eBay is charging sellers for typos. Last week, we reported that some sellers continue to complain that their eBay listings do not appear in search results, or do so in a sporadic and unexplained manner. One user found out after weeks of frustration why his items had failed to appear: he misspelled the word "ship."

Sam Mindel had entered in his shipping terms in a listing-tool template, and instead of typing the word ship, he typed "****." Rather than rejecting Sam's listings with the typo, the eBay system allowed them, but failed to index them because the misspelled word sets off a profanity filter. And by not indexing Sam's listings, they did not show up in search results. However, they did show up in Sam's list of items for sale in his My eBay account, meaning he might never have discovered that his listings were not searchable or browsable by buyers.

That is eBay's policy, spokesperson Hani Durzy said. That policy cost Sam not only listing fees for items that never showed up in search, but also weeks of frustration trying to find out why his listings were not appearing when shoppers searched for items he offered. "I got pretty angry about the whole thing," Mindel told AuctionBytes, complaining that eBay is charging sellers for auctions eBay isn't putting up.

Durzy said, "This was a case of user error, but we really fell down on helping this guy. We should have caught this sooner if we were helping him."

Durzy said the policy regarding certain typos is a balance between providing transparency, without giving "bad" people who intend to violate policy the tools to do that. "Pop-ups can give people ways to go around the filter," adding that, "people do have to be responsible for their typos. The idea that search is broken is very clearly wrong."

However, another seller who reported that his items sporadically appear in eBay search is not satisfied. After finding out about Sam Mindel's typo, he wrote in an email, "I assure you that was not an issue w/my listings. However, I am not immune to making typos." He also wanted to know why eBay does not have a warning about expletives and other words or phrases that potentially violate eBay policy, which he said is supposed to show on the page just prior to submitting listing.

Durzy also mentioned that there are more listing delays as eBay clamps down on Trust & Safety, and as eBay looks at listings for malicious code due to pharming issues (a variation on phishing fraud).

Related Story:
"eBay Seller Joins Chorus of Complaints over Search"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m02/i23/s02