Policy on rip off sales why does eBay allow this

[samagr_4]

Ebay started a spring promotion today with 20% savings. One hobby store increased all its prices by 10% and more yesterday and is now offering 20% off! What a joke what a rip off, they should be banned.

[samagr_4]

You're 100% wrong, eBay does not allow merchants in these promotions to raise prices for 7 days before a sale.

[countessalmirena]

samagr_4, you are incorrect.

eBay has nothing in any policy addressing whether or not a merchant raises his/her prices a week before eBay offers a discount code. If you disagree, please post the relevant policy here, just as I earlier quoted the relevant policy in what I said.

In at least some instances, merchants don't even know that eBay is going to apply or has applied a promotion in respect of several sellers including them. To confirm this, there are several threads in the Selling board from sellers who are alarmed and ask why eBay has discounted their items. (They are usually not experienced sellers, and think that they are expected to offer the discount. They are reassured when posters here inform them that it's eBay who will pay the difference.)

There is no consumer legislation of which I'm aware which forbids a seller to raise his/her prices on eBay a week before eBay offer buyers a discount code. Sometimes the discount codes are for items by a group of sellers; sometimes the discount codes are for particular sorts of items; sometimes the discount codes are site-wide. Are you suggesting that every single seller on eBay will be aware a week in advance that ebay will be offering a discount voucher code?

You have repeated the same incorrect information several times here, but however many times you post it, it will not make that incorrect information correct.

I'm really not sure why you're biting into this with such tenacity. I must admit I find it bizarre that anyone would take a screenshot of a particular seller's items at three different times. You must have had a reason for doing that.

At any rate, you are clearly on some sort of mission against this seller. If you don't want to buy from that seller, then don't. It may sound rude - but really, it's none of our business at what price a seller lists his/her items. Not your business, not my business, not your seller friend's business. None of our business. The seller will make decisions about prices based on all sorts of factors to which we are not privy.

[davewil1964]

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@samagr_4 wrote:

You're 100% wrong, eBay does not allow merchants in these promotions to raise prices for 7 days before a sale.

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In that case they couldn't have done it yesterday.

Therefore, the price and promotion are not subject to these rules. Otherwise eBay's bots wouldn't have allowed it. The policy you are paraphrasing is for sellers' own promotions, not eBay's. As has been explained to you numerous times.

[samagr_4]

Thanks for your input, I'll close it now and contact eBay management myself, unfortunately you have no idea about these sales and the contract the merchant enters into, you'll never find it by doing a search, it's by invitation only and is quite clear about changing prices

[samagr_4 · Accepted solution]

You're thinking of sales a normal merchant does, these are by invitation and yes, I would have hoped eBay had it's bots targeting these invitation only sales.

[padi*0409]

I love it when an inexperienced member comes here asking for advice from experienced members, then totally ignores their advice and reasons for their comments, then marks their own post as the correct answer to their own question.......................

[gutterpunkz05]

I am assuming you did not get an invite under your selling account.,  Might just have to make the HWH  aware of your posts. as I am

quite confident that you are a competitor of HWH  and not a prospective buyer.  So go and complain to ebay all you want as I am sure

you dont understand policies as well as you think you do, and ebay will have no problems linking your accounts.  Now I wonder what there policy is on anti competitive behaviour.

[gutterpunkz05]

Do you have any screenshots from the other hobby store in the promo, or does that hit a nerve

[*tippy*toes*]

Padi.............SEPTEMBER?

[digital*ghost]

Um.... 

What the heck, I'm just gonna say it - The OP actually has a valid point, if what they say is true.

I can't see what old / vs new prices in the last few days are, but I can see the BIN price has been altered 3 times in the last week or so. That does not happen with promotional sales - in the item revision history, a discount sale shows as 'sale start', and 'sale end' on their respective days.

Secondly, this kind of promotion is not actually just eBay hand-selecting sellers and providing discounts for those sellers out of the goodness of their hearts. With these kind of promos, the sellers themselves not only knowingly participate, but they pay a portion of the discounted amount themselves, just like they do if they run a store promotion without the involvement of eBay codes (if my information is correct, eBay pays for 10% of the discount, the seller pays for the other 10%, which makes it easy to see why a seller might increase their prices by 10%, no?) Maybe they can get away with it because at face value, it looks exclusively like an eBay discount, but scratch the surface just a tiny amount, and you see that is not strictly the case, and it's sketchy, IMHO. 

They are not the only seller who particpates in these deals who raise prices right before an eBay promo like this. I'm not gonna name names, but I have seen it done by some of the very well known big box retailers on here.

I don't care what the OP's motivations for posting are, but for whatever it's worth, I do support the exposure and criticism of this practice.