💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 26.07.23 @2pm

[community-team@ebay]

Hi everybody!

The Community Chat will open at 2pm and will remain open until 3pm on Wednesday. After that it will be closed for further questions. Of course, we will continue to take care of answering any questions that may still be unanswered—We’ll get to everything as quickly as possible. 

Please ask your questions in the thread below. In order to be able to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we ask you to have one question per post. Of course, you can make as many posts as you like in the Chat- the more the merrier!

Our eBay Community Team is made up of marco@ebay , dave@ebay , and katie@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, ProTrader, Fulfilment, Parts & Accessories, Payments, and the Community itself. Anything we aren’t sure on we’ll know the people who will be! Please ask us any questions you may have and we’ll do all we can to support. 

To ask your question, click Reply in the lower-right corner of this post, type your question, and click Reply between 2pm and 3pm. The community team will answer each incoming question in chronological order, and will quote the original question in each answer. 

Please note that any reply without a question to the community team or discussion replies may be removed from the chat. We want to keep on track to get through as many questions as possible. We welcome all discussion to be moved to the discussion boards. 

If you missed the weekly chat time, please ask your question in the community boards and tag us or we will be back next week with another chat! 

Many thanks,

Your eBay Community Team

[rainbowtrax]

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dave@ebay wrote:

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Hi @rainbowtrax 

The policy team will review all reports that are sent through the link you shared. We don't work in the policy team and can only forward any reports you sent through us. For the most part we don't have the bandwidth to take all your reports so it is best to continue reporting directly through the site.

It may not look like the are actioning these reports but all reports are taken seriously and the appropriate action will always be taken. 

Thanks,

Dave

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Thanks for the reply dave@ebay  but the appropriate action is not always taken I'm afraid, in fact in my experience, it's never taken. I have been reporting the particular seller in my example for over a decade. They've been trading illegally on ebay for around 19 years now. This is not a seller who sells anything remotely related to anything I sell myself so the reports couldn't be construed as malicious reporting by a competitor. I have used both this account and my private account to make reports multiple times over the years. I have provided links to the Facebook business page where the seller lists all of their multiple illegally trading ebay ids as proof (if any were needed) that they are all the same business. Their listings are in an identical format over all of the ids, all listing descriptions state they are in business.

Now, unless ebay has notified them that they need to upgrade but given them eleven years to do so, I can categorically tell you that the appropriate action has not been taken. I realise that none of this is your fault personally, my issue is with ebay as a whole, not you. So just what action do users need to take to get ebay to take the appropriate action on the thousands of proven (and openly admitting it) illegal traders? How much more blatant do they need to be? The whole reporting system is not fit for purpose.

[marco@ebay]

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@cobwebcottage wrote:

marco@ebay Trust me, nothing is happening. Just went to check on a private seller selling duplicate new items and they are alive and kicking and selling well. I gave CS their user name, reported 10 duplicate posts individually (about 3 weeks ago) and nothing happens!

Luckily, they are not competing against me but that is not the point. We are getting fed up paying business fees when there are so many accounts who are blatantly trading illegally and on top of that, getting promotions. 

We abide by the rules and offer the best service we can and then are up against cowboys who can do what they like. It doesn't give Ebay a good name and affects all of our businesses.

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Thanks for your reply, cobwebcottage. 

I understand your concern, but all these reports are reviewed and actioned. So, the best course of action is definitely continuing to report those that you believe might be against our policy, so they can be reviewed.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

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@pg_kicks wrote:

Hi Dave, 

Can you tell me how long eBay believe it should take for a report to be actioned upon? Just as you can see we all believe this is completely broken. I have reported obvious fake sellers/business on private accounts over 3 months ago and nothing has happened. More buyers have received fake goods, are eBay happy that buyers are receiving fake sneakers? eBay should have a time frame of which they try and act upon each report, trying to fob us off just isnt good enough.

Also you say you can forward reports, yet your colleague in DM told me that they can not do this as they do not offer a one on one service, can you tell me who is correct and who isnt please as if you wish to step up to the plate for us and actively take the obvious accounts who are trading illegally I am more than happy to send you usernames.

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Hi @pg_kicks 

The team that take the reports have a queueing system for the reports but unfortunately I don't know what the turnaround time for them to action a report is. 

We can forward the reports as a courtesy but we cannot offer to be a point of contact for you to send reports to.  You will have to do this through the report the seller option on site. 

Thanks,

Dave

[marco@ebay]

Thanks for your reply, kempseykate.

The appropiate thing to do or the best course of action in that scenario is continuing to report those sellers that you believe might be breaching our policies, so they can be reviewed.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

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@kempseykate wrote:

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dave@ebay wrote:

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@rainbowtrax wrote:

On last week's chat the following answer was given regarding illegal traders: "We perform reviews to make sure that no business sellers are trading as private sellers, so we are constantly reviewing this to make sure all sellers are in compliance. If you see a business trading as a private seller, feel free to report it to us, and we will be happy to review."

There are thousands of illegal traders who have been active for years with no action ever taken regardless of the amount of reports made. I'm talking about account with thousands of listings with the seller openly stating that they are in business, not those that are in any way questionable. So exactly what reporting route will actually get an account reviewed? Reporting using the Report Listing Button on individual listings doesn't get an account reviewed. Reporting using the Report Seller link here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/action?topicId=4850 doesn't get an account reviewed, even when extensive proof and details are submitted. For example, a business trading for well over a decade over multiple private accounts, all publicly linked by the seller on their Facebook business page, with around 1000 listings on each account, advertising their business status on all listings and in their multiple About sections on ebay. So do we need to report these directly to the ebay community staff or is there a dedicated email address (given the huge scale of the problem, I'm thinking there must be) for dealing with such blatant illegal trading as basic online reporting options don't work?

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Hi @rainbowtrax 

The policy team will review all reports that are sent through the link you shared. We don't work in the policy team and can only forward any reports you sent through us. For the most part we don't have the bandwidth to take all your reports so it is best to continue reporting directly through the site.

It may not look like the are actioning these reports but all reports are taken seriously and the appropriate action will always be taken. 

Thanks,

Dave

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... "so it is best to continue reporting directly through the site." As has already been stated, there is no point doing this as no action is taken.

"It may not look like the are actioning these reports but all reports are taken seriously and the appropriate action will always be taken. " No, Dave, the appropriate action to a report about an obvious unreg business seller is to make them register correctly. We can all see that this is not done, what other action could possibly be 'appropriate'?

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Hi @kempseykate 

As you know we cannot comment on action taken on another account so I cant comment on what was the appropriate action taken on each report. 

Thanks,

Dave

[paintingsart]

Hi there,

Where can I get Gift Aid information help for a charity? 

Thanks

[rainbowtrax]

It may be the appropriate thing to do but all those posting here have tested the system and it doesn't work so continuing to report these sellers is entirely futile. If no action has been taken on the most blatant offenders in a decade of repeated reports being made then what is the point in continuing with this? If something doesn't work, how many times are we expected to persevere before we concede that it doesn't work? Surely ten years is long enough to draw the conclusion that it doesn't work?

[dave@ebay]

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@paintingsart wrote:

Hi there,

Where can I get Gift Aid information help for a charity? 

Thanks

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Hi @paintingsart 

You can find everything you need to know about charities on eBay here  and more information on Gift Aid on the HMRC website here .

Thanks,

Dave