anti competative listing practices

[firefighter_au_78]

does anythone else think this practice is fair, ebay does not seem to want to help or think it's anti competative.

A person has been listing day and night for a period of two weeks, with little or no let up, changing only the aroma of her product.  She has aproximately 35,000 items in the same catagory and 56,000 total listings. 

If she stops listing and other sellers list a few items, she will start up again and push the other seller's listings to oblivion.

At least four other sellers have dissapeard of ebay in the last few weeks, and what is simply going to happen is that people are just not going to buy these products and abandon the catagory as it is the same thing over and over again...

I have contacted Ebay and they simply dont understand our concern about this seller hijacking and destroying the catagory, they once again seem to only care about collecting their listing fees and not looking at the big picture.

I would welcome any responce from Ebay (and not, but you can list like this too for a fee) or suggestions from members.

PS, I do not want the market all for myself, in crafty type catagories, people like to browse and the more variation the more browsers/return visits there are.

[phorum_junkie*]

You won't get any answers from ebay here, it is a member to member discussion. If the items are different 'flavours' then the seller is doing nothing wrong and they can list as many as they want as can you.

Why should anyone care about fair, ebay is a business and they are out to make the most money possible as are most sellers.

If all sales were restricted the way you want them to be then the 7eleven down the road would be able to restrict the packets of frozen peas that Coles because they offer more pack sizes and varieties than the 7eleva.

[firefighter_au_78]

As I said, I have no problem with competition, different items promote more views, making everyone more money, when people only see the one product over and over again, eventually there will be no competition, the customers lose interest and everyone goes home empty handed.

But what if you ran your 7eleven and coles came and built a store to the left, to the right infront and behind you, everytime you put up a billboard they would surround it with theirs, basically blocking access to your store unless you knew the way in, it would not be allowed to happen, even though the major supermarkets are trying their darndest to fin a loop hole.

So in your opinion you would be fine if coles came along and only sold frozen peas because they decided that they make  the most $$'s out of this product, but you wanted carrots today because you are sick of peas, no matter the size of the pack....... too bad coles has run all the other stores out of business...... 

PS I do realize Ebay are not on the forum, doesnt mean they dont keep an eye on what's being said.

[chameleon54]

Its a bit of a tough one. If what you say is correct it sounds like the seller is playing the system a bit, but not actually doing anything wrong ( if all 35,000 listings are for slight variations of the same product, which beggers belief. )  If the listings are for identical products you could report the seller & listings as they would then breach ebays duplicate listing policies. Can you place your product in a similar but slightly different catagory ? I use several very different catagories for the same products and find it makes very little difference to sales which catagory they are in.

[firefighter_au_78]

This seller has maybe 30 or so different items, the rest are variations of fragrance or size.

I presume they use the $500 list all you want, an option not viable to a home based business with small margins.

They claim all items are hand made to order, but doing this is impossible with these types of margins, they take too long to make unless you have a reasonable size team of workers, not a cottage industry as they are trying to make out.. (trust me my wife was working around the clock at the peak of this and not putting even half the orders through they are)

As I said, she uses the unlimited listings to push any competitor of the pages, so unless a customer has another seller as a favourite, they will not be seen for more than 1/2 hour, customers get bored with seeing the same thing and leave ebay, every one looses.  I have noticed that this is happening in many categories, how many of you guys click auction only because if you list all you get pages and pages of the same stuff, I for one am sick of  looking at 1/4 of all the listings being  for one man post hole diggers in the farm category.

Remember there were once hardware stores where you could get actual help and info, then Bunnings came along and ran them out of business and now we have come to the point where the help is a disinterested teenager that reads the instuctions from the back of the pack 

[peppers-tree]

can someone give me a hint as to what they are please...

[thecatspjs]

Are they candles ? 

[thecatspjs]

I'd ring up and ask to speak to supervisor to report the seller for spamming the category.

Whilst the frangrance and size variations might differentiate the goods, eBay still have a policy regarding such spamming of product.

"Avoid excessive listings of the same item because it makes finding items harder. Excessive listings are any set of identical items which breach the Duplicate listings policy or which eBay determines harms the search experience, regardless of the listing format used"

[gkam2]

I completely agree with Firefighter, it is not only in his catagory, the practice is also rife in Auto Spares.

I just looked at a listing for a generic after market switch and there are pages and pages of individual listings for exactly the same item, the only difference being the make and model car to which it could be fitted. I find it hard to accept that the seller would seriously expect other than a few of their listings to attract a buyer, particularly when the same switch is listed as suiting a 1950 Lancia Aurelia Spyder and a Ford Transit van, not to mention a Lambhorgini Espada.

This is only done to monopolise the listings and make it difficult to find anything other than their product.

I don't care if others think this is a reasonable practice, it is not.

[firefighter_au_78]

We will give it another go  and specifically bring up that policy, last time they said there is nothing they could do.

thank you catspjs, you obviously worked out what I was talking about.