VAT Erroneously Applied to a listing

[skswindon]

Hi 

I have come across the most bizarre eBay listing behaviour.

Yesterday a user contacted me to say that VAT was being applied by eBay to one of my listings. I am a UK based seller and operating well under the UK VAT threshold. The user was also UK based but neither of these facts have any bearing on the glitch I have uncovered.

To demonstrate the issue I have today uploaded two identical listings:-

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197611049860&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_odkw=1976...

and

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=197611049534&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313

Well, they are almost identical - one has the word "Express" in the title and the other doesn't. In every other respect they are identical - I used Sell Similar on the first one and simply removed "Express" from the title.

For some unfathomable reason eBay has decided to apply VAT to one listing and not the other. Why?

[4_bathrooms]

Bizarre but I suspect it is the "Mail Express" (i.e. not just the word "express") in the title making eBay's AI think the item is being shipped from outside the UK.

[sml192]

It is truly bizarre.  There have been several similar posts in recent months regarding this issue where the problem has been resolved by just changing the listing title in some way but I really don't understand why the listing title would have anything to do with the application of VAT.

Just to confuse things even more the one you have listed with 'Express' in the title states '+ 20% VAT will apply' in the search results but the listing itself states that the price includes VAT. 

[irt303]

Crazy if that is the reason, but not beyond the realms of possibility.

What if a seller wanted to sell something related to the group S'Express (for instance)? They could hardly leave that out of the title.

eBay's fast becoming a nightmarish mixture of George Orwell's 1984 (they're already well-versed in Doublespeak), Franz Kafka's The Trial, and Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland!

[4_bathrooms]

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@irt303 wrote:

What if a seller wanted to sell something related to the group S'Express (for instance)? They could hardly leave that out of the title.

---

I don't think it's just the word "express"; I think it's because the words "mail" and "express" appear next to each other.

This isn't even the most bizarre example that has been seen on these boards. There have been some earlier threads (like this one) where the same was happening to certain book titles.

[irt303]

Ah yes, sorry, I missed that.