The problem with eBay

Yesterday I listed an item on eBay UK. Someone probably reported my listing to eBay and within a couple of hours it was taken down. Apparently the item breached eBay's policy. Fine. If it breached eBay's policy then of course the item deserved to be removed and I wouldn't complain about that.

The problem was when I searched eBay I found at least 50 different listings of the same product and similar product. Most of these were by sellers from the Far East and are what we call 'power sellers'. They sell so much stuff that eBay makes loads of profit of them. You could see how the term "don't bite the hand that feeds you" apply here.

Feeling discriminated, I complained that many other sellers were selling the same item. eBay customer service e-mailed back, assuring that I wasn't 'singled-out' and that they are doing their best to remove prohibited items. They need help from people like me to report illegal listings. I then spent 5 minutes compiling the item numbers of such listings and e-mailed it off to them.

Today I received three e-mails from eBay. The first was:

1. By someone at eBay who doesn't know what was wrong with the listings and asked for an explanation!
2. By someone thanking me and promising that he will look into it (items are still up).
3. By someone who insisted that the member(s) in question has been 'reviewed' and all actions has been taken (although removing the prohibited item weren't exactly part of the action).

See why I am pissed off. A small timer like me whose rating is only 66 (100%) and contribute very little to eBay's coffers has his one-off listing removed. Power sellers, with ratings in their thousands and contribute probably quite a bit more towards eBay can get away with multiple listings of prohibited products.

I wish Yahoo! UK Auctions were still here. I had fun then and the people I dealed with were honest. And Yahoo! had a hands-off policy.

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