ebay to be flooded with listings from diamond powersellers...

StaffsSW

luvvabargin wrote: »

I seem to remember something a good couple of years ago where a powerseller was done for selling fake / stolen antiquities, but not banned from ebay... if I remember rightly the seller was a university professor or similar 'expert' in the field... anyone else remember this?

This was back in January last year and they were banned, and very quickly too - http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=bidancient&ftab=AllFeedback - their last feedback was received on the same day that this news article from The Times was released on the subject - http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1267565.ece

One of the beneficiaries of the boom is Eftis Paraskevaides, a former gynaecologist, from Cambridgeshire. He has become a “Titanium PowerSeller” — one of eBay’s handful of top earners — selling more than £1.4m worth of antiquities a year on the site.

In a conversation with an undercover reporter last week, Paraskevaides claimed shill bidding was commonplace on eBay.

When the reporter asked whether he arranged for associates to bid on his own items, he replied: “Well, if I put something really expensive [up for sale] and I was concerned that it was going for nothing, I would phone a friend of mine, even a client of mine who buys from me, and say: For Christ’s sake, I sell you 100 quids’ worth of items a week . . . just put two grand on it, will you?”

The reporter was posing as a seller of valuable antiquities. He inquired whether Paraskevaides could sell them on eBay and guarantee a minimum price.

He replied: “Leave it to me [laughs]. Don’t call it shill bidding. Then I won’t be accused of shill bidding. Yes. I mean — I’ve got people.

There have been loads of very high feedback sellers booted in the last 18 months -
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=casacaiman&ftab=AllFeedback

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=glacierbaydvd&ftab=AllFeedback

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=buy_to_net&ftab=AllFeedback

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=fastmemoryman&ftab=AllFeedback

And one of the UK's biggest sellers was NARU'd earlier this year as well
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=cofy_store_uk&ftab=AllFeedback

So in answer to all those doubters, Powersellers are not invincible.

chickychick

I shan't bore you with all the details but thought I'd add my 2p. I have been a seller on ebay since 2005, am a powerseller and have over 4100fb and my dsr for delivery dropped 2 weeks ago and I have been put on a 30 day selling restriction.... in a recession, before Christmas. Thanks ebay. I've had some really unfair negative feedback recently, can't leave a negative for the buyers and only just discovered that negative feedback can be retracted by the buyer (was not informed of this, just stumbled across it), who in my case agreed to do but it's too little too late. Some buyers just won't leave feedback and you can't force them to but this all adds up on your DSR's.
ebay also wrote to all my buyers when they started my restriction and said my account had been suspended!!! Which it has not as I still have full access. This sent all my buyers in a panic and all demanding their money back thinking some kind of fraud was behind the message. Talk about set you up!
then ebay tell you to improve your performace but won't allow you to sell anything so how can you make improvements if you can't sell anything?
ebay are also trying to force all sellers to offer free postage so that they can make even more money out of the sellers by charging higher fees on the item price.
The whole thing is so incredibly one sided it sickens me - and buyers 'know' how tied us sellers are now and some of them milk it for their own gain. The amount of paypal claims i've had in the past few weeks from people claiming their item hadn't arrived and in fact it had and I have won every single claim back because I track all my parcels but people are poorer than usual right now and trying every trick in the book. It's bloody hard work and I wouldn't wish the stress I have experienced these past weeks on anyone!!!!
If in 2 weeks ebay decide not to re-instate me, because let's face it, in ebay's eyes I'm a nobody, I'm not sure if my tears will be for my loss of my much needed income or just out of sheer relief that the hell that I once really enjoyed is finally over.

Brooker_Dave

FloFlo wrote: »

Thanks, can't understand that if that failed why they want to turn the whole site into a clone of it.

The future:

"In talking to Mercent CEO Eric Best, it's clear there's a very different philosophy at play between these mega-retailers and long-time eBay sellers. For Mercent's clients, it's about visibility, branding and customer acquisition. I believe large retailers view eBay simply as another channel to which to send their product feeds, similar to comparison-shopping sites such as Shopping.com and PriceGrabber. That's quite different from the traditional eBay seller who viewed eBay as a major venue on which they sold, not as a way to acquire new customers for their own sites.
It's noteworthy that the executive who heads eBay's marketplaces business is Lorrie Norrington, the former President of Shopping.com - the comparison shopping engine eBay acquired in 2005. Her experience at Shopping is likely a major factor in eBay's new direction. But with Google getting into the comparison shopping engine space with Product Search, it's a greater challenge for such companies.
eBay is evolving from marketplace to ad platform. It's hard to be optimistic about this strategy - it didn't work for Yahoo Auctions. Stay tuned for Sunday's AuctionBytes-Update newsletter which will carry an interview with Mercent's CEO for a better understanding of the large retailer view of eBay."

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl

luvvabargin

chickychick - I sympathise with you... A couple of years ago nearly now I started a new ebay business account, all properly set up as per the instructions, with T&Cs, return polices and all that jazz. I was selling relatively high-value items, mainly in the £200-£2000 range. The first batch of about 10 things sold ok, and so I put another batch on the second week, which again sold well. The third week I put about 20 items on, and the day before the auctions ended, ebay froze my account, deleted all the auctions and also wrote to all my bidders saying I had been suspended.
ebay said I was "in breach of their T&Cs" - but despite several requests from me, they refused to tell me what TorC I was in breach of, so how could I do anything to rectify the situation? I had 100% positive feedback, there was nothing odd or fishy about any of the things I was selling (antiques), ebay just decided they didn't like me was the only reason I could come up with!
Fortunately I had cleared my paypal account out a couple of days before, so no money got stuck.
I had contact details of some of the bidders, as they had asked odd questions about the items or delivery costs etc, so I emailed them to see if they were still interested, but not surprisingly they had lost total confidence in me and thought I was a scammer.
Fortunately, one of the previous buyers from week 1 was bidding on something else, and he sent me a copy of the email he got from ebay. It was pretty shocking in its language, and it was no surprize nobody wanted to deal with me.
Then to cap it all, ebay still wanted to charge me the listing fees for the auctions they had deleted! - I refused, and they went so far as to instruct a debt collection agency to chase me for it... they got told very unpolitely where to shove their demands, I told them to take it to court and have heard no more.
Quite what ebay gain by restricting/banning genuine sellers like you and I, I just cannot fathom out. But it happens quite a bit. I know several other people who have also been banned one way or another for not doing anything wrong... and yet there are hundreds of scamming sellers offering crap and banned items every day on ebay - they don't seem to ban them though??
I really hope google or someone quickly sets up in decent competition to ebay.
I did drive past an ebid banner in a field yesterday "ebid the alternative to ebay" - so at least they are trying... but they need to do a lot more!