Time for a Level Playing Field... | Business Seller Board

collectablecats · 2026-05-25T09:15:25.131000Z

Let's call a spade a spade. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of 'private' sellers on ebay who are trading. And the number of their listings is ballooning as they get rolled over for free every month. I often check other listings before deciding whether to list a card I have, and its not unusual to discover 'private' sellers with many thousands, even tens of thousands of sales, and hundreds or thousands of free listings that roll over for free every month, meaning their 'shops' get bigger and bigger, slowly making business listings harder to find. Just yesterday I discovered a 'private' seller in my category with 26,000 sales and 2000+ listings - all sitting there free of change and paying no commission when they sell. There is no way to address this effectively without LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD and giving all sellers the same deal when listing and paying commission. This is what happens in the USA an in Australia, where you also get a huge number of 'free' listings when you pay for a shop compared to here in the UK. Sure, give private sellers 20 or 30 free listings a month - who, listing things they want to get rid of, would honestly need more - but include the monthly roll-overs in that total so they have to decide whether to keep those items running, just like businesses do. And charge them commission on sales. Ebsy likes to call itslef a 'community' - but when the community leaders make businesses pay through the nose to allow their competitors to have everything free, it doesn't feel like a community for many legitimate businesses on here. Especially when they are then invited to pay even more to 'promote' items, so they have a better chance of being seen among the vast sea of 'private' listings they have been subsidising. One hopes eBay will one day place 'community' values at the heart of their 'community' and treat businesses fairly by reintroducing a level playing field.

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Time for a Level Playing Field... | Business Seller Board | eBay UK