an
ad. With the new online auction service, eBay, we ask that you include
"FA" ("For Auction") and also "eBay" to your subject line if you
choose to place an auction notice. (Note that a recent straw poll
revealed that many readers are not happy seeing auction notices on
r.r.swap - post such notices at your own risk! If you fail to append
"FA" and "eBay" in your subject line, you will surely be flamed.)"

Nose around on the faqs.org site and you can find FAQs for other
newsgroups as well. One of the things you'll notice is that most
groups are intended for discussion, not for advertising -
rec.radio.swap being the notable exception in this family of groups.
In other words, those who insist on posting advertisements to these
groups do so at their own risk. It matters little that a hundred other
people may be doing it too - that does not reduce (and in fact
probably increases) the anger felt by users when they see such
advertising where it rightfully does not belong.

For what it's worth, Dan, as I see it you have two separate issues
here, one with E-Bay and one with the users in these newsgroups. So
far as E-Bay is concerned, I do not do business with E-Bay either as a
seller or as a buyer. I do not buy items sight unseen, period. So,
I've no axe to grind with respect to E-Bay - though it occurs to me
that your relationship with E-Bay is a voluntary one, and you're of
course always free to stop doing business with E-Bay.

But insofar as the folks on the newsgroups are concerned?

Yes, you're right, more than half the stuff that comes through some of
these newsgroups is off topic BS. You think it's bad in the scanner
groups? Check out rec.radio.shortwave where half the morons in the
group seem to think it's some kind of political discussion group where
it's open season on whoever happens to be the current POTUS!

But Dan, that doesn't make it okay for you or anyone else to add to
it. Two wrongs don't make a right; two thousand wrongs don't make a
right. If you think back to how angry you felt when your auction was
cancelled by E-Bay...you have some idea of how many people feel every
time they download their usenet mail and find it full of stuff that
shouldn't be there. Personally, I use a real newsreader that can,
indeed, filter out things based on keywords in the subject, by sender,
and by several other criteria as well - as you suggested upthread. The
thing is, the newsreader still has to download the headers and then
apply the filters to get rid of it - which means I not only have to
waste *my* time to create the filters, I also have to waste more of
*my* time and *my* bandwidth downloading the headers from all this
off-topic and unwanted stuff that shouldn't be there before my
newsreader can get rid of it all.

Since I pay for my access to the Internet, this means that in effect,
everyone who refuses to voluntarily abide by Netiquette force me (and
who knows how many others who read these groups as well) to pay for
the time and bandwidth expended to download stuff that I shouldn't
have to deal with in the first place. Again, it matters not whether
there's one person doing it or a thousand, all who do are equally
guilty, and this is truly a case where if you're not part of the
solution by voluntarily adhering to netiquette, then you're part of
the problem.

John Kasupski, Tonawanda, New York
Amateur Radio (KC2HMZ), SWL/Scanner Monitoring (KNY2VS)
zIRC #monitor Admin

John,

Thank you for a most educational and informed response.

Once again, I learned much from you, and agree 100%.

I've said it before, I take full responsibility for the FA postings, and
have paid the price. Your also correct that justifying it with the fact
that others do it as well is wrong.

Dan

Charging $20 for using pay pal in underhanded.

No it isn't.

First, it wasn't $20.00, it was $10.00.

In your rush to blast me, you should get your facts straight first.

Second, the eBay auction that was pulled made NO mention of ANYONE
paying ANY Paypal fees.

Third, I put that is a FOR SALE post on the radio groups in error. I
did not know it was against the rules. When someone told me it was, I
retracted the statement in the same post.

Now, I've seen others charge buyers the PAYPAL fee and get away with it,
that's why I thought it OK. DOes that make it right, NO, and as I said,
I immediately corrected my error.

However, it may be against eBay and PAYPAL rules to ask for the PAYPAL
fee, but how is it underhanded?

Keep trying, I can keep this thread going forever....

Dan

Charging $20 for using pay pal in underhanded.


What IS underhanded are the TONS of eBay seller who auction items at
what appears to be a reasonable price, then tack on shipping costs 2 or
3 times the cost of the item.

It's hidden profit, and THAT my friend is underhanded, yet it is done
all the time on eBay.

Go after the REAL villains out there pal, and let this one go..OK?

Dan