Seller plagerized my listing description Word for Word, including the listing title!

[itsnicetwice]

I was very shocked to come face to face with my hard work copied to the listing of another seller.  This person did not change a thing! I'm actually embarrassed, what would a customer think?  What should I do? What would YOU do?  I invest a lot of time in writing my listings...it's not right that someone can just help themselves to MY efforts.

[katzrul15]

Unfortunately, ebay allows for your listing and pictures to be used in a sell similar listing.  Another Seller can (and apparently has) copied your exact title as well.

Is it frustrating?  Yes.  Will e-Bay do anything about it?  No, unfortunately not. 

I would tweak your listing title/description and change your pricing slightly under theirs.

[m_pthisandthat]

There is nothing you can do about it,best to just grin and bear it. You can feel good that your listing was better than  the copiert could do on their own. As suggested if you have room you could cut your price to below the copy. At the same time if your rating is better than the copier or your pictures are better the fact they copied your description may not matter.

[amricons]

Common practice on eBay site as they encourage the  practice. They use "sell similar" as an excuse. Really confuses buyers which results in more returns. Once upon a time eBay protected sellers but stopped that practice.  We have had as many as 4+ other sellers do that on several of   our items.  Praise Landru

[b86fiero]

Happens to me all the time.  I have even found copies of my listings with my eBay User ID in theirs.  eBay did remove those when I reported them. 

[fashunu4eeuh]

Below is the policy governing this issue. eBay is clear that sellers should not copy other seller’s work. But there is a huge exception.

If your work appears in eBay’s catalog, then eBay invites other sellers to freely use any image or text found there. If your listings are not in the catalog, then write the seller and request that they take down your work.

But eBay will not get involved in such a dispute between sellers. At one time it was a policy violation to use another sellers words and photos, but this is no longer the case. 

Sorry this happened to you. Good luck!

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-policies/images-text-policy?id=4240

[2013grotz]

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@fashunu4eeuh wrote:

Below is the policy governing this issue. eBay is clear that sellers should not copy other seller’s work. But there is a huge exception.

If your work appears in eBay’s catalog, then eBay invites other sellers to freely use any image or text ound there.

Indeed.  This is the way things are with most web sites.  You post anything to them in the forums or where ever, the content immediately becomes the intellectual property of the site in question.  This is something that @itsnicetwice and everyone else on this site agreed to when they signed up for the account.  (Point #9 in the User Agreement in ebay's case)

[monica-sells]

Happens all the time.....what I hate is all the 'specifics' I took the time to fill in...so I "embed" my username into a specific and many times the lazy seller does not even see it....they just think my listings are effective so they copy them. 

"Sometimes" altering your original listing will work, but I have found more often than not, it 'penalizes' my positioning (as compared to the idiot who copied me)

At least they can't copy the pictures in the descriptions....they are sourced/linked from my own server....if they hotlink them, i change the picture to something totally different + a nice message

[rudy2828]

Never thought about putting my ID in some of the required fields.

[rudy2828]

When is this time you speak of where sellers were protected? 

You are not of the body and must be absorbed.

[itsnicetwice]

That's kind of stinky!

[goaldeelocks]

As far as the text in description, seems to me that's public info once is posted. 

Same for photos, EXCEPT, in my opinion, using my photo in a listing of someone else's item isn't acceptable since it isn't actually the same item the buyer would receive. A buyer can't check for damage of other issues by looking at the wrong photo.

That happened to me once and I complained to eBay and they notified the seller asking them to delete it (they did delete it). This was more than a year ago, and as with most customer service departments, your answer can vary depending on who you connect with.

[richards*rock*collection]

I am sure all the other supermarkets look at the ads of their competitors when having a milk sale to see they also used the word, "milk". Very interesting. What do I think? It is totally ok if someone wants to use mine, there is no problem.

[chapeau-noir]

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@rudy2828 wrote:

When is this time you speak of where sellers were protected? 

You are not of the body and must be absorbed.

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@rudy2828  Years ago we were - on complaint from the seller, eBay would actually notify the plagiarist to take down their stolen photos.  That hasn't been the case for a while.

Then there was hotlinking - oh, for those days!

No protection now - if I happen to see my deathless words in someone else's listing (or my photos), I would just change my copy a bit and shift my photos around.  Some are lazy, but I've actually seen worse.

[donsdetour]

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@itsnicetwice wrote:

I was very shocked to come face to face with my hard work copied to the listing of another seller.  This person did not change a thing! I'm actually embarrassed, what would a customer think?  What should I do? What would YOU do?  I invest a lot of time in writing my listings...it's not right that someone can just help themselves to MY efforts.

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What would I do??

Ignore it....... You give the rights to eBay when you post a listings, photos and description etc.......