Entire categories getting flooded with duplicate listings.

[ameri_kiwi92]

I've tried reporting with no effect whatsoever.   Ebay's reporting software will not accept any input for "duplicate listings"    Even if you copy the item number and ONLY the item number directly from the ebay page it still will not accept it.

I cannot talk to a live person.   Every time I succeed in getting the software to supposedly transfer me to a live person the line  hangs up the instant it starts to connect.

I request a return call and the call never comes.

The core problem which I can find no way (other than this) to bring to Ebay's attention is that some categories are being totally swamped with duplicate listings where the listings for a single identical item outnumber ALL of the other listings.

Search for "water distillers".   You get (currently)   557 results.

From about $60 to about $78 you get over a hundred listings that are all the same idential item in large groups of exactly the same price.   There is an obvious pattern of many different IDs that all use the same two or three titles to list exactly the same item at exactly the same price two or three times    This is very obviously the same entity doing this many repeated times with different IDs.

After around the eight dollars level there are two more models with pretty much the same pattern.

A few large operators are seriously abusing the process to flood out all competition.     The end result is that if a potential buyer wants to see what is available, he/she has to swim thru a sea of identical items to find a handful that represent the real variety available.

In some categories Ebay is becoming a very bad place to sell if you want to sell anything other than the single most common version of a product (and compete with a very large company while doing so).

I;ve built up a large inventory of refurbished very high quality, efficient water distillers but Ebay does not appear to offer a good place to list them.   

Ebay is becoming the place to shop if all you want is the very cheapest version of a product, don't care to learn what else is available and don't much care who you get it from.

I suspect that the core problem is that someone in a high postition is getting rewarded based on crude statistics that measure only the crude number of listings in categories with no oversight to see that the numbers represent genuinely different listings.  Just as clearly some sellers are "gaming the system" to get a personal advantage at the cost of seriously degrading the service, so some executives may be "gaming the system" to make their performance ratings look good at the expense of seriously degrading the service.   It's hard to imagine why ebay's software would so effectively PREVENT any input on this problem unless someone really wants to AVOID it!

Example of what Ebay will NOT accept

122140615490

112141428037

121214830329

121214830430

182286256847

182286256938

291879804088

282182945289

282182945425

262632440412

252546931410

282182945916

282182946128

252546932180

182286257707

401191293843

391566246381

391566246518

391566246643

222254678791

191974849692

222254679104

(note - a few of these groupings have ostensibly different prices that are nullified by balancing differences in shipping costs)

The category ("water distillers") is completely flooded with dozens and dozens of listings of exactly the same item at exactly the same price.   At the very least, Ebay should lump all identical items at the same price together in one SUB category with only one line in the search results that could be clicked on if you want to see the (alleged!) "variations".

(a list of item number copied DIRECTLY from it's listing (and I've tried separating them by commas (with and without spaces) and everything else a reasonable person could think of.  Ebay maintains an illusion of accepting input on the duplicate listing problem  but if you try to actually use it, it simply will not work.)

This "gaming the system" is going to (justifiably!) destroy Ebay if they don't stop it.