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]

If eBay are failing to police this they are in breach of the following:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-extending-joint-and-several-liability-for-online-mark...

I was part of the lobbyists who made HMRC bring this law into effect.  If eBay are not policing this I urge you to contact the guy at the bottom of the page.  He has now been promoted to head of VAT compliance for HMRC.  He has weekly meetings with eBay and Amazon.  Its his job to make sure they follow the law.

[555njp]

This may be the reason though that eBay only takes action if a sellers TO clearly exceeds the VAT threshold.
Illegal trading on eBay if under this (i.e. seller not VAT’d) but where the business is disclosing their income correctly to HMRC gets ignored because eBay probably know full well nothing will be done.

At least this ‘might’ stop some of the bigger businesses from trading illegally although I’m surprised the bigger players would take the risk of being caught, fined and possibly being shut down.

[gemini-project]

After over 3 months i have had my first "The content you reported was removed" still a waste of time unless they remove the other 59 listings until they convert to a business account.

[iglassmobilephones]

Very true. I find it unbelievable how they can use AI for a whole host of functions such as detecting the exchange of unauthorised information through emails etc yet they cant use AI to flag up every private account that has met certain criteria such as (turnover, username, listing content etc) that proves beyond doubt they are selling as a business. At the very least it should be able to flag up in seconds suspicious accounts and send alerts to ebay staff who can do manual assessments and restrict selling activity untill they can prove they are not a business.

consider a private seller whose turnover is £90,000 in the last months, their username is highly specific and product / service oriented (e.g we_sell_phones or electronics_repair_uk - BOTH FICTITIOUS NAMES) and their listing contains tons of info that no private seller would include (disclaimers, customer service, detailed return policy). And if there was a website with a domain name identical to the ebay username, selling products identical to the ebay seller and in a location identical to the ebay seller I might have though even AI would get the hint. 

[lupo-store]

I believe they are waiting for the HMRC sweep on tax at the end of January.

I have checked on Terapeak in my markets.  A couple of things were found.

1, The amount of private sellers in the top page is dwindling.

2, The amount of sales the top items are getting compared to a year ago is down a lot, (maybe 30%).

I think its in the interest of ebay to get this sorted ASAP as it's damaged the marketplace.

[555njp]

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@gemini-project wrote:

After over 3 months i have had my first "The content you reported was removed" still a waste of time unless they remove the other 59 listings until they convert to a business account.

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On this weeks chat I raised this issue again and got a very poor response to be honest, but Marco did provide a link for reporting a seller, rather than listing by listing (which I didn’t realise existed!).

Having tried reporting a handful of one sellers listings, I’ve now used that link and reported the seller (70 multi-quantity listings, brand new items, worth thousands, clearly a business who’s flooded the category) so looking forward to see what, if anything, now happens…!

[gemini-project]

Can you share this link?

[555njp]

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@lupo-store wrote:

I believe they are waiting for the HMRC sweep on tax at the end of January.

I thought (hoped) same, but apparently the timing for eBay to provide data on accounts that existed already (prior to January 2024) has gone back 12 months.

I have checked on Terapeak in my markets.  A couple of things were found.

1, The amount of private sellers in the top page is dwindling.

2, The amount of sales the top items are getting compared to a year ago is down a lot, (maybe 30%).

I think it’s in the interest of ebay to get this sorted ASAP as it's damaged the marketplace.

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I do to and called out the revenue loss to eBay in this weeks chat, this was the response:

“I've just double checked there, and there is nothing particularly impacting sales at the moment. Please note that eBay's main income is fees from sellers, so if there was anything negatively impacting sales, we would jump in there straight away to get it resolved as this matter would be considered priority for us.”

So eBay blatantly do not see these illegal accounts as revenue losing threats. It’s not just the avoided fees but the knock-on loss of genuine fee-paying businesses that cannot compete. Why they can’t see and action this as a priority is beyond me.

[555njp]

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@gemini-project wrote:

Can you share this link?

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Try this, taken from this weeks chat (post 28/37) from Marco.

To report them, you can use this link and select the "The seller has violated one of eBay’s policies" and then "Other", and then enter the seller ID and your description.

[moldosgifts]

For any body wanting to report a seller not just a listing for operating a business on a private account or any other infringement the link is  

Online Customer Service - Report an issue with a seller

For the privat/business the option is. The seller has violated one of eBay’s policies, then on the next page. Other.

Fill in appropriately

[gemini-project]

Thank you , i will give it a go later.

[santlache_sales]

It's all too late, all this whinging about Private sellers and people fixated in reporting them, eBay have let the genie out of the bottle and it is all too late now. The site has been decimated for Businesses and there is no going back now.

The only option for businesses is to vastly reduce stock, drop a shop level and be very particular about what you list, that is the way I am going as sales have totally fallen through the floor. This isn't going to get better.

eBay have screwed us over.

[gemini-project]

That was all a waste of time yet again, the item was never took down, its still on 2 days later and all other reports got a "we didn't find anything wrong"

I give up.

[555njp]

Same here, except eBay haven’t even bothered to get back to me this time.

I had an item on at £16.95 with a margin around the £3.50 mark. The illegal seller has just listed identical items at £14.95 with best offer, so this morning I duly reduced mine to £14.95.

He’s just sent me an offer on his at £12.50! 
If I did that it would be at a loss of around £1.

So if this isn’t fixed soon, I’ll also be delisting, clearing current stock (only got a few items on now anyway) and leaving as the site just isn’t viable anymore.

Only when a lot businesses move away or switch to Private accounts, thereby hitting eBay’s revenue will anything be done.

[santlache_sales]

Dear Kat

You do realise this is desperate measures from eBay, after screwing over all your businesses it is too late now, the genie is out of the bottle and it isn't going back.

You soon realised at eBay things are not right and a massive error has been made, and so far you have done nothing to rectify it, except exclude many Private sellers now with this 1000 pounds limit.

Why don't you admit you have totally and utterly screwed up the platform, businesses have suffered massively and yet still you give us nothing back. Over 20 years I have been here and I'm left paying premium rates for nothing.

How about addressing the highly manipulated search engine too while we are at it, where it is no longer a search engine anymore as all it shows is what eBay want you to see, Promoted Listings, not what people want to see, which has led to a two tier selling system and not a level playing field.

Where is eBay's loyalty to their long standing business sellers ?

There is none, absolutely none.

[iglassmobilephones]

Spot on 👍 But sadly I think as other people have said nothing is going to change. 

[santlache_sales]

Thank you.

But as others have said large corporations like eBay always hold their cards close to their chests, although I get the impression they have now actually realised through massive CS feedback they have totally screwed it up.

But they are acting like headless chickens, and keep coming out with stupid new measures now against Private sellers which simply do not come near to addressing the problems, a problem they alone have created.

They will have to drop business fees by a large chunk, otherwise many will leave if they haven't already, and have likely opened 2 or 3 private accounts to sell for free.  I am coming down a shop level at the end of January and streamlining much of what I sell. It's high time I had a good clear out anyway.

But this isn't going to go away, eBay have totally screwed it up especially for businesses.,

[gemini-project]

I have just reported the same item again however this time round there's nothing wrong with it.

I will probably get another warning soon 😩

[myretrostore-uk]

Unfortunately this reporting method  is not working either. I've reported  a few sellers and get the standard AI response back that we didn't find anything wrong.

[moldosgifts]

I use that method I've never had that message, always we are looking into it.

Some i have reported have stopped trading or changed to a business account, but it takes time one poster here was expecting a takedown in 2 days, not happening. i see action taken in more like 2 months minimum.

I have a list of accounts and go back and check, some i have to report 3 possibly 4 times.