Buisness sellers

[choughed-to-bits]

When is Ebay going to crack down on business sellers registering as private sellers?

I have seen accounts selling the same type of things as I do, they are registered as private accounts but have 300 plus listings and sometimes multiple accounts.

[brindsey]

I would like to applaud the last two posts. 

After many years I am close to being totally fed up with the eBay practice of allowing obvious businesses to trade as private sellers.  Just too frustrating.  As far as promoted listings go, I've just paid £20 eBay fees on a £75 sale - this just  exacerbates my fury further as some of them  are selling at absurd prices that I can't possibly match - and there are also some with ridiculously inflated prices that still somehow get occasional sales. But, regardless, they are unregistered businesses with a totally unfair advantage.

I note we can now report to the CMA directly - thank you 4-bathrooms for that useful link.

I am also wondering, come January 2025 whether in the face of hithertoo unseen assessments for HMRC the information could be passed over to, and utilized by, Trading Standards who just might, with proof positive, get on eBay's back.

(I know someone will say no, they can't do that.  But, I can dream the dream)

[missdollydaydream]

Very usefull. I have been retired now for over 15 years (I use my business account for buying personal items) and so am pretty out of touch with present legislation. 

[btr.style]

I for one spent half the day at the office today (well, between an hour at the pub with the laptop) preparing a case for the CMA report. Let's all get this done. Get those weekly chat comments uploaded too where supposedly the tool for reporting people who are illegally trading is working and eBay do act on reports 😂. 

[btr.style]

Oh and if the anti complainers want to complain and I don't care if eBay staff see this (hopefully they do). 

- We purchased around 30 Barbour Beaufort 40th anniversary wax jackets a few months ago. 

- Obviously private account businesses were also buying some. 

- When it came to listing them right away, I was on the fence. We have other priorities with the vintage lines but I made the decision to get them listed for £185. 

- 2 private account business sellers had listed them around the same time but undercut us by around £5 due to the fee promo. These were all unprofessional accounts with no returns and anonymous style usernames. Almost certainly the same seller with multiple accounts. 

- Having sold none. I saw that due to eBay's 100% off fee promo for 2 months (obvious they had it as these accounts only list when it's fee promos), they'd whacked the price down to £150, something we can't match with full fees. They were selling them like hotcakes. 

- We dropped the price down to around £165, sold 1. 

- The season for these wax jackets is now all but finished and we have sold 1. Looking at 1 of their accounts now they've sold 12. 

Had there been no fee promo for this illegal trader, they'd have only been able to drop their price to a certain point, of which we could have matched and had the advantage due to returns being accepted. 

Instead, exclusively thanks to eBay, they had a pat on the back for trading illegally and were gifted with £0 fees to pay to allow them to undercut us. 

Some say if someone has turnover in 1 month which x12 = exceeds VAT threshold then they will be forced onto a business account. This person had 9k turnover a few months ago (x12 = 108k) and nothing was done. 

[brindsey]

I'm in! 

First on the list is the seller who has been operating now for quite a number of years. The  original private seller ID was made to register as a business. Set up 2nd private seller ID , and when told to register as a business set up ID 3 as a private seller.   When ID 3 told to register as a business set up ID 4 as a private seller..  This was in September 2023, and she has since sold 486 items at an average somewhere between £40 to £60 each, and is still operating as a private seller.  Six months trading so far - Doubling up for an annual turnover is 972 - this times, say, £50, if I've done my sums right, is £48,600.  I could be way out as she does sometimes 'knock out' stuff cheaper, but there is still one heck of a lot of money involved.  

Don't believe it! - Just PM me for details