Reporting eBay Policy Breaches Pointless

EffieTrinketsWig

I have been reporting 3 companies, all registered at the same address, and making identical listings who had multiple breaches of eBay policy they have listed in numerous wrong and irrelevant categories, they have hundreds of listings that are duplicates, the company has multiple accounts and is posting dozens of duplicates on each account, as well as saying they are in London when they are in China, on top of that they are breaching eBays image policies and advertising other products within their listings, not multibuy, but they are also abusing the multibuy system by listing the item alongside a much cheaper 99p item that has no relevance to it.

I have reported these breaches in every possible way and permutation, now I am getting messages from eBay saying that they have been checked by an AI and they have been found to not breach eBays policies, so it looks like it is open season for corrupt sellers to do as they please and oust out honest sellers, the worst part was that when I raised it with an eBay agent they were shocked at the extent of the abuse and were certain the listings would be removed.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Sadly eBay has always failed with enforcing policy, IMHO it's something that helped allow Amazon to over take them in the early days as the reputation of eBay began to slide. 

soolin

I've all but given up reporting anything to ebay - at the moment they just don't seem to have sufficient staff to do anything at all. 

forgotmyname

I had a contact at ebay and could sidestep the reporting procedures and jump the queues.  I also found discrepencies with their banning
of some sellers and not others.

These were illegal items that should not have been listed on ebay, smaller sellers got restricted or instantly banned where higher end sellers
may have had one listing pulled even if many were reported or for their listing to remain active even though the products broke ebays rules
and were actually illegal to sell.  Several sellers were on the news having been raided.

Over time the options for me to report were changed so that none of the options offered were revelant to my area of expertise and my contact
went on maternity leave and nobody responded when I contacted them so I just gave up.

ElefantEd

It's almost as if ebay is only really interested in maximising the number of items sold through their platform rather than policing it properly for the benefit of consumers.

ballisticbrian

[quote] that they have been checked by an AI [/quote]

Hardly inspires confidence does it? Using a system that produces fluent and sometimes impressive copy by effectively copying other web sites, but can't make a decision and warns you it may give wrong answers.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

ElefantEd said:

It's almost as if ebay is only really interested in maximising the number of items sold through their platform rather than policing it properly for the benefit of consumers.

It doesn’t really work though as the damage to their reputation over the years has cost them far more.

I get the impression those at the top simply don’t wish to invest heavily in the site and the infrastructure required for it to be ran to higher standard. 

ElefantEd

It's difficult to know if their reputation has been damaged, or rather, by how much it has been damaged. Ebay still seems to be thriving, and presumably the vast majority of transactions are satisfactory. Perhaps most people who have a bad experience simply shrug and move on, not blaming ebay, and carry on using it.

soolin

ElefantEd said:

It's difficult to know if their reputation has been damaged, or rather, by how much it has been damaged. Ebay still seems to be thriving, and presumably the vast majority of transactions are satisfactory. Perhaps most people who have a bad experience simply shrug and move on, not blaming ebay, and carry on using it.

I agree. I’ve had issues with eBay and yet here I am, still selling and buying on there.

if I go to a physical auction all I see are dealers browsing eBay to gauge value of items, and if a TV drama mentions selling on an online site, I suspect 98% of people watching would automatically think ‘eBay’. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

ElefantEd said:

It's difficult to know if their reputation has been damaged, or rather, by how much it has been damaged. Ebay still seems to be thriving, and presumably the vast majority of transactions are satisfactory. Perhaps most people who have a bad experience simply shrug and move on, not blaming ebay, and carry on using it.

There's a video on Youtube showing website traffic over the years, many years back eBay used to have more traffic than Amazon, both had the potential to go on the same direct but they are million miles apart these days.

That's obviously not down to this issue alone but as someone who has sold heavily in a category subject to a lot of counterfeiting eBay ended up with a tiny slice of market.  

As a buyer I have no problem with eBay (as I can make a sensible decision).