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@moviemem wrote:

The SS Marriage plebiscite has highlighted the fact that it can be illegal for businesses to refuse to sell porducts to customers based on various criteria. 

 

ebay allows sellers to block up to 5000 users and there is no need to provide a reason.

 

Curious as to whether that might be illegal.

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I don't think it's illegal or as someone said, it would have been challenged before now.

However, that doesn't mean it will forever remain that way. Ebay has changed a lot in the last few years & will probably change a lot more in the next decade.

It seems to me that more & more people are 'challenging' restrictions or calling foul on a lot of situations.

It is not 100% true to say all businesses are free to sell to whoever they like or restrict sales. A few months back I remember shop keepers at a couple of stores putting up signs that black teens were not to enter the store. Forget the wording but that was the meaning. Reason was one seller had groups of them coming in daily & openly shoplifting from him and felt powerless to stop it.  He was absolutely persecuted by media.

The reason he was in trouble I guess was he was generalising instead of just refusing service to particular individuals but if he put up the names of those not welcome to enter, I'm betting that would not be acceptable either.

What I can see happening with places like ebay (just supposing there was a ruckus about blocking people etc) is that blocking would be allowed, however, the seller would have to give a reason for it from a drop down menu. I'd guess 2 strikes against a buyer would be remain as a reason (it is sort of like a bad credit rating really), item no longer available would be fine, buyer lives in an area seller doesn't post to etc would be fine. But openly blocking someone because you didn't like their feedback to others would not be fine. You'd have to choose another option.

What happens with some discrimination is it goes underground & often you wouldn't be able to prove it. My sister worked in a warehouse (in the office section) where there were often vacancies advertised but the boss was only ever going to hire males, because it involved heavy lifting of rolls of fabric. Now we can argue what we like about women & lifting but that was the boss's opinion, but he could not advertise openly that it was  male only. My sister said the result was many women sent in excellent resumes that they must have spent good time doing but it was all wasted effort. But you'd have a hard time proving it.

Sellers should be able to restrict sales & I don't think that will change at all in the immediate future but it may tighten up.

of course once ebay turns to instant payment for everything a lot of the non paying bidder problems will disappear anywya.