eBay

antontrak · ‎14-01-2024

Hello,

I've bought a new product from a private seller who is clearly operating a defacto business; all their products are stock photos and a lot of their listings have multiple quantity available.

I got the product at a good price and know that private sellers aren't operating within consumer rights, so a risk was taken by me I get that, I'm not complaining here more just exploring the topic. The product has developed a fault after about six weeks, this is a product you'd expect to last more like six years. They have rejected my request for a return based on it being outside of the return period, no surprise there.

My question is are they allowed to be operating a defacto business under a private seller account? Whether or not they technically trade as a business I'm sure HMRC would consider their activity taxable and so in the eyes of the law I would have thought this would make them a business.

Have they breached ebay policy by registering as a private seller?

Thanks

rainbowtrax · ‎14-01-2024

Yes they have but unfortunately ebay don't care and won't act on any report you make, however blatant and obvious it is. Your best recourse is probably to contact your payment provider, or possibly try Paypal if that's how you paid.

tommystrezures · ‎14-01-2024

Of course they are breaching ebay policy, fee avoidance and denying buyers their consumer rights etc. Unfortunately ebay don't or wont act on it. Its a very sore subject on these threads if you have a read!

If the item in your case isn't functioning then you are outside of the Ebay MBG period of 30 days, so you would need to approach your payment provider eg paypal or your bank.

My business was a finalist in the ebay business awards 2023.

iew-signed-books · ‎15-01-2024

There are innumerable posts on this very topic - best to read them first before starting yet another.

naughty_neena · ‎15-01-2024

Even if they were registered as a bussiness, Would Ebay want to know as its outside the 30 days

gallovidian · ‎15-01-2024

@rainbowtrax wrote:
Yes they have but unfortunately ebay don't care and won't act on any report you make, however blatant and obvious it is. Your best recourse is probably to contact your payment provider, or possibly try Paypal if that's how you paid.

eBay are selling a service, just like you are selling items.. So how do you think they or you should feel about being ripped off for a substantial part of the intended price? I'm sure ebay do care about people illicitly paying the reduced fees for private sellers. But monitoring and enforcement cost money, and sometimes seem to rank low in their priorities.

Volume of sales isn't the criterion, but buying or making things in order to sell. They do seem to allow the hobbyist some leeway. What is he to do, for example, if his trioical fish procreate with exceptional success? Or if the only way he can get a 1960 motorcycle throttle cable is by buying someone's lot of ten?

With more purposeful fee ribbing-off, ebay may reflect that registration type doesn't change the buyer's rights in a misdescription, transit damage or non-delivery case. So it shouldn't affect buyers' willingness to buy, which is where the bottom really lies. A possible pitfall is when a buyer wants to do a change of mind, no-fault return. Only a private seller is allowed to "offer" a policy declining no-fault returns.

This is obviously cheating the buyer out of his rights. But it doesn't seem like something buyers will often fall foul of. Many a buyer, like myself, has never done a change of mind return, and it was there in the listing to be seen.

Of course we occasionally hear from a buyer who sees "noreturns", doesn't click on the explanatory link, ank makes the unwarranted assumption that it means no returns of any kind. Life is hard, and it is harder for some people than others.,

rainbowtrax · ‎15-01-2024

@gallovidian wrote:

@rainbowtrax wrote:

Yes they have but unfortunately ebay don't care and won't act on any report you make, however blatant and obvious it is. Your best recourse is probably to contact your payment provider, or possibly try Paypal if that's how you paid.

eBay are selling a service, just like you are selling items.. So how do you think they or you should feel about being ripped off for a substantial part of the intended price? I'm sure ebay do care about people illicitly paying the reduced fees for private sellers. But monitoring and enforcement cost money, and sometimes seem to rank low in their priorities.

Ebay have set the criteria for enforcing business registration at the VAT threshold of £85,000. If a seller's turnover is below that then they don't care. Their CS staff, even UK/Ireland ones, have their scripts to tell sellers who ask advice on the matter that they are free to sell as a trader from a private account until they hit the VAT threshold. This happens time and time again. It has even been reported by one seller, who wanted to switch to a business account but encountered a tech glitch, that they were then told by CS that they weren't allowed to have a business account as they didn't sell enough.

One can only assume that ebay must think that such sellers wouldn't sell on ebay without the private seller freebies and discounts and ebay would prefer some fees to no fees at all from these sellers. That's the only logical reason that anyone has managed to come up with to explain ebay's active encouragement of illegal trading and fee evasion on such a massive scale. But, whether that's the real reason or they have some other one, ebay really do not care one jot - much the same as any report on any other matter. Unfortunately, AI always says no problem and, if a human CS agent reviews the report, they also say no problem. It's been that way for a long time and doesn't look likely to change.

Also unfortunately, there are far too many buyers who do believe that no returns means no returns for any reason and even think that they are stuck with faulty or damaged goods. There are regular posts about it, particularly on the Member To Member board, which is where users are steered to when they first come to the forums with a problem. The reality, of course, is that the law gives buyers even more legal rights of return from an illegal trader than from other sellers - but due to one aspect of the illegal trading being the lack of contact detaiils on a listing, the buyer has virtually no way of enforcing them.

btr.style · ‎15-01-2024

'I'm sure ebay do care about people illicitly paying the reduced fees for private sellers. But monitoring and enforcement cost money, and sometimes seem to rank low in their priorities.'

Of course they dont. They supposedly have a team who review these cases anyway so no extra investment needed to enforce those rules.

It's very easy in most cases to spot who is business trading on a private account misusing fee promos within about 10 seconds, sometimes less. It kind of gives it away when you see things like "family business of 10 years", business names as their username, mentions of having a shop, the logo used or even the fact they have 100's of similar listings, all brand new in sealed packaging.

I would imagine the reason eBay won't act is because they've made a mess of things. It all started when this fee promo was given out occasionally quite a few years ago as an incentive to get more listings on their platform. eBay realised that more and more private sellers wouldn't list at any other time but only when there was a few promo. So then they started giving it out every 2 weeks.

Business sellers then popped up misusing this fee promo on private accounts. Now it's a case of, stop the promo and have countless sellers who expect it stop listing on eBay at all. Alternatively they could go after the blatant business sellers getting them onto business accounts but again, many will just sell elsewhere instead of switching to a business account and paying full fees.

Any action they take would annoy some people but as time passes and more and more full fee business accounts shift to other platforms due to eBay allowing private account business sellers undercut them with the fee promo, eBay will have no choice but to start taking action.

gallovidian · ‎18-01-2024

@rainbowtrax wrote:

Their CS staff, even UK/Ireland ones, have their scripts to tell sellers who ask advice on the matter that they are free to sell as a trader from a private account until they hit the VAT threshold. This happens time and time again. It has even been reported by one seller, who wanted to switch to a business account but encountered a tech glitch, that they were then told by CS that they weren't allowed to have a business account as they didn't sell enough.

One can only assume that ebay must think that such sellers wouldn't sell on ebay without the private seller freebies and discounts and ebay would prefer some fees to no fees at all from these sellers. That's the only logical reason that anyone has managed to come up with to explain ebay's active encouragement of illegal trading and fee evasion on such a massive scale. But, whether that's the real reason or they have some other one, ebay really do not care one jot - much the same as any report on any other matter. Unfortunately, AI always says no problem and, if a human CS agent reviews the report, they also say no problem. It's been that way for a long time and doesn't look likely to change.

Also unfortunately, there are far too many buyers who do believe that no returns means no returns for any reason and even think that they are stuck with faulty or damaged goods. There are regular posts about it, particularly on the Member To Member board, which is where users are steered to when they first come to the forums with a problem. The reality, of course, is that the law gives buyers even more legal rights of return from an illegal trader than from other sellers - but due to one aspect of the illegal trading being the lack of contact detaiils on a listing, the buyer has virtually no way of enforcing them.

The government set that £85,000 threshold for VAT. ebay do what they can or must to enforce.

Here is the only script to which I can convince myself that ebay limit themselver. I am sure that VAT resistration would be strong evidence, but it is wrong to try to convince people that they can safely rely on being non-registered for VAT

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy/business-seller-polic...

rainbowtrax · ‎18-01-2024

I'm not trying to convince people that they can safely rely on being non-registered for VAT. That's the one aspect of trading that ebay have been keeping on top of, since legislation forced their hand, so quite the reverse is true. They don't rely on user reports to manage that though.

As for illegal trading below the VAT threshold, I live in hope that, going forward, that can't be safely relied on either. But I refuse to mislead people into thinking that their reports (on anything) are likely to be acted on when that is absolutely NOT the case. This has been proven time and again over many years. Finally, with the new HMRC reporting legislation, ebay's hand has been forced, as with the VAT registration legislation previously.

With today's post regarding an illegal trader finally being forced to correctly register as a business, we can only hope that this signals a turning point in ebay's own threshold for when they bother to enforce their own business registration policy - a page I'm very well aware of. Unfortunately, having tested the reporting feature today, it is still completely broken so we have to rely on ebay to begin acting by themselves, as reporting these rogue traders does not prompt any action. Of course, you're free to believe otherwise so we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I'll continue to advise people honestly as to their chances of having their reports acted on - which is somewhere less than slim.

Incidentally, whenever a valid report is wrongly automatically found by "AI" to require no action, ebay send the reporter a message which includes a link to appeal the wrong decision. However, you can't appeal the wrong decision as the link is dead and takes you to the old favourite "We've looked everywhere" page, ensuring that most reporters just give up at that point rather than go through the hassle of requesting a callback or trying live chat and hoping the CS agent understands what you're on about.