New Duplicate Listings Rules

Rhymsta

Just got an email from eBay including the new Duplicate Listing Policy. I have read through it several times but am still a bit confused about some of the restrictions.

I have been selling a pack of items on an auction basis with no buy it now option and have several of these to sell. I normally start it on a Thursday for 10 days. If there are several bids and it gets up to a price that I don't think anyone will better I start an identical listing off - often on a Tuesday for 5 days so that it also finishes on the Sunday evening. I also start off another on the second Thursday so can have three or more auctions for the same thing running at the same time. Is this going to be against the new policy?

Will this policy affect anyone here adversely?

soolin

Rhymsta wrote: »

Just got an email from eBay including the new Duplicate Listing Policy. I have read through it several times but am still a bit confused about some of the restrictions.

I have been selling a pack of items on an auction basis with no buy it now option and have several of these to sell. I normally start it on a Thursday for 10 days. If there are several bids and it gets up to a price that I don't think anyone will better I start an identical listing off - often on a Tuesday for 5 days so that it also finishes on the Sunday evening. I also start off another on the second Thursday so can have three or more auctions for the same thing running at the same time. Is this going to be against the new policy?

Will this policy affect anyone here adversely?

That is already against the duplicate policy, it is one identical item in any selling format at a time at the moment.

The change will mean it is one identical item in 'any' one selling format in the future. So if you sell BINs you cannot also have an auction running for the same item.

This will affect me as I use a variable BIN format for my bread and butter goods, but also run one auction at a time and mention in it that if you don't want to wait for the auction to end you can use my BIN auction 'here'. I am careful that the one i have on auction is a slightly different variation, so maybe a different colour to the ones on BIN. In future I wonder if even that will be a problem.

So, what I would want to do is have a variable BIN for say 10 each of a widget in red , blue and green, but with an auction running for the same widget in yellow- but I may have to be careful

EDIT to say I may well be reading ot all wrong, so would welcome other peoples views as well.

soolin

Actually, I am convinced I am wrong ...

The policy currently says:

Sellers can't have more than one fixed price listing of an identical item at the same time.
Sellers may list limited duplicate auction-style listings. However, only items that tend to do well when sold in an auction-style format - for example, hard-to-find or high-demand items - and sell nearly 100% of the time should be listed in duplicate

'is the word 'should' compulsory or a guideline only?

Then it goes on to say


The following types of listings, if they are for identical items, will be considered duplicate listings even though the listing format or details may vary:

• Auction-style listings for identical items even if they have different ending times, start prices, or reserve prices.
  

Which implies even auction style listings cannot be duplicated- it is as clear as mud
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/listing-multi.html

Rhymsta

Glad it's not just me that's confused LOL

gollum007

Does this policy mean I can report the sellers who list the same RAM chip 100's of times with 100's of different motherboards in the title then?

Was looking for some laptop memory recently, and I had to wade through pages and pages of identical items with a marginally different title

-Gollum

kev225

gollum007 wrote: »

Was looking for some laptop memory recently, and I had to wade through pages and pages of identical items with a marginally different title

That really annoys me, 10-ish variations I could stomach but I've seen 100's when searching before.

RFW

It seems that the bigger more annoying sellers that the rules were set up to stop are the ones that can bluster on with one day listings without the system noticing them.

The rule is for duplicate, identical listings of the same items, unfortunately it's quite easy to adjust a listing slightly for it not to be a duplicate. I can't see Ebay tightening up any policing to get around that.

Sasahara2

From reading that you can list duplicate items as auctions, but they only want you do that with hard to find items or more valuable items.

A good example would be someone selling 2 identical graphics cards they had in an SLI config could list them separately and be ok, being within ebay rules as long as they are auctions.

forgotmyname

Will this stop the 50,000 listings from one seller for a car bulb?

This fits the front right of a micra, this fits the front left of a micra.

Its a standard H4 bulb it fits every car that requires an H4 bulb.

I gave up buying goods in some sections because of sellers like that.

RFW

forgotmyname wrote: »

Will this stop the 50,000 listings from one seller for a car bulb?

This fits the front right of a micra, this fits the front left of a micra.

Its a standard H4 bulb it fits every car that requires an H4 bulb.

I gave up buying goods in some sections because of sellers like that.

I doubt it. There are a few things like that, batteries, phone chargers, printer ink, etc where the uses may differ but the products are the same. To know which were duplicates would require a level of knowledge amongst Ebay staff, given that the majority of policing of listings is done by computer programs that won't be happening.