At the start of the Pandemic, due to to price gouging consumer sellers eBay heavily restricted the sale of all Face Masks, Hand Sanitisers, Cleaning Wipes & Pads, Baby Formula & Milk and Toilet Roll. eBay.com has now issued a reminder that the policies remain in place and price gouging is an unacceptable practice on eBay.
Last year, only a whitelist of closely vetted eBay sellers were permitted to continue trading these items at appropriate prices under the eBay Emergency Listing Restrictions policy. Sellers attempting to sell these items not on that list were warned they would find their listings blocked or removed and their account suspended.
Since the end of February 2020, eBay has had block filter algorithms in place and a global security team working around the clock to remove listings and take enforcement action against unscrupulous sellers who persist in attempting to circumvent eBay filters. While the vast majority of non-compliant listings are blocked from appearing on eBay, a small minority are not.
eBay remain committed to monitoring the pandemic and take measures to remove listings that infringe their policies… so if you don’t want action taken against your account it’s probably not worth trying to fudge your way around the rules.
“At eBay, we’re committed to ensuring consumer and employee safety and protection. We continue to closely monitor the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as it develops and to take significant measures to block or quickly remove listings from our marketplace that make false health claims or offer products at inflated prices in violation of applicable laws.
As a reminder, we have a zero-tolerance policy on price gouging to ensure that buyers are able to find essential items at reasonable prices, especially during challenging and extraordinary times like those we face today.
Buyers are encouraged to report items they believe violate our policy using our price gouging reporting tool.”
– eBay
2 Responses
They want to update their software and vigilance on all aspects of their policy enforcements.
they removed an item of ours quoting its not permitted for sale on eBay so ok the listing has gone.
I then simply type a name in the search bar (nothing technical or in depth) and up comes 11,346 other items exactly the same but various brands but all the same banned items.
I spent an evening at home and reported 412 of them under the same policy as spouted to me.
I also noted the 412 item numbers. All items are still on there now after 16 days.
What a uselkess platform ebay are they are just getting worse and worse and worse if it does not make them more money they do nothing. They just tinker with unnecessary aspects on the platform.
Is this still a thing?
At least here in Germany, you could easily buy more of the stuff than you can carry.
Each and every shop has plenty of simple and FFP2 masks in stock, FFP3 can be ordered online without restrictions on quantity and for an almost pre-Covid price.
I can’t imagine anyone paying a premium for toilet paper, there is a truckload available at our local ALDI , LIDL and $younameit.
So why the ban?