Ebay isnt regulating its own platform.

[borshmo0]

For the past few weeks I have been observing the GPU market on ebay devolve into an unusable state.
You see multiple a day, 3 suspiciously cheap 4080 for sale, 1-3 month old sellers with no reviews shipping from interstate. You purchase them, you get a message that actually, they are not in Australia, but overseas, and will ship the GPU in 18-20 days. By the time that deadline comes round, the shipping label shows it was delivered to an entirely different state, and the sellers account is long deleted.

You can get your money back, but at that point there is no point giving it in the first place, I didn't need my money floating in the void for a month that could otherwise have gone to the actual product I intended to purchase, or better yet accruing interest. 

They're almost always a scam, and yet they keep on being allowed to be listed. "Seller falsely advertised shipping" or "Seller is falsely labelled as domestic" should be a separate option for requesting refund after a product has been purchased. My front page is always inundated with overseas listings, setting myself up for disappointment once I inevitably see that either the currency had not been converted, or the usual predicted shipping over $100. I might aswell just use .com rather then .com.au because the same damn things show up. The app is borderline useless as a result, because I can't even trust what I'm looking at to not be 13,000km away.

What is the point of selling items on a platform that in return provides an unusable experience? When my listing has to compete with 5 scam listings that dilute the available buyers, who are all stuck waiting for a product that'll never arrive, what right do they have to take 16% off something I'm already selling at a loss, when my money gets stuck in a pocket dimension for a month?

I'd have better luck buying and selling in a back alley with only paypal, least I get more of the cut.

[*casey*]

"Ebay isnt regulating its own platform"

eBay never has regulated their own platform.

These scam listings  are  often, but not always, listed on  hijacked  accounts.

Hijacked by scammers to fraudulently list non existent items , usually a copy and paste of a real seller's listing

Once upon a time,  teams in both Australia and the US reported  fraudulent listings and they were removed.

But back then , eBay had good trust and safety teams. They no longer exist.

These days it's a waste of time reporting very obvious fraudulent listings as the reports are  either ignored, or a  useless  AI  automated reply is sent.

eBay relies on the Money Back Guarantee but as you mentioned, money  can be tied up  for a long time.

Let's not forget that eBay makes interest on all money held.

Item 405989479505 would be an example.

It's been removed now, but it  remained on the  site until sold.

A tip for any buyers who have dealt with a scammer:

Run all your spyware, virus and keylogging protection and change your passwords regularly.