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Who Do I Report This To?
I don't know who is at fault here, but I am a SERIOUS buyer of certain goods for MYSELF spending thousands of dollars in giving my implicit trust to those who sell on Ebay. I am not a reseller, so I value my money when it comes to luxury purses. I was on Ebay and discovered two identical purses with the SAME pictures and with DIFFERENT prices on these two seller accounts. I wanted to buy the cheaper one until I examined the pics carefully. I am very trusting of Japan-based Ebay sellers, but to me, this isn't right. Either they're sister companies selling the same product, or someone is stealing another business' pictures. I understand that (maybe and legally) people can have multiple shops, but to market the same pictures with different prices is very off-putting. Is this a violation in any way of Ebay's policies, because I tried writing Ebay but could not submit my complaint. I'm not sure if it was because I was submitting two sellers, but then I tried submitting with only one seller's handle, and it still didn't work. The pictures match right down to the stains and scuffs. Thank you, Ebay Community for responding to this.
eburtonlab
Mentor3 years agoTypically such listings -- particularly for expensive, unique items very often found in Japan -- are put up by professional brokers that do not actually possess the item in question. If the item is purchased through such a listing, the broker will then attempt to purchase the original and arrange to ship overseas to the eBay buyer.
Scammers also use the same basic technique, except the scammers do not actual buy or ship anything.
You can usually tell if the seller is a broker or scammer by examining feedback. Brokers tend to have a lot of feedback for selling such items, with possibly a few negatives or neutrals for cancelled orders (when the broker was unable to obtain the item and it was sold elsewhere). Scammers have little or no feedback for major sales at all -- or possibly feedback for sales of keychains or trinkets to build a false history -- at least until the negatives start rolling in once the scam item delivery dates begin to slip.
While it is against eBay policy for a seller to list an item not in the seller's possession (or under contract to the seller in the case of a drop shipper), eBay does little or nothing to seek out such listings in advance or to prevent them unless there are problems reported by buyers.