Listing Discrimination

[promotions_by_design]

Several months ago I received an email from eBay stating that one of my listings had been removed due to the fact that it was contravening a rule regarding Duplicate Listings. I was also warned that if I had any other similar listings, or did it again, I would be sanctioned in several ways. After investigating the rules, I found they were correct, so I accepted the decision and moved on.

Over the next few days, I then noticed that there were several other listings within my sales category that were also contravening this rule, exactly the same way in which my items were listed. So rightfully I brought it to eBays attention using the Report an Item link, only to notice that eBay does not seem as eager to remove another seller’s listing as quick as they did mine. I have resent this Report several times over the following months and to date, nothing has been done to this person.

I have also noticed that with Sponsored Listings, eBay not only allows, but supports these sellers to do exact what I was doing, and make multiple listings of the same item, yet when it came to my item, I was warned not to do it or all sorts of penalties would be applied to me. With respect to Sponsored Sellers, eBay do not allow you to report this issue by blocking your 'Report an Item' access.

So why am I being discriminated against? And, how can eBay allow some Sellers to operate against the rules and, openly support Sponsored Sellers to do what they threaten me not do?

As another Seller stated in a previous post on another claimed discrimination issue, am I able claim Compensation for the loss of sales I have incurred whilst other sellers use the duplicate listings to dominate this particular category and push me down the 'Best Match' rankings?

[padi*0409]

You might have better luck if you report the seller rather than the listing (unless it's an Asian seller, as lyndal mentioned)

https://www.ebay.com.au/help/buying/resolving-issues-sellers/report-issue-seller?id=4022

[promotions_by_design]

padi, thanks for your post, I have called eBay by phone and reported the Seller directly, and supplied them with the item numbers; the consultant has said she will reply within 24hrs to let me know what has happened.

While I was on the phone to her, I also brought up the issue of the Sponsored Items where they are given preferential treatment with repect to have certain policies waivered i.e. allowed to have Duplicate Listings, and she was quite understanding that the action of allowing them to have Duplicate Listings, under the eBay policy, is essentialy preferential treatment whilst giving them the ability to push everyone else out of the market. 

She said she would pass-on the feedback to management; hopefully something will be done to make eBay a fairer place to work.

[padi*0409]

Here's just one example of that rort by Asian (read "untouchable") sellers...............

Item number:- 123486919642

Advanced search :- 

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_nkw=Car+Japanese+Flag+Metal+Waterproof+Emblem+Badge+Sticker+Deca...

[imastawka]

The bots aren't picking those up because they have different numbers (codes?)

in the title

[padi*0409]

---

@imastawka wrote:

The bots aren't picking those up because they have different numbers (codes?)

in the title

---

Yep I realise that Stawks, but even reporting them does nothing because of the "Asian Untouchable Aspect" of the listings.

All I can do is filter out those sellers with the -xxxx(seller) in my search - but then another seller (or sellers) pops up doing the exact same thing.....

Ah well, life goes on splendidly down in the bush here regardless.

[promotions_by_design]

So, happy to report that the Seller (Aussie Seller) with multiple items in my category has already been removed; the phone call did the trick. Of course though, nothing has been done about the Sponsored Pages - one step at time I guess. Thanks for your assistance.

[lyndal1838]

Ebay is unlikely to do anything about Sponsored Listings.   The seller pays for those so ebay is happy to let them run and rake in the money.

[lm-entertainment]

i had a similar issue recently which infuriated me. 

i was selling a number of items of the same type, the "Coles Little Shop Mini Collectables" with a multi-variation listing. on the variations, i had all of the 30 collectables listed so that people could select which one they wanted to buy, or buy multiple. my listing was appearing near the top of the first page of results of thousands of results and i was making a decent amount of sales. 

i was told by ebay this contravened their "Choice Policy" which states that multi-variation listings must be of the same item type, varying only in colour or size and not totally different items. they removed my listing. 

although it annoyed me, i was fine with it as i looked up the policy and sure enough, my listing was violating it. what frustrated me more though was that there were hundreds of other sellers doing the exact same thing, some selling 100-200 items a day on the first page of the search results and their listings were not affected. they were also australian sellers. in spite, i reported a few listings, and ebay said they'd look into it - i even provided them the item numbers.. but no other listings were removed and they remained in place for a further 5 weeks. some of those listings sold thousands of items over that period, falling into the tens of thousands of dollars. 

i pestered ebay every few days asking what was being done and they said they had either found they weren't violating the policy, or were still "looking into it." 

there is discrimination, even amongst australian sellers and i can't figure out for the life of me what the difference is or who makes the determinations and why.