FAO Ebay staff - Reporting businesses trading on private accounts

[howmuchtobid]

To whom it may concern.

It's about time it was made easier for Ebay users to be able to report businesses trading on private accounts in a much more straight forward way.  At the moment there is no obvious option when using the report item option, i.e. there is no business trading on a private account option.

I and many other business sellers/Ebay users have spent a lot of time reporting blatant business sellers on private accounts however we are often wasting our time as all we get is a pointless AI response which simply isn't good enough.

This is something that needs to be introduced urgently as it will help legitimate business sellers survive and hopefully flourish, also in many ways it will be of great benefit to Ebay. It will also help Ebay's image as having so many illegal sellers on the platform is not a good look.

Can someone from Ebay please confirm they have seen this, thank you.

[lupo-store]

I had a long conversation with concierge tonight.

i was told they are mandated to remove or upgrade all private sellers who have exceeded £1k sales pa by the end of the year.

I believe they are just about to enter the phase of withholding funds. Next phase is removing listings and last phase is closure of accounts.

This is the same info I was given back in August (apart from the end of year mandate). I think now we will hopefully see action against the hardcore non-compliant sellers

[lupo-store]

I had a long conversation with concierge tonight.

i was told they are mandated to remove or upgrade all private sellers who have exceeded £1k sales pa by the end of the year.

I believe they are just about to enter the phase of withholding funds. Next phase is removing listings and then finally accounts.

this is the same info I was provided in August (minus the EOY mandate).

fingers crossed it's true

[rainbowtrax]

Well, that would be typical of ebay to use some random sales figure that, taken alone, is no indication of whether someone is trading or not. If they use that as their sole criteria then that's not really any less stupid than the current situation of no action whatsoever. Sure, it'll catch all of the main offenders but there will be a hell of a lot of innocent private sellers caught in that net.

I sell in an area that's awash with illegal traders BUT it's also an area where genuine collectors often have very large collections to sell off with some individual items being worth more than a grand on their own. Even selling off lesser items, that's allowing a genuine private seller to sell under £100 a month before being forced to switch to a business account. Heaven help anyone selling off a collection or clearing a dead relative's possessions.

When will ebay grasp the fact that a seller's status as private or business has nothing whatsoever to do with the value of items sold? Hopefully they've given you wrong or incomplete info but it does sound daft enough to be true.

[555njp]

The more I read on here, the less I think eBay have any clue...?

Ridding yourself of yours and the families unwanted items is basically the whole point of having a private account to sell online...!!

As @rainbowtrax says; god help anyone selling off a collection or trying to clear a relatives home.
Are they deliberately ridding the site of the very people that made it in the first place?

Also, why encourage private sellers to sell more by giving them free fees if all they are going to do is shut them down or force them into a business account (which most absolutely will not want to do).

If they do implement this nonsense by the end of the year, coupled with GPSR & the new HMRC reporting (not even mentioning the planned buyer premiums) then who exactly are us small business account holders meant to be selling to?

Weekly chat will be interesting tomorrow.....!

[1956glyn]

Heaven help anyone selling off a collection or clearing a dead relative's possessions.

Thats us done then because 95% of items hubby and i list (as most are aware) are genuinely inherited 😞 

Before any twit accuses us of being a business i shall repeat......we lost both of our last parents within just over 2 weeks of each other and had to clear their homes.......in those homes were also my fathers items and also Glyns mothers and grandmothers items 😞     Only just over 2 months ago he lost his younger sister.

I still have about 10 plus  large boxes of inherited items to go through in a spare bedroom 😞

[moonspender]

Nothing wrong with that then. My issue is when I seen a lot sold at auction house pop up on Ebay being sold by a private seller, those im reporting and i have a feeling that will be one thing HMRC will do one they have the data ebay has to supply, cross reference the seller name with local auction houses and bingo ... proof of buying to sell / trading.

[1956glyn]

We have no auction houses etc around here at all.

But what is to stop these people just giving a false name and address or do they ask for proper photo identification?

[moonspender]

The good news is that private sellers who are obvious business sellers that are being reported are being investigated by ebay and action is being taken, appreciate they cannot give us information but they are on it and i dont think anyone legit has anythingto worry about

[1956glyn]

I agree and listing on Ebay at the minute is "my therapy"   but we are just over the limits.  

Been waiting ages for proper therapy as we both wake up 4 times a night...every night 😞

[papso22]

I had a long conversation with concierge tonight.

i was told they are mandated to remove or upgrade all private sellers who have exceeded £1k sales pa by the end of the year.

There is a law against a business seller masquerading as a private seller, but I am not aware that there is one that works the other way.  However, ebay forcing business account status on genuine private sellers (as an alternative to not selling at all), due to an entirely arbitrary and made up measure, is an appalling move.

If this happened to my private account then I would be tempted to take legal advice, the trouble is that as there is no right to an ebay account, or to sell on one, then there is probably very little I could do about it, legally.

The choice seems to be declare yourself as a business by havinmg an ebay business account, with all the legal implications that come with that, not forgetting awkward conversations with HMRC, or stop selling.  

No doubt ebay will blame HMRC again, but they really don't care what sort of ebay account you have, although they might take more notice of business accounts with no tax declared, which is probably the correct tax position for most of the £1k plus accounts that ebay will bully into upgrading. 

[kempseykate]

I think if they tried to make me upgrade to business or stop selling, I would take the latter route. This is our own stuff/inherited stuff, so I certainly wouldn't want to go down the business route, especially as we have no receipts, so I wouldn't be able to show that on a recent sale we bought the item for £16.99 years ago and sold for £5.25 (which included £3 postage!).

Goodness knows what would happen to the stuff we still have to get rid of, I suppose a couple of boot sales, maybe some as lots to auction and the lower value stuff to charity.

[moonspender]

Could you use the valuations from probate as far as evidence for HMRC ? I would image sale of inherited goods falls under capital gains ? Might be worth getting some advice before moving off ebay in the event that change was implimented

[kempseykate]

---

@moonspender wrote:

Could you use the valuations from probate as far as evidence for HMRC ? I would image sale of inherited goods falls under capital gains ? Might be worth getting some advice before moving off ebay in the event that change was implimented

---

Most of the stuff we have is ours, but as I say, without receipts. When my bro-in-law died there were no itemised valuable items, just a house full of 60 years of collecting stuff that has little or no value. On probate it was just lumped in as not being more than £x.

[1956glyn]

When we had dealings with probate everything had to be properly valued ....a lot individually as parents were collectors of expensive items 😞   Losing 2 parents close together Glyn had to take a year or so out of work to deal with everything.

it is difficult.

[555njp]

I fully understand your situation. I had something very similar years back losing family on both mine and my wife's side. It literally took years to sell off, give away etc. everything.

But even as our kids grew up, selling off old toys, clothes, gaming stuff etc. soon mounts up and better than it going to landfill.

[555njp]

So if this is true, I guess what eBay are saying is there are two kinds of account; business if you buy to sell and private for selling your own old possessions........However, if you exceed £1000 of sales in any rolling 12 months (or tax or calendar year), your private account will be 'upgraded' to business (mainly to stop people cheating the system but also so we can sting you for fees).

Whilst I don't fully agree with this approach it does make sense when considering GPSRs as eBay will be in serious trouble if they allow business sellers to avoid compliance by trading illegally on the wrong account.

The remaining open issue is, how do they deal with multiple account holders? 

[555njp]

---

@kempseykate wrote:

I think if they tried to make me upgrade to business or stop selling, I would take the latter route. This is our own stuff/inherited stuff, so I certainly wouldn't want to go down the business route, especially as we have no receipts, so I wouldn't be able to show that on a recent sale we bought the item for £16.99 years ago and sold for £5.25 (which included £3 postage!).

Goodness knows what would happen to the stuff we still have to get rid of, I suppose a couple of boot sales, maybe some as lots to auction and the lower value stuff to charity.

---

And I think a fair percentage of legitimate private sellers would do the same...

[1956glyn]

We only have this one account.

Ebay can easily link multiple accounts i guess by IP address, home address etc etc

[the-nutwood-collection]

i was told they are mandated to remove or upgrade all private sellers who have exceeded £1k sales pa by the end of the year.

IMHO, even the White Queen wouldn't have included that statement in the six impossible things she would believe before breakfast.

[nutrafituk]

I was told they are mandated to remove or upgrade all private sellers who have exceeded £1k sales pa by the end of the year.

I guess this reply must have also been generated by their AI 😂