Millions across the country will be buying a Poppy between now and the weekend and when you purchase yours make sure that the money is going directly to The Royal British Legion. This is especially true on eBay, where many sellers offer poppy broaches all year round and at this time of year it’s easy to assume you are supporting The Royal British Legion when they may see none of the proceeds.
eBay are running a banner on their home page for The Royal British Legion, with a ‘Shop Now’ link to buy your poppy. Unfortunately the link merely redirects to the home page which is where you’ll have seen the banner. This makes it tricky as your next step will probably be to search for ‘poppy’ in the expectation that you’ll find what you’re looking for.
When you search for a poppy on eBay, the site clearly knows what you are looking for as it brings up broaches similar to those sold by The Royal British Legion. However, the first five results are all marked as ‘Sponsored’ with commercial sellers promoting them through eBay Promoted Listings.
Four of the listings at the top of search results that we looked at even donate a small percentage of the sale price to charity, but to Help the Heroes (admittedly a worthy charity but not The Royal British Legion you may have thought you were supporting!). The poppy is the The Royal British Legion’s official trademark and only partner companies are allowed to use it.
Searching the whole 50 listings on the first page of search results fails to bring up a single one of The Royal British Legion’s listings. In order to find then you’ll either need to search for ‘British Legion Poppy’, or visit The Royal British Legion eBay shop.
Whilst we totally appreciate that sellers may choose to sell poppys all year round and that’s why they grab the top spots in search results in the run up to Armistice Day, this is one time that eBay might be forgiven for fiddling with the listings to ensure that The Royal British Legion listings are surfaced in search results. Perhaps even giving them free eBay Promoted Listings for a couple of weeks leading up to the 11th of November each year would be in order to support the charity, or an onsite banner on all poppy related searches (with a hyperlink that works!) to direct people to their listings.
If you do decide to buy your poppy from The Royal British Legion on eBay, sadly it’s now too late for it to arrive before Sunday when many parades will take place, or Monday which is when Armistice Day falls. However we’d still encourage you to shop from The Royal British Legion as fund raising doesn’t have to happen once a year and you’ll still have your poppy for next year. If you need a poppy to wear for this year, then unusually our advice would be not to buy on eBay as you are certain to find an offical British Legion seller on just about every high street in the country this coming Saturday (or buy one on the high street and buy another on eBay!).
3 Responses
I would have to say that if this was a normal ebay seller, I would be avoiding like the plague, which is a shame to say.
The feedback is terrible, with multiple reasons from P & P costs to items missing.
Positive Feedback (last 12 months): 98.9%
The P & P costs are possibly why they will not show anywhere near top on ebay results and the FB.
As most of us know, it’s free – inclusive P&P as almost a requirement.
£3.99 does appear to be a little hefty for what they show as 1st class.
It may be that they are just overwhelmed, but I am sure many of the feedbacks could be removed as the P + P is clearly shown.
Looking at 312834806122 Enamel Lapel Pin
It’s listed in Collectables
>
Masonic
>
Cufflinks, Studs & Lapel Pins
and
Jewellery & Watches
>
Men’s Jewellery
>
Lapel Pins
Unless masonic regalia has changed somewhat, I think that’s the wrong category.
I do hope they do well in the future but think they need someone to guide them.
“Unfortunately the link merely redirects to the home page which is where you’ll have seen the banner”
This is quite normal and expected of eBay, today I am seeing this promotion notice at the top of my Seller Hub:-
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Clear your inventory with Multi-Buy!
Tiered discounts on multiple sales of items this peak season. Offer Multi-buy promotions now
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When I click on the link it takes me to a page showing “The promotion was not found. Please check and try again.”