Frustrated by multiple identical auction spamming.

[a.s.p.me]

Hi,

Just after some advice from the regular sellers on here.

I am on the boards regularly myself under my selling id but wanted to keep this one anonymous.

I sell fashion jewellery and do pretty well with 20-40 sales a day.

I work hard for this along with my wife.

We both work regular jobs and do ebay after hours for a total of 12-16 hours a day each, 7 days a week.

We have maintained a top rated seller status with almost 100% feedback.

Normally i wouldn't complain about a little competition.. it is why people come to ebay after all, but there is a seller spamming auction listings in our category that seems to be massively affecting our sales.

So much so that for the last 2 weekends we have had a total of 6 and 8 sales respectively.

The seller has a total of 2500 active auctions but as near as i can tell, only 250-300 unique products.

5-10 listings for each item finishing over the next 4-5 days.

Most of the auctions finish on weekday evening and all day on the weekends.

At these times, everyone elses listings get pushed back a few pages and the majority of the search results are their listings.

Ebays policy on this is a little vague. Basically its ok to do multiple identical auctions as long as they are selling.

From what i can see of the sellers listings, they have a sell through rate under 20% with some items as little as 2%.

One example:

Antique Style Stunning 18K Rose GOLD Filled Filigree Drop Earrings VINTAGE LOOK 

Total listings in last 30 days: 98

sell through rate: 8%

Another one:

18K Rose Gold Filled GF Stud Earrings With Purple SWAROVSKI Crystal

Total listings in last 30 days: 49

Sell through rate: 2%

I did report them for listing violations over the weekend, but i think unless the items are in the wrong category it takes more than one report to make ebay pay attention to it.

They may also just think its sour grapes because im in competition with them.

They also do keyword spamming which i haven't reported them for because its fairly minor, but am tempted.

eg: 18K Rose Gold Filled GF GP Four Leaf Clover Stud Earings With Rhinestone Crystal

It's not possible for an item to be both gold filled and gold plate (gold filled gf gp)

So, my questions are...

what would you do?

Am i unreasonable to expect customers to be able to view my listings without having to sort through their 2500 listings first?

[kopenhagen5]

I would report for keyword spamming. It's not so much what is minor or major but what ebay can prove in order to sanction accounts.

Go for it, I am getting a little sick n tired of individuals not doing the right thing. X-(

[tonalidesigns]

Are their listings auctions or store items?

[davewil1964]

Are their listings auctions or store items?

Frustrated by multiple identical auction spamming - the title of this thread.

Auctions, I suspect.

[a.s.p.me]

Yes, they are auctions.

Basically 8-10 listings for the same item.

They are spread out over 5 days, so normally it wouldn't be a huge problem, but since they have 250 - 300 items with 2 auctions for each one finishing mostly from 5pm to 1am, their auctions take precedence in best match.

Up to 600 of them altogether in a night.

Having said that, it looks like something has made a difference because their total listing number has dropped from 2500 to 700.

Maybe reporting does work.

😄

[davewil1964]

it might pay to remember that very few experienced buyers search using 'best' match.

[thesoulyearns]

I don't see this seller keyword spamming anymore than most.

Anyway, here is what eBay says regarding multiple auction listings for the same item. The first paragraph states the reasons for removal or less visibility in search results. The second paragraph states what needs to be achieved to prevent a listing being called a duplicate. From here: http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-multi.html

"If you have too many duplicate auction-style listings that don't end in sales, you may be in violation of this policy. If you don't have a strong record in converting these types of duplicate listings into sales, you'll need to remove the listings, and you won't be allowed to list duplicate auction-style listings in the future. If you do, we may remove the listings or give them less visibility in search results. If you continue to list duplicate auction-style listings, you may lose your selling privileges or your account may be suspended.

Listings are considered duplicates if they are for items that have no significant difference between them. To avoid having your auction-style listings treated as duplicates, make sure you show the differences between items in the title, price, photo, subtitle, product ID, item specifics, or parts compatibility areas of the listing. We may also look at other parts of the listing to determine whether it's a duplicate. If 2 items are the same, but are listed separately in auction-style listings that have 2 different ending times, they will still be considered duplicates and may be in violation of this policy. This restriction also includes listing an identical item in different categories or listing an identical item using different user IDs."

[a.s.p.me]

Thanks for all the replies.

😄

If 2 items are the same, but are listed separately in auction-style listings that have 2 different ending times, they will still be considered duplicates and may be in violation of this policy. This restriction also includes listing an identical item in different categories or listing an identical item using different user IDs

They are talking about 2 listings there, so hopefully it applies to 10 as well...

I'm sure i read somewhere in ebays rules that if you have a large number of identical items, it's ok to have 1 buy now listing and 1 auction.

Forgot to mention that the seller has 3 accounts. They are not doing auction spamming on the other 2 accounts. I guess they know they are breaking the rules and assume only the 1 account would get suspended.

[putney32]

Forgot to mention that the seller has 3 accounts. They are not doing auction spamming on the other 2 accounts. I guess they know they are breaking the rules and assume only the 1 account would get suspended.

[putney32]

missed my reply.

if One of your accounts is suspended, then you are not permitted to sell on ANY of your eBay accounts..