Duplicate listings

[lousbloomingarden]

Recently eBay have been through my store and is still going through my store cancelling listings they think are duplicated.

I sell plants and if I have say a Soursop plant and another listing for Soursop seeds, they take one of them off. They are definatly not duplicatec listings. Some of them I have had for year and had over 300 purchased. Then in one swoop , the listing is gone. I dont know how seeds and plants can possibly be classed the same . I emailed them and then phoned them and my complaint was escalated but that was a week ago and I have not heard a thing and listings are still disappearing before my eyes.

In my other store they did the same thing . They think seeds and plants are the same  and took that many off they when I went to relist items I was over my free listing quota and had to pay $1.50 ...Stop the madness

[lousbloomingarden]

Thanks ,thats  quite possible as i do have a few sellers watching me but Im friendly with a lot and we buy and sell from each other...Theres bound to be some one out there with more time on there hands hey.?.lol..lou

[lousbloomingarden]

I have been doing some buying and I'm shocked at the amount of duplicate listings I found. I was suspended for this myself and before I start back up I just want to know is it eBay who finds these duplicate listings or is it reported in by another seller / buyer . If it's eBay, Why can one seller have duplicate or similar listings and not me. eBay say make it noticeably different like you can't have one listing that has 1 of and the next one 2 of. I have been accused of violating policy even if I list eg...soursop fruit tree 10 seeds
soursop fruit tree 1 plant
Yet I'm looking at items that are totally identical and there's lots of them.
How do I get an educated answer to this. Every time I phone eBay I can hear them on their keyboard searching for the answer to my question. They are only as smart as their FAQs . Question is ,again , am I being reported ?

[i-love-my-sheep]

If ebay are carrying on because you have a photo of the mature plant in your seed lising and they are screaming duplicate, could your main photo be a packet of the seeds, then add a photo of the mature plant in the description so people know what they are getting?

[lousbloomingarden]

I'm sure people are more intelligent than that ( generally speaking) . Theres 18,000 listings for seeds.How many times do you see a packet of seeds as the main photo. Also tell me how many times have you seen for sale a packet of seeds in the nursery and on the front is a picture of seeds?
So what your saying is I should take a photo of some strawberry seeds and put that as the main photo. That's certainly going to attract no one to look further as strawberry seeds are so tiny , a camera cannot photograph them ( well mine can't any way ) I buy a lot of seeds and I wouldn't look twice at a picture of a zip lock bag with tiny specks in it....eBay are not carrying on about the photos . Any way the reply you sent doesn't match the question. Thanks for your input though , much appreciated....Lou

[aussie.grazing.boards]

Exactly right, someone has reported the listings

[harley_babes_hoard]

again duplicate listings only apply to us little guys the darn chinese can have many many identical listings and they never seem to get pulled.

To the person who said Lous listings are misleading you are wrong in my opinion. People don't want to see a packet of seeds as the main picture they want to see what the adult plant will be.

[yeoldecoinco]

The thing about their duplicate listing policy is that it is inconsistent.

One can find plenty of duplicate listings in the search results and they never seem to get pulled.

If they are on to you Lou, be very careful with your listings, they boot people for the slightest thing these days, in the headlong rush to pander to big businesses...

[englishrosegardens]

This is what the duplicate listing policy says:

You can't have more than one fixed price listing of an identical item at the same time.

You can have more than one auction-style listing for identical items. However, only one duplicate auction-style listing without bids appears on eBay at a time. Learn more about how duplicate auction-style listings appear on eBay.

These restrictions on duplicate listings include listing an identical item in different categories or listing an identical item using different user IDs.

Separate listings may be created for the same item on different eBay sites, as long as the international postage options don't result in the listings cluttering the search results of any individual site.

If your listings don't follow these guidelines, they may be ended or not displayed in the eBay search results. You may also be subject to a range of other actions, including limits of your buying and selling privileges.

I once had six different vintage sets of china to sell - all were exactly the same except that the wear was different on each one so I put #1, #2, etc in the titles.  I'm not sure that'd work with plants & seeds though, especially if an ebay staff member goes through your listings and pulls them.  In fact, it'd probably make it look like you were trying to get around the rules (get away with something).

Can you use the item specifics to get them to show in different sections of that category? I notice when you're in the plants, bulbs and seeds category that there are links down the left side for plant listings and for seed listings. 

Another way to do it would be to have multi-variant listings and have both plants and seeds available in the one listing.  That way you can have the same picture for both seeds and plant, and it'd save you a few listings.  Just put "plant OR seeds" in the title.  The new feature for stock levels in multi-variant listings would mean the listing won't end if one variant sells out.

If you have separate listings, I'd put a picture of a packet of seeds as the second picture, not as the first one.  If someone is pulling listings based on the pictures, that'd show them they're different (hopefully).  I really think a multi-variant listing would be the best way to go though.

Here's the link for the whole policy:  http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-multi.html

Oops, I didn't realise this was an OLD thread that had been resurrected.