@thc9 wrote:
"Ebay jumped in with toilet paper profiteers and hand sanitiser rip offs"
It depends on what you are ripping people off for?
Strange.
So eBay does facilitate rip offs as long as the rip off is not an essential.
That's not actually correct. Ebay doesn't set prices at all, for anything. It's a selling platform only and the sellers are the ones who determine what to sell and what price they will ask for it.
That doesn't man ebay has no restrictions on what is sold. There are plenty of items that can't be sold on ebay and ebay has computer programs that will pick up on any of the key words and an ad will be pulled if a seller is violating a restriction.
Off the top of my head, I think there are bans on ads for tortoiseshell, nazi paraphernalia, that sort of thing.
Also if you try listing some brands of product and you aren't an authorised seller, you would get in trouble if your ad was reported.
Similarly if you have a scam ad-trying to sell an empty box that misleadingly implies the contents (usually an expensive electronic game) are included, you would probably be banned once someone reported your ad.
In the case of toilet paper, it was a well known community issue and ebay jumped in when it became aware.
Toilet papaer and sanitiser - what ever happened to supply and demand? Are these items outside that philosophy?
Yes, I would guess any item that could be deemed 'essential' or in short supply due to a catastrophe of some sort or a pandemic, would fall into this special category. But you're not going to see ebay or the government act until they see it is a widespread problem.
The problem with the coins you describe is no one actually needs them. No one needs them urgently either. So I would expect anyone paying out $1000 or more to research the coins.
The word 'rare' is vague & I'd expect any coin or stamp collector to have some idea of how 'rare' before buying.
I've got a little collection of 10c pieces (nope, not vaulable) but the booklet tells me exactly how many were minted in each year. The information isn't that hard to come by.
What you are saying is - When it is a blatant rip off then eBay has no public obligation to regulate its platform?Nice.
Sure, I think they have a responsibility to regulate their platform and by and large they do (see earlier examples). And I don't like misleading ads any more than you do. If the sellers were advertising a very rare & valuable coin then sending a different,common one, I'd say that was a rip off and the seller should be booted and legal action taken against them.
If they are sending exactly what is in the ad though, at what point do you see it as a rip off? How on earth is ebay meant to regulate that aspect? Plenty of things on ebay sell at over the RRP or the price you can often get in shops.
Supply & demand. If there is an absolute deluge of these $2 coins out in the community and they are not rare, but worth exactly $2, then I wouldn't expect people to be falling over themselves to pay $1000, that's what supply & demand mean to me.
