Widespread Ebay listing abuse

NumbersCrunched

Ebay listing abuses are increasing at an astronomical rate the past few months. Many listers (often those who import goods from the Far East) are creating partially false listings in order to appear near the top of the goods value listing. They do this by including an item in the offering which is nothing to do with the goods being sold, but which is itself of very low value.

An example today is shaver adaptors from UK 3-pin to 2 pin socket. Many of these start at a value as low as 99p. What they have at £0.99 is a SIM ejection key, value about 5p, and nothing whatsoever to do with shavers. It isn't even listed in the item title. Select the real product, however, and it will be well overpriced at £7.90. On one of the listings the unadvertised low-price offering was a single fuse at an astronomic £1.90, but it was a 13A value, which is totally inappropriate for a shaver adaptor at 2A.

Ebay has a duty to police these artifical and fraudulent listings, but of course they won't listen. So the question is: how can really forceful representation be made to them to tidy up their act? In a way it would require a government body to do it, but how do you get their ear? Everyone wants an easy life these days (I don't blame them) but it seems those promoting false claims couldn't care less, and those who should watch out on our behalves are asleep.

MeteredOut

I've noticed this too, but i find the cheap item is often vaguely related to the "main" think you're actually looking to purchase.

But these listings are not fraudulant, nor are they anything requiring government oversight. Only eBay can fix this, and the only way they will do that is if sales or customer volumes drop.

soolin

I filter them out as much as I can by searching for items from a certain price. So for instance if I would expect to pay say £3 for an adapter I would search for,prices from £2.50. If that means the low listers don’t get seen and I buy from a competitor then that’s good.

This is not new though, we’ve had threads on here about it for years.

Spoonie_Turtle

You can report them for listing manipulation but it does feel like a one-person crusade. (Even if there are a few of us, we're mere drops in the tsunami of bad listing practices!)

RFW

I tend to think it's more annoying and puts people off rather than anything else. I don't like it but usually just look for a listing that doesn't have it. It's more search manipulation than anything else. If someone is searching for lowest price whatever then having something mildly related that gets the listing at the top of that search is their priority.

You can report to the Advertising Standards Authority if you think it needs investigation.

They tend to act more if something is deliberately misleading and would fool the consumer. It's increasingly the case that big companies do as they like and governments stand by and let them. I'd guess this would be low down on that particular list.

https://www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint/how-we-handle-complaints.html