Reselling of items that eBay GSP has failed to deliver

[james_cumbria]

I've often wondered what happens to items that eBay's Global Shipping Programme fails to deliver, and now I know! It seems that the GSP flogs them off to a business seller who then relists them on their private seller account!

Last year I sold a rare and quite expensive (£2,500) antique magic lantern to a buyer in the USA. After spending weeks in transit the item was deemed to have been lost and the buyer was refunded. It's now back up on eBay (item number 276322692825). I've dropped a line to the seller, who informs me that their business model is based on buying up items from the GSP and then reselling them on eBay. They do this on their private eBay account, thereby benefitting from the many offers extended to private sellers including free listings and reduced final value fees. They currently have around 300 items for sale, including many high value items. They don't accept returns and they don't display their business information. The issue of business sellers hiding behind private selling accounts often crops up on these discussion boards, and it is well known that eBay turns a blind eye to this kind of thing - but I am astonished that eBay is apparently complicit in this practice by supplying such sellers with stock!

This aside, if anyone does know how to purchase items that the Global Shipping Programme has not been able to deliver (e.g. for customs difficulties), I would love to know.   Most of the items I sell are rare and hard - if not impossible - to replace.  On the rare occasion that something does goes missing, I'd love the chance to get it back.  

[vintagewatchpart]

Yes the item had return details on clearly, they all do. I will continue to use GSP as it opens up avenues I cannot attain myself in terms of cost to certain countries. GSP refunded the buyer and not myself, so effectively they do now find themselves responsible for the goods and although it is extremely annoying, I cannot do anything about what they decide to do with the goods.

The issue I have hear is the personal data contained on invoices and labels that are being passed on to other people that is a breach of GDPR and the lack of a respone regarding this by anyone from Ebay.

This is a prolific practice, I got penalised for going to far on this by the mods a few weeks ago but needless to say I see thousands of GSP items for sale by a single seller all of the pictures and titles are copied from the original item that was undelivered by GSP. Sorry but thats impossible to find such an eclectic mix of items and their details without being provided with the invoices within the package to locate them.

Unless I am wrong and it is done another way but no one is responding to this.

[the-nutwood-collection]

A quick search of the internet lists many auction houses selling undelivered parcels and a retailer selling 10 parcels for £69.99.  The retailer shows an image of a heap of parcels, some RM T48, and says 'Packages come in their original form with names marked out with GPRD reasons'  I think they mean GDPR.  On the image, the address labels do have a sticker obscuring the recipient's name and address but, as they are unopened, any personal data within the parcel remains.

However, RM say that all undelivered items without an external return address are sent to Belfast and the packages are opened to ascertain whether there are return details inside.  If not, low value items are destroyed and high value items are auctioned to defray the cost of running the Belfast facility.

I agree with @vintagewatchpart that personal data should be removed, but I expect that the cost of unpacking and repacking the parcels is the reason why it isn't.  Everything comes down to cost nowadays.

[btr.style]

Absolutely, there's quite a few auction houses doing it. I bought one box a while back and whilst they had pulled off/obscured some labels, a lot were still there (this lot was mostly online store returns that never got to their destination with a few of them likely being eBay sales with packling and p2g labels on them). Inside there were some invoices and personal details. 

Partly stuff isn't removed as indeed it's the time to do it, but also part of the appeal is for completely sealed, never opened packages so buyers know it's a gamble but it could pay off instead of them already being opened to remove invoices (which buyers would then assume that if there was anything decent in them, the auction house would have removed it to sell elsewhere for more money). 

[vintagewatchpart]

Another point is that not all packages will have personal data in, but if you are VAT registered you have to provide a VAT invoice by law which will have the buyers name and address and the details of the seller too.

[papso22]

You only legally have to provide VAT invoices to other VAT registered businesses.

[vintagewatchpart]

You are right, and I knew that for some reason I had forgotten as I didn't used to send invoices out at all but perhaps 1 in 200 of my customers asked for them so just included them to prevent admin work!

[the-nutwood-collection]

You're right - I hadn't thought of the 'surprise-surprise' element of the transaction.  Will it be a Faberge egg, a Rolex, a new iPhone - or a pair of socks?  

Or maybe it will be a doubtful item, and you can use the recipient's data to blackmail them.  

[rigged_out]

It's common knowledge about what happens with items in GSP. I really don't know the answer to the invoice in the box though. However, here's a post from 2020 with the same thing. There's many examples. 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6193830/liquidated-ethics-ebay-gsp-and-pitney-bowes