EBAY NAZI'S

[Anonymous]

Anything that portrays a Swastika is something that cannot be sold on ebay from what I understand. I went into the German ebay sight and typed in Nazi. Found currency,stamps, and publications with Swastikas being sold. A friend of mine that as a perfect Ebay rating posted a WW2 paratrooper badge showing only the eagle, was booted off. On top of that under the seller dashboard in the policy compliance rating he is now a negative.

 

[Lignemaginot]

This has been an ongoing, ridiculous rule for some time at ebay - what makes it worse is that the rule is enforced arbitrarily by half-trained nitwits who don't even know why they're being asked to enforce the rule.

As far as I understand, the rule is that you can't sell anything with a swastika on it unless it is a stamp or a book. Anything else is not permissable. However, even if you list a book, if someone complains about it, ebay will end the auction anyway. You're not allowed to cover up the swastika, either. I even once listed abuckle which had had its swastika ground off, and that wasn't good enough for ebay - or at least for the person who complained. I have no doubt whatsoever that most of the time, the person doing the complaining was one of the people who contacted me to let me know that they'd buy it, "if ebay ended the auction".

The most ridiculous part of it is that they have categories for WWII German hats, helmets, daggers, etc, etc - every last one of which had a swastika on it at one time or another.

Yes, it's ebay's store and they should be allowed to say what can be sold in it - but they should at least do away with those categories.

 

[asiamiles]

I have no doubt whatsoever that most of the time, the person doing the complaining was one of the people who contacted me to let me know that they'd buy it, "if ebay ended the auction".

An important point. When something gets cancelled there's usually a reason behind it. AFAIK eBay don't employ a single person to search for "offensive" listings. Presumably there are some self-appointed moral guardians with nothing else better to do with their time than search for things they believe shouldn't be made available, but often if something gets cancelled it's likely been alerted to eBay by someone who has has a grudge against the seller, who thinks the item is affecting his own sales, the reason given above, or some other unthinkable reason.

I remember once selling a Hawaiian shirt by SunSurf (by Toyo, the same company as Buzz Rickson's) that was a repro of an original 50's design, and I actually gave the name of the designer in the listing title. Well, someone complained to me saying "I own the copyright of that designer in the US; you are not allowed to sell it here" and when I refused to cancel the listing (I am not in the US, so I didn't see any problem, and HPA were selling the exact same shirt) eBay removed it. I simply relisted it without the designer's name and obviously the guy didn't spot it, so there was no problem and it sold. I mean, what was the point? There wasn't even a company in the US making this designer's shirts let alone that specific design, so such a sale (one shirt!) would affect absolutely no one. Crazy.

 

[zoomer]

I used to use Safari to browse eBay until they put in a blocker that blocked all, yes ALL, militaria-related auctions. For some reason this only happened with Safari.