Reporting listings in violation of policy

[cobwebcottage]

Has anyone had any success with reporting listings which breach the rules? 

Is it even worth the time and effort as everyone comes back with 
'We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence.'

Recently tried the report for partial bottles of perfume selling for around  £100 a bottle and 14  'items coming soon' all duplicate titles and no descriptions (obviously to use the recent promo).

After receiving  'we looked in to your report' messages for all of these, I thought I would see what happened when you appeal the decision and guess what? Error page, We looked everywhere. The link is broken.

It feels like Ebay doesn't want anyone to report any listings so why bother?

[kempseykate]

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@cobwebcottage wrote:

Has anyone had any success with reporting listings which breach the rules? 

No

Is it even worth the time and effort as everyone comes back with 
'We looked into your report and didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence.'

No

Recently tried the report for partial bottles of perfume selling for around  £100 a bottle and 14  'items coming soon' all duplicate titles and no descriptions (obviously to use the recent promo).

After receiving  'we looked in to your report' messages for all of these, I thought I would see what happened when you appeal the decision and guess what? Error page, We looked everywhere. The link is broken.

It feels like Ebay doesn't want anyone to report any listings so why bother?

I don't bother anymore. They want to get the name for being a site of fakes, illegal stuff and people breaking the law ... that's fine by me. Now I'm only a private seller getting rid of stuff, but I used to have 2 business IDs on here, and I thank goodness every day that I no longer run a business on here, and all those still trying to do this have my uttmost sympathy.

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The new AI responses to reports are an absolute joke.

[rainbowtrax]

No, it's not worth the bother - as you found out. Ebay never take any action on reports, they just send you a message saying there's been no violation. I don't believe that they even review them as they've shown that they fail to spot just about every violation possible. When something is very obvious, like your examples, then the only possible conclusion is that all reports are just binned.

[btr.style]

They don't act because they don't care. That's how I see it. 

Before we had exclusive supply lines, we'd head to trade auctions and stuff like that. One time in the early days I remember sourcing a load of stock from a sell off of various M&S excess stock. Lo and blehold many private account holders got there too, selling the stuff undercutting us because they had the fee promo. 

You, me, anyone can see the abuse of this fee promo with business private sellers. All you have to do is type "coming soon" into eBay search and page and pages of dummy listings come up from business sellers with no returns accepted on private accounts. Sort it by date, newest first, the fee promo ended yesterday and WOW!!! People even say it's a "placeholder". 

It's amazed me even now. A mobile phone number reseller, Toy shop, laptop business, trainer seller, hand made pom pom business. All with dummy "coming soon" listings made during the fee promo on private accounts with no returns accepted. 

eBay themselves are ruining the platform. I wanted to build a decent business and keep going for years and years. Now, I want out. Cutting back on staff, charity donations and as much as I can whenever possible to line my bank balance so I can close the business down, retire and be off eBay for good. A sad state of things but I'll close down fully at the earliest possible oportunity.

Thanks to eBay, I don't enjoy it anymore. Clothing used to be my passion, my main interest. I'd spend hours on fashion forums and worked hard to set up the business. I like the aspect of competition which pushes me to work harder but it's a losing battle working so hard to see some private account business sellers with no returns being gifted the fee promo to undercut us, even waiting to see what we list next so they can revise their placeholder fee promo listing into something we list to undercut us. It just isn't for me anymore. 

[cobwebcottage]

That was sad to read @btr.style but not surprising.

I just can't see why they would not want to take positive action. It's poor business practices which affect all of their clientele, buyers and sellers. Surely, they would want to tidy up the site to improve their reputation and give everyone more confidence to buy and sell.

Why have policies if you are just going to ignore them? And a broken appeal link just sums it all up.

[litp*records]

Well said.  

I've reported many other rule breaking listings before - for digital in-game items from mobile games, for mystery/random boxes of real life items, to photos of shelves/piles of DVDs saying "I'll send you 10 random DVDs out of these..." all of which are not allowed.  And fake items too.  Some fake items being sold by well known charities.  (As I am sure you are aware, being in the fashion business).

So either these people don't read the rules, or don't care, or both... 

[btr.style]

Lets be fair too, eBay claim to want to support businesses. 

Well busineses are those typically with a business account who want to build up reputation, expand, even do good for their communities. They are the long term lifeblood of the platform. They'll usually invest in progressing their business with a company name, logos, promotional material and so on. 

Rather than support this lifeblood, eBay would sooner give out incentives with fee promos to those trading illegally, who typically just want money, don't care about building up a brand name. They will have any randomly generated username, not abide by eBay's own t&c's, create multiple accounts to get more fee promo listings, close one and open another at the drop of a hat because of a few negatives or not getting the fee promo anymore. Dummy listings, dupe listings, all knowingly against the rules (With dupes, they know doing more than 1 qty will void fee promo. Doing exact same listing will give a dupe policy message and so text is changed around to bypass it). That's a point... The dupe message.... It might as well be eBay saying 'You can't create a listing which is EXACTLY the same, but add a single letter to the end of the title to make it different and that's all good'.  

We've built up a long term brand, a company name we stick with. They've built up 'BlahBlah.User87697' (not a real username but you get the idea). 

They get extra money. We get an invite to some silly event (I'm not trying to mock it, it might benefit some, who knows) of no interest whatsoever.

[ett1954]

@cobwebcottage   "Why have policies if you are just going to ignore them? And a broken appeal link just sums it all up."

You are correct; I have just reported a blatant unregistered business seller.  The usual AI report shortly came back stating nothing wrong.  Tried the appeal link as I couldn't understand how this decision could be made on the evidence and got the 'page could not be found'

I think with eBay it is the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" doctrine:  i.e. "turn a blind eye".   It will be interesting to see whether the new income reporting rules for digital platforms results in questions being asked by HMRC on the number of "new" businesses on eBay suddenly having to register for self assessment and whether eBay can be held accountable for the situation.  Time will tell.

[btr.style]

One way, and by all means I'm clued up legally but certain areas are still in infancy for me including regarding competition watchdog. 

You've got business sellers masquerading as a business using fee promos, making people think they have a better deal on an item (opposed to actual business sellers who can't compete on the same item). They may think they are dealing with a shop, a business with the way listings are described, so go for the lower price. Only to then find out when it doesn't fit or there's a change of mind, they can't return it. Isn't that a worse deal for consumers?

eBay allow private accounts to say they've been in business for 20 years or have a shop so surely by offering them the promo creates a worse deal for consumers?

[four_mid_able]

"Has anyone had any success with reporting listings which breach the rules?".

Yes.I reported about 14 listings today after a poster yawned on about having 700+ items put in to unsold.

All were removed within an hour.Yukky stuff.

[iew-signed-books]

In a word, no. Not even vile Nazi propaganda on eBay's German site.

[cobwebcottage]

Good to know some of the 'yukky stuff'  is being removed. Did you use the AI report system?

[bravergrace]

I suspect there are several aspects to this reporting problem.  I have no inside knowledge here, these are just my guesses:

- The people "examining" and "investigating" the reports may only have a few seconds to deal with each report.  This means that they don't have time to read the description, so they can't act on anything that's not immediately obvious from the picture or title.

- The people investigating may not be based in the country where the listings are made, so they may not know what the items ar, let alone whether they breach policy - I know nothing about hunting, for instance, and wouldn't have a clue whether a particular knife or gun was designed for an illegal use in the USA.  Or they may not speak the language well enough to understand the implications of the description - they may think "grooming gang" refers to a hairdressers' association...

- Some report headers are automatically self-defeating.  For instance if eBay defines "business seller" as "seller who has registered as a business", and "correct contact details" as "details accepted by eBay computer as correct" - or thinks "duplicate listings" are automatically detected by the super-duper duplicate listing spotter - then all such reports will be automatically rejected.

- If you make too many reports, eBay may identify you as a problem or "competitor with a grudge".  So if you spot a seller with 100 listings, ALL for "mystery items", eBay may act on your first report, but may automatically bin all the rest.

[iew-signed-books]

People? Robots I'd proffer. 

[pg_kicks]

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@bravergrace wrote:

I suspect there are several aspects to this reporting problem.  I have no inside knowledge here, these are just my guesses:

- The people "examining" and "investigating" the reports may only have a few seconds to deal with each report.  This means that they don't have time to read the description, so they can't act on anything that's not immediately obvious from the picture or title.

- The people investigating may not be based in the country where the listings are made, so they may not know what the items ar, let alone whether they breach policy - I know nothing about hunting, for instance, and wouldn't have a clue whether a particular knife or gun was designed for an illegal use in the USA.  Or they may not speak the language well enough to understand the implications of the description - they may think "grooming gang" refers to a hairdressers' association...

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There is the issue with the system in bold, people dont check them its 99% done by AI now which is broken but if you ask ebay they tell us its working as designed, I have got sick of asking in the weekly chats as they copy and paste some pointless reply that A doesnt actually answer your question and B just claim you are wrong and its working as designed, they are part of the problem as they either are lying to cover for eBay or not actually passing it onto the team to check. 

There is no way we'd have a thread each week complaining about it from TRS with thousands of feedback if it was working as it should, issue is it will cost eBay to fix the issue so they will continue to bury their heads in the sand until they are forced by law to actually deal with it. The new HMRC situation wont make a dent as you can still be reporting your sales to HMRC just on a private account. 

I'd tag the community team members but they would either just ignore it (like previously even though they said theyd reply in the weekly chat) or copy and paste and tell us to carry on reporting.

[exponential_developments]

No............

[pillarboxred]

If you are seriously concerned about perfume which should not be sent in the mail as it is a fire hazard in transportation or a health hazard when not sealed, you can report the matter to public authorities. They can speak to eBay.

[cobwebcottage]

That wasn't my reason. The seller was obviousely selling a lot half full tester bottles of expensive perfume and listing them as 'new other' which goes against the 'used' cosmetic policy not to mention trading as a private seller.

[ducatimondo]

Sadly, same as the majority have posted here.

Reported items from a private seller that is blatantly a business and got the AI response that nothing is wrong.

I've asked in the weekly chat, about specific items and if they are duplicates.

I was answered by anita@ebay to say they weren't when they misapplied the policy.

So if the eBay team on here don't even know or understand the policy, then what chance do we have if either AI jumps in, or worse, poorly trained staff in outsourced resources that don't know the policies either.

I have tried and tried for more than 7 years to get eBay to address the duplicate listings from thousands of sellers. I have definitely wasted my time as eBay just do not care, not one iota...
All they see if fees for listing and fees for sales. They don't care who sells, whether against their policy or not, they are blindsided by making fees when anything sells.
Dealing with customer services is a waste of time.
eBay maintaining their own platform and making sure it always works doesn't even seem to be a primary consideration. So why would anything we want get any consideration, when they don't even consider a fully functioning platform as being important?

Tagging eBay team members was pointed out in the weekly chats a few times by the team members, where they said start a new thread or tag us and will continue to assist outside of the weekly chat.

It is a rarity that they do that, so me tagging a team member here is probably going to be fruitless too.

Cheers
Russ

[pg_kicks]

Hasnt been online since the 5/1 by the looks of things, another great thing eBay team do is keep all their work to themselves, so if somebody is on holiday or leaves then your issue goes with them, you then need to start everything again trying to explain a simple issue to somebody else who starts the full process from the beginning and as eBay somehow take months to reply that person has probably left before its fixed. I'm still waiting for an update from an issue I raised on the 1/11/23 a team member said he would look into it last week but obviously he has just ignored it as no update means they are looking into it, only in ebay world does that sentence ever seem acceptable.

If stuff actually got fixed in a timely manner and a few stickies were put at the top of this forum it would be a much better place and in turn would help eBay make more money.