Time for a Level Playing Field...

[collectablecats]

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. 

[theelench]

I wonder how many who bought your items to split up and re-sell bought them on private accounts ?  Which is also mis-representation, just as criminal and as said above by @cobwebcottage  easily detectable by ebay's A.I

A genuine private seller might occasionally buy one or two of your listings of multiple figures to get hold of one that they're missing, selling-on the others they don't need.  But if they're doing this on a regular basis and re-selling all the figures at a profit, the pattern would be enough easy to spot.  

[emsgems2025]

Yes very easy to spot and no not the case. Just purely buying to sell on. Are you by any chance a private seller? 😂

[sml192]

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@maarsy wrote:

well yes , i have 1620 items on my business and 30 on my private . while on the other hand like others say i have seen myself private accounts i am in competition with have 800 - 1000 items should not be classes as private anymore 

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Whilst someone with that number of items listed is more likely to be a Business Seller than a Private Seller, the number of items listed/sold should not be used on its own to determine whether someone is or isn't a Private Seller as that would not comply with Consumer Legislation.  The same goes for total sales value.

However. I do think there should be a threshold above which you are automatically upgraded to a higher fee structure as is now the case in Australia.  There if your total sales for the last 12 months are greater than AU $25,000 then you are automatically upgraded from 'Free selling' to the 'Pro Starter Plan' and transaction fees (Final Value Fees) are charged instead of the Buyer Protection Fee being applied.  Note being on a 'Pro Plan' doesn't make you a Business Seller so in that regard the name is a little misleading.  The 'Pro Plans' are available to everyone and registering as a Business Seller, if you are actually trading, is still a separate requirement.

Having the same fee structure for both  Private and Business Sellers, like they have in Australia, wouldn't necessarily resolve the problem of businesses trading on a private account but it should help to reduce the number doing so and definitely create a more level playing field, especially if eBay were to also remove the listing fees as they have done in Australia.