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.

[peppers-tree]

Aha..Thank You...

[gkam2]

Last time I looked you did not have to go through the 7-11 to get to Coles frozen peas.

[firefighter_au_78]

Well, we rang we put forward our case and they agreed what they are doing is spamming, we will get on to it, two days later nothing, so we rang back, "oh yes you are right we are concerned with whats going on and it is wrong, problem will be sorted in 4hrs"

two days later, contacted customer support via email (maybe if we got it in writing) again the reply was, "there is nothing wrong with what they are doing"

goodness ebay, make up you mind and do what you said you were going to do.

To be honest I was not expecting a result, but I dont give up without a fight, ebay will only  do something if 1/ they miss out on money, 2/ they miss out on money and 3/ they miss out on money.   Customer service should be renamed customer string along, the 'service' portion should definately be removed. rant over

[thecatspjs]

Very frustrating indeed ....good on you for continuing to follow up and at least you have scored an admission of sorts from eBay that all is not as it should be.

I am not sure how such spamming of product could improve eBays sales, IMO it must deter many buyers who like to have see the offerings from a few sellers before purchasing. 

Fingers crossed there is some real action soon ...

[k9tardus]

I'm a buyer and I've pretty well given up even looking in this category. No buyer wants to sift through pages and pages of the same thing looking for what they want. I've tried every word filter and can't get rid of their listings. Hope they give up soon. It must be costing them a fortune, and I can't figure out why.

[sueken4812]

They've been doing it for as long as I've been selling on ebay .... about 4 years.  They started at about the same time as me.  I know this because I also have listings in these categories.  It's terrible trying to find something in there ,,,, page after page of the same photograph.  I haven't given up with my listings, just perservered.  I sell a few of them each month, and inevitably get return customers on these items.  

[firefighter_au_78]

My wife has been selling these items on ebay for close to 10 years, but took a break for about 1.5 years when we sold our house (candle making and house sales dont go together ) 

She has tried to list the odd thing here and there, but they soon dissapear into oblivion, like you said the only people buying at the moment are repeat customers that know where to go to her store.

Anyone that know candles/perfume etc. can see that she is making up blends for the sake of creating a listing, I suppose that is the only way to get to 73000 odd listings.

[ccblue222]

I too have noticed something else very similar in another category and it drives me nuts. I have scroll through what seems like a zillion pages to get to the items I am really interested in and then I get so fed up with trying to find the listings that are not repeated by a variation of style and colour by a seller I nearly give up. It is very annoying I do not want to be looking at one seller only that has zillions of the same thing with maybe a slightly different colour over and over for pages that gone on forever. Totally understand the frustration.

[extra-keen]

K9tardis, It may help if buyers like you contact ebay customer support too. They are more likely (I believe) to take notice of a buyer than a seller.

My categories have been spammed for years with mostly overseas cheap junk, I've just learned to put up with it and when I get a new customer I make sure I do everything to satisfy their product requirements. I have many return happy customers, without them I wouldn't have a business!!!

[k9tardus]

I sent ebay an email to complain, got a "nice" automated email response back. But I notice today they haven't spammed the category.