Its about time, Ebay got serious with buisness sellers using private accounts.

[the_repair_man]

Just had a look at a business seller, who has been using private account for 10 years.He has sold over £800 worth of items this week.He says in own words in the "About me" section he has been buying ,selling hifi for over 40 years.I have reported several times, but each time AI says nothing wrong. This seller has saved over £80 in fees this week, due to ebays new "private sellers sell for free". He must be laughing all the way to bank, and yes Ebay laughing at you too, for potentially giving him back best part of £4k a year in fees.I would ask ebay have a human look at some of these reports you receive, and i bet you 90%+ are businesses, that you are not only letting them get away with fees, but are allowing them to sell illegally. Ebay put us all on the same level playing field.

[ile136yz]

I could understand this happening if eBay were getting fees from the sales on the misused eBay account you described ????

[potfp23]

It irritates me to the hilt too. I recently saw a seller with multiple copies of brand new sealed items, who is blatantly a business.

I looked at the reporting choices and couldn't see a relevant one, a simple "seller is evading fees by false representation of being a private seller" option would help...

[robbtyke132010]

Giving a bit more thought to this as a business seller myself, the free fees policy for private sellers implemented by eBay seemed to be a panic measure driven by sales seemingly fallen off a cliff. But I think there will be further measures by them to nudge private sellers to business status especially in the New Year when HMRC start rattling their sabres & a stricter policing policy starts to take effect. Once sellers ( & that includes private ones ) have to upload a mandatory National Insurance number there will be a huge fall in private seller numbers & a huge increase in private to business status. However like God, eBay moves in very mysterious ways & you do wonder who is actually running the company - it seems like a number of drunken monkeys in charge of a runaway train! ( Sorry for using so many metaphors - I have read too many novels!)

[theelench]

I agree there will most likely be a large decrease in the number of private sellers because of the requirement to give ebay their NINO, but I can't see a corresponding increase in the number of business accounts.

I'm only guessing but IMO the vast majority of private sellers don't want to become a business, never sell anywhere near enough items to make being a business viable as they only ever sell off unwanted possessions and certainly don't want any of the hassle of keeping records and receipts just to offer HMRC as proof that they are NOT  a business, should they ever ask. 

Even if they have no objection in principle to giving ebay their NINO, many won't do so because it will mean that, business or not, they will effectively have to start acting as though they are.  If they sell nearly-new but no longer fashionable clothes or collect anything where there is a certain amount of selling-off of old items when a better example comes along, they will all have to keep careful Books of when they were bought, how much they cost.  Just in case they might decide to sell them later and for how much they sold them for.

What is more likely to happen is there will be another exodus of potential buyers as private sellers leave, while the wrongly registered businesses, who will, or already are registered with HMRC, will still be around until ebay forces them to re-register.

Spell Check STILL BROKEN.

[pg_kicks]

The humans at eBay don't care, theres a seller on eBay who sells a type of hard stick-shaped boiled sugar confectionery from Britains best loved seaside tourist hotspot, in the about us it clearly states we are a family run business, I have alerted the community team on here, at least 5 concierge customer service agents, a concierge manager, eBay commercial team leader and I know for a fact they have been reported 100 times by numerous members via the way the team here have told us, yet they are still selling on the site as a private account. 

The reporting system is not set up correctly, the humans don't care (they may say they do but evidence says otherwise) and the managers/high ups certainly don't care. Nothing I have said is factually incorrect and I can prove every single point I have stated so when HQ are reading this please just reach out and I can show you how little your staff/systems care.

[e-breaker]

It's really disappointing to see eBay's lack of action on this matter, their own policy states that such sellers have to register as business account's, There is one seller I am aware of even has their LTD Company name as their username, they sell a specific product that suits multi quantity listing and have dozens of listing up that have all sold multiple hundreds of times,  are eBay in contraction of their legal obligations in this regard?  

[papso22]

---

@e-breaker wrote:

It's really disappointing to see eBay's lack of action on this matter, their own policy states that such sellers have to register as business account's, There is one seller I am aware of even has their LTD Company name as their username, they sell a specific product that suits multi quantity listing and have dozens of listing up that have all sold multiple hundreds of times,  are eBay in contraction of their legal obligations in this regard?  

---

Just have a look at all the business trading on private accounts that are kicking up such a fuss about buyer protection and simple delivery!

Their solution is to upgrade to a business account, thus avoiding the changes and with the added bonus of being legal.

But first they have to accept their status, which seems a major issue.

I am not sure what legal obligations ebay has to ensure the correct accounts are used, but they are not even enforcing their own published policies on account type.