eBay, you see an interesting SBC, but the seller cannot attach the UM.pdf

[DiTBho]

I remember this being possible a few years ago, but now eBay has strange new rules about sharing links and PDFs, making it very difficult to see the documentation for a board you're thinking of buying and you hesitate because you can't find anything by Googling

I've been chatting with a seller for two days and we're both forced to take screenshots of the manual pages, I tell her what to look for and she attaches screenshots of the pages as images. Again and again, because she has no idea about the SBC for sale.

but does it make sense?

... and if I try to write my email on a piece of paper, and try to add it as an attachment... eBay also has a visual AI that understands that I wrote an "email address" and blocks the PM...

(probably understands it with the word "gmail")

There's just no way, and that's very limiting 

try to get a schematic explained to you by someone who doesn't even know what a capacitor is and you have to explain things to them symbol by symbol...

... in the end I got a precise idea of ​​that very rare and exotic SBC, but what an effort!!!
(Do I deserve a discount? a packet of sweets included in the box?
Do I?  )

[thm_w]

Links in a description are only allowed for the following: Other eBay pages (eBay Messages, other eBay items, Stores pages, Follow Seller or Add to my Favorite Sellers) Product videos. Freight shipping services approved by eBay.

Partly they want to avoid scams (fake buy it now links to external sites), partly they don't want to lose commissions if sellers direct you offsite to their own sales page with no high fees.
Once you actually purchase though its not an issue, you'll get buyers phone number if they provided it, or you can put a note in the shipping box.

Are you going to link to the item in question?

[aeberbach]

Have the seller take a photo of some piece of the equipment with a hand-written (not easily machine scannable!) email address visible in the picture. About the only time eBay allows exchange of contact details is when the seller is sending a mobile phone number to a buyer after the sale to arrange pickup.

You just have to make what you write readable by a human and not the machine.

[DiTBho]

Have the seller take a photo of some piece of the equipment with a hand-written (not easily machine scannable!) email address visible in the picture.

It seems that only the seller can write his email in a photo, while the buyer cannot
I remember how a seller got around this restriction by writing in the item description what to search for on Google to find their email and phone contacts

Terms of Sale
Feel free to email or call us directly Mon-Fri 10AM-5PM EST.
You can find our contact information if you google [...]

Well done 
Unfortunately... the seller I dealt with is a private.
d'oh.

You just have to make what you write readable by a human and not the machine.

I tried everything: I avoided writing "I attach my contact" or similar, I avoided any reference in the text I wrote requesting further documentation, and I wrote in pen on a sheet of paper, in italics, removing the @, removing dots ... and yet .. eBay's AI always understood that I was secretly attaching a photo with my email address

but I really don't understand why(1) eBay allows you to attach photos, but not PDFs.

I didn't want to bypass eBay, also because it offers a convenient international shipping program, which saves both time and money by anticipating import taxes, I wanted to be able to carefully examine the documentation of a rare SBC before spending more than 200 euros!

(1) If it's for their AI, what's the difference between analyzing a photo and understanding if it contains contact information, or analyzing a PDF and understanding if it contains the same type of information? Indeed, a PDF containing text fields, or images, should not make any difference, in algorithmic terms!

[thm_w]

Since most PDFs contain links they'd just be blocked, making it pointless.

Anyway, if you really want to waste more of their time you can tell them to use pdfupload io and send you the code that is generated as part of the url after you upload a file.

[fzabkar]

You just have to make what you write readable by a human and not the machine.

That's exactly what I do in other forums.

For example, a forum's antispambot might filter out aliexpress.com URLs, so I replace the "a" with "%61". The bot sees the "%61" but the browser resolves it to an "a".

%61liexpress.com