[jdm]

Outrageous.

[cgk]

ping.

[kinoxi]

Standards should be met somewhere...

[GB]

This is a bunch of horse hockey. I'm not a home schooler, but my kid attends a private Christian school and I needed to replace an a Beka book of his, and a Beka is one of the more popular curriculums for home schoolers as well, and I found it on eBay and I just did a search on eBay after seeing this post, and there are 2,056 a Beka textbooks up for auction and 1,573 available for a set price at this very moment. And a whole bunch of them have "home school" in the listing.

[cgk]

eBay's overview of prohibited items includes animals, artifacts, autographed items, academic software, bootleg recordings, credit cards, drugs and paraphernalia, government IDs, lockpicking devices, human remains, police-related items, used clothing and used cosmetics, among others.

Strange, seeing I've sold TONS of used baby clothing on ebay as recently as 2 weeks ago dating to 3 years ago.

[coconutt2000]

What eBay needs to do is set up a system of certifying home school parents and certified teachers, and then limiting the bidding for such items to those users.

Then again, the cost of setting up such a system would be more than the fees generated, probably.

[A CA Guy]

Boycott them and make it to the news so their stock drops like Saddam into a spider hole.

[A CA Guy]

Boycott them and make it to the news so their stock drops like Saddam into a spider hole.

[Richard-SIA]

craigslist.org

Careful not to check the wrong box or you will get "adult content" you might not want, but you can sell almost ANYTHING on craigslist.

And unless it's real estate, it's FREE!

[blu]

Ve must protect zee children from themselves! Ve must make sure they don't buy the teacher's manuals so they can cheat on their work!

Oh for Gawd's sake!!! Ebay is my nanny! (actually, I've used vegsource.com for about 8 years for texts...prices are much better). Ebay seems to be ticking off a lot of their customers lately, maybe their bubble has burst?

[taxesareforever]

Don't sell them as textbooks. Sell them as Guides to Learning, with a note to contact seller as to content. Or, sell them on Bidville or AllBookStores.com

[Admin Moderator]

The title you created had to be changed to the published title.

Please do not alter titles.

[CodeMasterPhilzar]

I don't get it. Does eBay really think they are helping keep the answers "secret?"

What are they trying to prevent? Does eBay think some student is going to fork over the $ to buy the book(s) particular to his/her class(es) - and note, the correct printing/editions of them to match his/her course. Then what, read them (heaven forbid!) or simply memorize the answers?

Or is it more likely kids these days would forgo spending real $ and print media in general and just google what he/she needed to know?

The only slice they are stopping (while frustrating many teachers) is the very small percentage of kids bent on rote memorization. All the teachers have to do to thwart that is mix up the questions, don't ask them in the same order as in the guide/examples. Then, if the kids memorize the questions and answers such that they can handle them any any order... Yikes, they've actually learned something in spite of their best efforts to cheat! Ok, maybe they haven't learn the topic as thoroughly nor as in-depth as you might like but still... With that demographic, I'd take even that as a win.

Really silly, ill-concieved policy IMHO eBay.

[Arkinsaw]

Its a good thing actually...eBay banned firearms and a new site opened that does firearms auctions. They ban school books, a new site will open that allows it. eBay will regulate themselves out of a monopoly and thats to the good. It gives other auction site competitors a chance to grow and have people get familiar with them.

I don't know why eBay wants to limit its sellers constantly, but its not going to turn out bad for the online auction industry as a whole..just eBay.

[Minus_The_Bear]

Ridiculous bureaucracy. I don't see how publishers would care since these transactions do not involve new books. I cannot think of a good reason for this. Pissing off your users/customers isn't such a great idea and EBAY/Paypal goes further down that path every single day.

[endthematrix]

"publishers have voiced their concern "

You must buy NEW books!

[gitmo]

Reckon I'll boycot eBay. We currently make eBay purchases 4-5 times a week. Are there any alternatives on the WWW?

[Gabz]

Just one more reason to add to the myriad others as to why I don't even LOOK at eBAy.

[paudio]

I understand why they don't allow the selling of teacher's manuals. It's intended for the teachers, not for the students. You need to verify that you're teaching that class to buy new teacher's manual. So, what eBay needs to do is developing some way to verify the buyer's status. This will be a problem for the homeschool teachers, though. Well, there's always craiglist and other online used bookstores.

[NonValueAdded]

Holy Junior Achievement, Batman, when will homeBay start up?

I wonder if Amazon.com has blocked teacher's editions from the used book storefront?

The price of textbooks is a real crime. No wonder the publishers want to retain control (and full retail pricing) whenever possible. Seems like monopolistic behavior, no?

Do teachers secretly fear students will have the correc tanswers and point out their errors? :)

[hotshu]

E-Bay sucks! The only part of the bubble that didn't burst when it should have. They made their growth capital on the backs of Beanie Babies, and their father smells of elderberries!!!