Are there rules against sellers taking orders at a premium then filling the order via Amazon

Question

I recently bought an item from an Ebay seller on March 6th. The seller listed the part at $19.87 with an estimated delivery of March 10th through the 16th. I paid for it and waited for an updated message with tracking info. Then about 20 minutes ago I received a unordered package from Amazon with the same part I had ordered here on Ebay. When I searched the order information that was in the Amazon packaging it stated the order was placed on March 6th for $9.99.
Are there rules against this or is this typical of many sellers on Ebay? Just reselling other It's only $10 but I too have an Amazon account, I could have just as well used them instead of Ebay and saved the money and probably received the part faster.

eburtonlab · Answer

@ironspade-81

It may not be possible to always identify in advance those sellers who drop-ship, but it is possible to identify some common characteristics of illicit retail drop-shippers or other under-performing sellers, and thus avoid the worst of them.

Often they can be spotted by a combination of low feedback number, free shipping of heavy items where it would not be profitable to use retail shipping, use of stock photos, high handling time (not necessarily if they are using Amazon or Walmart, though), poor feedback received with complaints of delays and wrong items or out of stock cancellations, very odd item selection and/or quantities like items were chosen at random from a catalog, canned item descriptions scraped from another site that exactly match many other similar listings, differences between registration location on the feedback page and item location (or vague item location -- like "US, United States"), or inability to answer even basic questions about the items being sold.

disneyshopper · Answer

It sounds like the seller used his/her Amazon Prime account to purchase and send you the item. That is against Amazon and ebay policy. Was there a gift receipt inside the package? If so, definitely a no no.

However, there are some members that sell on both ebay and Amazon, and have their inventory warehoused with Amazon, so if an item sells on ebay, it will be shipped from Amazon, using their FBA, but there will be no guest receipt.

https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicid=4022

1. Select The seller has violated one of eBay s policies and click Continue.
2. On the next page, enter the seller's ID and select Other.
3. In the comment section, write "Seller listed and sold an item, then purchased it on Amazon to send to me".

Too many defects, and sellers can be restricted or suspended.