UPDATE: We have launched another Sponsorship Auction, you can check it out HERE
Hi everyone,
For unjust reasons, ebay canceled our sponsorship auction. We’re trying to get a hold of someone there now (which is near impossible) and hopefully we’ll have something figured out soon. I sincerely apologize for the hassle. It’s definitely not what we were hoping for. If you’re interested in sponsoring us, please email me at matt@icecreamman.com or check back in an hour or three and we’ll see what progress we have.
You can view all of the info from the auction listing here. Ebay claimed the auction was in violation because of A)Search and Browser Manipulation and B)Circumvention of ebay fees. Click the accusations to view the emails they sent me.
In regards to the Search Manipulation. We paid extra to be listed in two categories. When Knife posted the auction he put it in the wrong category. Instead of being listed in “Advertising Opportunities” he somehow listed it in “Email Addresses”. Less than an hour after posting I was on ebay live chat talking with someone about changing it. I pleaded because being listed in “email addresses” wasn’t going to help us with ebay traffic at all. Since someone had already bid $1 they wouldn’t change it. During this conversation, the person on the other end never bothered to mention that this could be cause for cancellation. And this was something we paid extra money for too.
I’m really at a loss on the Circumvention of Fees violation. They quoted this ” Description: Payment of a $1,000 payment is expected within an hour of the conclusion of the auction, Start price for the auction is one US Dollar. All bids are in US Dollars. There is no reserve price.” Besides poor grammar by saying “payment” twice, I don’t see how that is trying to get around paying fees. We wanted to pay ebay more fees. They get a percent of the final price and the higher the bids, the better for both of us. Maybe they didn’t realize the auction was already over $1000 at the time of cancellation.
We’ve invested hundreds of hours, hired a publicist, and worked out deals for thousands of dollars in advertising to get the word out about this auction and because a computer scanned the auction and didn’t like it, it was canceled without anyone even contacting us. I’ve been a member for TEN years with 100% positive feedback (view my profile). Would anyone other business act this way to a customer that’s been supporting them for a decade?
thanks for all the help and support, hopefully this won’t take too long.
Matt Allen
Ice Cream Man
You can help us out by Digging this article so hopefully we can get some press that might make ebay change their mind and you can contact ebay (item #270254178648) and tell them that you’re disappointed with their decision to cancel our auction which will help us give away free ice cream. There’s a live chat button in the upper right corner on ebay’s homepage too. They were really able to help me at all last night at 1:00 in the morn though. You can also view the ebay live chat I had with Samuel, Mark, and Mike here
