The situation with face masks and respirators.

[mobileempireau]

I am getting so confused.

Firstly, eBay was looking to ban ALL listing of surgical masks and respirators, regardless of who they are and regardless of prices, origin, etc. But we all know that isn't happening since there were still thousands of those listings.

Now more recently, eBay announced they are only allowing a "small number of approved business sellers" to list these items REGARDLESS of their prices, quality, origin. There is no clear process on how to get approved. I know there is an email that I can send to, but I have not heard anything for 4 days now. 

If eBay's intention is to prevent price gouging, then why are there still a large number of sellers listing these items at large markup over imported prices. I can also see a number of "SAME" listings (e.g. same picture, same description) appears and disappears by many different sellers, of various level.

Why are small private sellers cannot list them right now because the moment you do, you risk accused of price gouging and lifetime account banning? Without a large number of supplies on eBay, prices of these IMPORTED items remain exceedingly high while supply costs have continued to lower as China's manufacturing output have ramped up significantly with lower domestic demands.

I am so just confused here. 

[padi*0409]

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@mobileempireau wrote:

Firstly, eBay was looking to ban ALL listing of surgical masks and respirators, regardless of who they are and regardless of prices, origin, etc. But we all know that isn't happening since there were still thousands of those listings.

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Not at all sure where you get that figure from, I did a search for face mask surgical and it only came up with 152 results, with the majority of those being from Asian sellers.

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_nkw=face+mask+surgical&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&_udlo=&_udhi=&_...

Sour grapes on your side because you've got a lot of stock that you imported and can't sell perhaps ????

[lm-entertainment]

though the term "face mask" still has 140,000+ results and are mostly from china and included are masks of the type which ebay had "banned." obivously there are also a lot of other types of face masks, but there's a much greater number than 152. 

it's interesting that this is even possible, and there's so many "new listings" considering that ebay had banned the term "face mask" from being used in an item description. 

[mobileempireau]

Sign...The first thing you do is to criticise someone without bothering to answer my questions.

Surgical masks, yes, a lot less listings for items located in Australia, but still limited to a small number of business sellers selling civilian grade face masks from China. (Which don't provide PFE)

Try searching for P2 only, filtered to Australia only. 14k last I count, not all may be p2 masks but I dare to say most are related.

Some sellers (in particular one Chinese power seller) is selling p2 Unbranded uncertified for almost $9 each for pack of 10. And you tell me this is not price gouging?

I don't admit I have a bit of stock left, but when I'm trying to do the right thing by asking for approval, I get no where. But at the same.time, there are still.plenty of sellers breaching the rule by listing them with "funny names" to bypass eBay filtering.

So you'd rather blame me for trying to go through the proper process and procedure while ignoring others who don't?

[mobileempireau]

I mean I admit I have a bit of stock left, but now I'm looking to give up trying to import proper ones and sell them here via market price anymore. (Prices are dropping fairly fast in China now)

[excalipurr]

And good old sanitiser has made its way back onto ebay