Item location misrepresentation

[bigdonut]

This has been happening for years.

I started reporting them (Chinese), the more people report the soonier they might do something about it.

KLM Search is useless because they are say they are in Sydney, Darwin, Melbourne and I even seen one the other day at Broome.

Look at the item, Half way down the listing, Right Hand Side there is a Report Button, (Under Ad)  Click it and  Report Category : Listing Practices, Then Reason for report: Other Listing Practises, Then Detailed Listing: Item location misrepresentation.

The More People that do it the better chance something will get done.

If you message ebay they will say that they are warehousing in these cities (Which most are Not) Some are if they have Woolworths pickup but 99% are in Hong Kong and China.

Not only does it have an effect on our business but buyers are getting ........ (Not Happy)

Not only is it coming from overseas but ebay give them up to 30 days or more to deliver the item and what do they give us before we get a defect...

The other issue is Drop downs, when you search an item and it comes up for $1 when infact the battery that runs it is $1 but the item in the search is actually $10... Thus they get first up on the search by price.

If saying you are in Australia (Seller) then you should be liable for all the Consumer laws and paying GST as we are.

Chinese sellers get away with Blue Murder with 20 user names selling the same thing for 1c difference.

If ebay checked they would see that the payment goes back to the same Paypal Account, all they would need to do is cross reference the paypal account to stop it.

And yes my sales have also fallen off a cliff in the past 2 Weeks from 20-30 a day to 1 or 2 sales a day

Ok I have had my 2c Worth

[lyndal1838]

Even more annoying is when the sellers who have put a postage cost in the listing come to the boards complaining about buyers who ignore Pick Up only way down the bottom of the listing and are demanding the seller post the item or cancel the sale.

I've had it happen to me and I am far from inexperienced.

[*tippy*toes*]

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

Even more annoying is when the sellers who have put a postage cost in the listing come to the boards complaining about buyers who ignore Pick Up only way down the bottom of the listing and are demanding the seller post the item or cancel the sale.

I've had it happen to me and I am far from inexperienced.

---

I think part of the problem is, unless it's changed, the quick listing tool doesn't have pick up as an option. As I said, it may have changed, it's been a while since I've looked at it.

[lyndal1838]

Not being a seller I have no idea why it might happen but it sure is annoying for a buyer to get a strike because the seller does not know what they are doing.

[digital*ghost]

---

@clarry100 wrote:

No point reporting them to ebay.AU as they are registered on ebay.CN.

ebay.AU have no punitive jurisdiction over CN registered sellers. This is their own international internal policy.

All they will might do is pass on your report to ebay.CN who will do nothing about it.

This is exactly why they get away with blue murder.

So you are wasting mouse clicks even reporting them really.

Better off to register your own account in CN and then sell on here in the usual way maybe.

---

I find this quite interesting to be honest. I know it's come from Tim Davies, who is generally a reliable source, but I question it because if I - as an Australian seller - list on any international site, I automatically agree (via eBay's own terms and conditions) to comply with that site's T&C's, whether they are the same or differ from eBay AU's.

If a Chinese seller has carte blanche to list on any site and not comply with that site's policies, either I can do the same, or the Chinese are getting special treatment.

I feel fairly certain it's not the former, because you can bet your life if I listed something on the US site and breached one (or more) of their policies, I'd face the consequences if reported / caught, and if it's the latter, I would personally prefer a better explanation than what amounts to "it's internal policy to give them that special treatment".

[clarry100]

---

@digital*ghost wrote:

---

I find this quite interesting to be honest. I know it's come from Tim Davies, who is generally a reliable source, but I question it because if I - as an Australian seller - list on any international site, I automatically agree (via eBay's own terms and conditions) to comply with that site's T&C's, whether they are the same or differ from eBay AU's.

If a Chinese seller has carte blanche to list on any site and not comply with that site's policies, either I can do the same, or the Chinese are getting special treatment.

I feel fairly certain it's not the former, because you can bet your life if I listed something on the US site and breached one (or more) of their policies, I'd face the consequences if reported / caught, and if it's the latter, I would personally prefer a better explanation than what amounts to "it's internal policy to give them that special treatment".

---

I agree with you there DG and I'm quite sure that anybody who lists internationally has to agree with the policies that exist withing the country of listing. Its the application of those policies that appears lax.

When I spoke with Tim personally about this last year he seemd to indicate that the problem was more to do with ebay.CN than anything else. They are none too good at upholding their own policies and simply fail to act on any member reports from other countries unless they are a "large" breach of the rules (eg I'm quite sure they would act if something like guns and/or drugs were involved). They are more interested in the $$$ than anything else (as is always the case in the Chinese culture). So they will avoid doing anything that may impact on that income. And I would guess that ebay global HQ would also be interested in the income being generated by ebay.CN and are probably lax about enforcing them to do so too for this very same reason.

So it was pretty much Tim's opinion that this kind of thing will continue into the foreseeable future unless something major changes with internal ebay global policy and governance. So what I took away from the discussion was that I would be wasting my time to even report things like location misrepresentation by CN sellers as its unlikely to be acted upon by ebay.CN.

Especially if the evidence is a bit dodgy like them claiming they have an AU based warehouse. But if you order an item from them it will come in 6-weeks (if at all) emblazened with CN postmarks. Of course then they will just claim that the AU warehouse was out of stock so we sent it direct from our Chinese supplier on this occasion. So its pretty hard to beat it really.

[rocket2retro]

Even if you were able to get 10, 100 or a 1000 closed down they would just spring up again with a new user ID. Bascially eBay don't care enought to proactively do anything about it.

I'd go with the clear explanation in your listings that you are Australia based & point out you offer local pick (perhaps name a suburb).

[digital*ghost]

---

@clarry100 wrote:

---

When I spoke with Tim personally about this last year he seemd to indicate that the problem was more to do with ebay.CN than anything else. They are none too good at upholding their own policies and simply fail to act on any member reports from other countries unless they are a "large" breach of the rules (eg I'm quite sure they would act if something like guns and/or drugs were involved). They are more interested in the $$$ than anything else (as is always the case in the Chinese culture). So they will avoid doing anything that may impact on that income. And I would guess that ebay global HQ would also be interested in the income being generated by ebay.CN and are probably lax about enforcing them to do so too for this very same reason.

---

This is actually why I find the explanation for it unacceptable, to be honest.

eBay isn't a franchise, in that (as far as I know) each site is not independently owned, licensed, and able to operate as they see fit (apart from whatever contractual obligations they may be, as franchisees usually have a few). That means no matter which way you look at it, eBay is choosing to allow it to happen, because they're not changing any of their internal policies, and they're not implementing consequences if their employees in other countries don't uphold site policies. That isn't a "it's not our fault and we don't know what to do" kind of situation, that's a "we know what's going on and we can't be bothered doing anything about it and/or the money's too good" situation.   

The notion that eBay is currently or ultimately powerless to stop it doesn't ring true to me, unless there's a reason why they can't do anything about it above and beyond 'it's not us allowing it, it's them', because the "them" they're referring to is still eBay, run by eBay employees, who (presumably) can be disciplined and/or fired if they aren't performing to expectations. 

Also, if eBay AU is not able to sanction eBay CN members, fine... but since when does that mean they can't enforce site policies on listings that are created on eBay AU? Is it eBay CN or eBay AU that has to remove a listing on eBay AU? 

Is it eBay CN or eBay AU that can monitor, control, or reduce visibility, of listings on eBay AU? 

(Just FYI, I'm not asking these Q's of you directly, nor expecting you will have an answer 🙂 , they're just the Q's I have in response to the info that's been provided by Davies). 

[imastawka]

Sounds like Tim fobbed you off Clarry

Fed you BS to make you go away.

Ebay's answer to everything

[clarry100]

Stawks I strongly suspect you are right. I recall having this feeling at the time of the short convo with Tim but I'm not as quick on my feet with probing questions and there were others in the queue to chat with him at the time.

DG oh where were you at the time to put up those questions. You are right, I don't have the answers and could only hazard a guess which I won't do here.

So not sure where we could go with this from here. But clearly something needs to change to deal with such dodgy sellers.

[digital*ghost]

To tell you the truth, it's not the first time I've heard or seen this kind of response to the question re: why Chinese sellers can continually breach policies without consequence - the first time I heard it, it seemed mostly logical (though - at the very least - unfair) and though I wouldn't have been really satisfied with the answer, I wouldn't have questioned it too much had I been there at the time, but I've had a while to think it over and ponder those questions. 

There are probably answers to them, and I suspect I'd ultimately find them just as unsatisfying, even if they were half-way reasonable or understandable, because no matter what answer eBay gives to try and excuse or justify the lack of action, it's that lack of action that is the core of problem and there's only one way to fix that.