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Hello avid readers who understand eBay, and who will also understand the vagaries of eBay Policy Compliance, which in a nutshell means that eBay has an ever changing list of do’s and don’ts (called policies) and basically have a policy for everything, finding and understanding a policy  is a different matter of course, especially when you cannot find a particular policy – and fail to meet any eBay policy requirements and you are in non-compliance!

What am I rambling about, well PageMage to be precise, the new and I must say at this stage, a  very cool application, very innovative with lots of possibilities for eBay sellers. Indeed it has been well publicised :

AuctionBytes talks about it : http://prune.it/sk2s

eBays Uncle Griff talks about : http://prune.it/59XA

Lots of PR about it : http://prune.it/PCUs

So, I had to go and look  to see what it actually is and one thing jumped out at me straight away – users would be creating an entire auction description in a Flash movie  (Flash file), which would be hosted outside of eBay, and none of the content (item description, seller terms etc) would form part of the eBay view item page – as text formatted or not.

Why is this an important issue, well think of it this way, imagine the entire item description was an image hosted outside of eBay, an unscrupulous seller could edit that image and swap it – thus changing the item description, even if the auction has bids – something you cannot do where you simply enter text, as that becomes part of the eBay page and is non editable once an item receives a bid.

There are of course other implications which I will not detail here, but a simple one would be what if a Flash blocker is used,  and what about eBay Policy Compliance ?

Yes, I know there is a ‘report this item’  function, and one of the options is:

 ”Item description and/or terms of sale hosted outside of eBay”

But where is the damned eBay Policy page about this, I cannot find it, neither can other people, does it actually exist, and just because it doesn’t exist does that mean you cannot break an non existent policy, thus making users of PageMage eBay policy compliant (even though it appears to be a reportable option and thus against eBay policy) 

I wish PageMage well, as I said at the outset, I like the application, but am worried if or not sellers using it would be eBay Policy Compliant ?

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