MORE businesses on private accounts, not less

[lupo-store]

Since spring my sales have been hit by Chinese accounts creating UK private accounts to evade VAT taken at source and thus have a 20% price advantage.

I have made several test purchases and all have arrived from UK based fulfilment centres and those have been owned by companies with Chinese directors.  

In theory the new legislation with £1000 maximum sales per private account should have sold this and I know that eBay are removing many accounts however I have seen a new trend.

One of my best selling products, which has gone from selling 800 units per month down to 550 units per month but it still the best selling one on eBay has had serious competition from private sellers.

At the start of September I conducted a search and there were 1200 listings of the same type of product which were from UK based private sellers of new items.  Yesterday I conducted the same search and there were now 1400. It is my belief that these Chinese accounts are simply multiplying so that they do not get to £1000 sales on each. Each listing tends to have a quantity of 5 or 10 and that quantity stays the same no matter how many are sold.

Most of these accounts they are on or accounts which have been created in the last few months. There are Facebook groups where people openly buy and sell accounts and create accounts with false ID.  

The only way eBay can crackdown on this is by limiting the number of multiple unit new products private sellers can sell.

[myriad*seller]

£1000 in sales OR 30 items....

[lupo-store]

Yes forgot to add that bit

[pg_kicks]

I think you may have already mentioned it but if you are on  concierge send an email with all of your findings and let them know you are also contacting trading standards and your local MP with the same evidence (it may make them sit up and think) as concierge have direct contact to a safety and security (I think thats the team) and they can look into it and you get an email back which is manned by humans, yes it looks copy and paste replies but least you have proof you've sent it and get a reply.

Also we need to keep raising these issues and anything else like this on the boards, people at eBay do read it but as they dont actually use the site from a business selling side they only know of the issues if we raise them as departments dont talk as much as they should sadly.

[lupo-store]

I have just had a long conversation with cpncierge and shown them this post.  They are passing it to Trust and Safety and hopefully they will get it to the Cyber Security team to investigate further.

Also my friend, whi helped with the VAT evasion issue will be blogging about this and will hopefully get some of his journalist friends to write about it.

I know its happening.  I was right about the VAT evasiuon issue in 2015 and the laws brought in on the back of my petitioning saved the UK taxpayer £1.3b per annum.  Then I was right in 2019 with item location misrepresentation.  I worked with Royal mail and Mike Pitt (eBay's head of shipping) to sort that.

I can see the patterns.  I can see the many thounsands of new accounts which are all private selling all the same items.  All with virtual stock levels of less than 10.  All with 20 or less listings.  All come from UK 3PL's.

[lupo-store]

It's an absolute joke how these are getting away with it.  Just seen eBay item number:235757724687

Private seller with 419 listings yet in their description they say this!!

[lupo-store]

Just had this really positive response from eBay concierge:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting eBay customer service, my name is **** from eBay Concierge. I can see from your email that you are concerned that these Chinese sellers who have infiltrated these private accounts are adapting their MO to divide their listings between more accounts and therefore each account will not reach the £1k PA threshold.

I’m happy to be assisting you regarding this.

I understand your worries about the potential implications of Chinese sellers dividing their listings among multiple accounts to avoid reaching the £1k per annum threshold. This is indeed a serious issue that could have significant ramifications for compliance and safety standards.

We are committed to maintaining a secure and trustworthy marketplace on eBay, and we take these matters very seriously. I will escalate this issue to our compliance team to review and assess our current policies and procedures. We aim to ensure that all sellers, regardless of their location, adhere to local laws and regulations, including the General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR).

Your vigilance in this matter is greatly appreciated, and it plays a crucial role in helping us maintain the integrity of our platform.

I would recommend utilizing our report a listing tool will help us to flag these accounts with our Trust and safety to investigate and take the appropriate action. Please see below for more information;

Report an item or listing

Thank you once again for bringing this to our attention.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to resolve your query Julius and I hope you have a lovely day ahead.

I appreciate you taking the time to contact eBay Customer service, we wish you every success with your current and future transactions on eBay.

Regards,
****,
eBay Customer Service

[pg_kicks]

Whilst reporting is a sensible option it seems like going straight to concierge bypasses the chance of AI or somebody without the knowledge looking at it, lets hope its actually acted upon and the accounts are banned along with the IP addresses. All we want is a safe and legal site, surely eBay are wanting the same?

[technthread]

Slightly off topic but on the point of being a safe and trusted place to buy:

In a lot of cases they just need someone with basic knowledge in a category to apply some common sense.

Take 1 Oz Silver Eagles as an example:

Anyone with even a passing interest in bullion or the spot price of silver knows those can't be real. Silver is £23 an Oz at the moment.

Those coins will be fakes, maybe half decent ones as sadly when I've looked at these things before there's positive feedback from buyers who think they are holding the real thing.