Price gouging by Japan sellers

[petemckay]

This platform used to have a policy that banned price gouging from sellers. For some reason, that policy was discontinued years ago, and the direct result has been an overwhelming increase in prices for plastic modeling items from Japanese sellers. I had contact today with a seller that has items inflated 500% over what is normal retail on items that are still commonly available. As an avid museum quality model builder and owner of a YouTube channel with more than 11,000 subscribers, I plan on exposing some of these eBay stores for what they are doing. This goes well beyond the "shop somewhere else" mentality as there is no way to remove these sellers from search results. What needs to be implemented is a way to exclude an entire region of sellers, including sponsored content. I spend several hundred dollars a month on eBay products, and have for almost 8 years. If eBay cannot clean up its act and soon, I will be switching my platform of choice to Amazon. 

[inceptions · Accepted solution]

eBay does have a policy about price gouging. Price gouging means charging unreasonable prices for critically needed items in short supply during an emergency (such as bottled water after the local waterways are poisoned after a train carrying chemicals explodes or face masks and hand sanitizer during a worldwide pandemic). It does not apply to plastic models.

[petemckay]

Thank you for the clarification, which makes perfect sense. I've been on the platform since 2015 and I was vague about the rule when I started, as I had several listed items removed that were hobby related for what I perceived (or just remembered) as gouging. I have a YouTube plastic modeling page with just over 11,000 subscribers, perhaps it's time to make a video highlighting these extreme pricing practices of some, but not all, Japanese sellers.