eBay

design*tiger · ‎02-11-2023

So today, I offered an amount on a listing for a Givenchy purse only to find out that the same purse with identical photos was also posted by another account. I then became suspicious and googled and I found this information:

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level 1

Angry-Strawberry

· 1 yr. ago

This is a common practice with Japanese sellers on ebay. Multiple sellers copy high value listings from Yahoo Japan auctions, intending to purchase the YJ item from the actual owner once it sells to a foreign buyer on ebay. You'll see the same exact listing 5+ times with slightly different prices. They are all different individuals, not one person with multiple accounts.

They're not exactly dropshipping since they do have the item shipped to their Japanese address first before sending it on to the ebay buyer, but these sellers do not have the item in hand and can't answer questions about it. There's nothing illegal about it, but it's annoying as hell. I collect some high-end anime stuff and the listings are flooded with duplicate items with **bleep**ty descriptions like "please look at the photos" and no actual information.

If you're resourceful, you can find the item on YJ yourself and use a proxy bidding service like From Japan to buy it yourself without the middleman. Well, without the annoying ebay middleman, anyway.

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Then, I wanted to contact ebay and I'm now registered in the US/Canada even though I'm based in the UK and that's correctly in my profile. So, surely ebay admin are in on that and don't care? Should I report the seller to ebay? I don't want to pay only to find out that I may not get my money back. With this seller there were 10 negative reviews and obviously I don't want to get one from them now unjustifyably.

Many thanks for your help and sorry for not finding this out beforehand.