This is my first time posting in a discussion, so I'm still figuring our how the board works. Apologies if this has been addressed before, but I searched online to see if htis was a common problem and found nothing.
I have noticed a very common practice of sellers listing clothing (bulk quantities, and ususally in China) as "cotton linen" or sometimes just "cotton" as a catch-all phrase for moslty synthetic clothing. It is not limited to ebay, other sellers do this, but here of course i am just tlaking about the issue as it exists on ebay.
For a couple items I was looking for I was surprised at how cheap these brand new "100% cotton" clothes were and inquired with the sellers who gave me all sorts of shady responses. Often I see the same item, same brand listed by another seller in the related items bar as "100% polyester".
If I am looking at a cotton or linen item have started asking the sellers for a photo of the tag to verify that the item is what they claim it is. The other day a seller sent me a tag which does indeed say linen and cotton, but belongs to what seems to be a completely different item. It is a different colour (which they told me as the monitor) and has a pattern while the listing shows plain fabric.
I have mistakenly ordered a few things in the past only to find they were definitely polyester, for example one had a tag on it. The sellers give me a huge amount of grief of the matter of returns, they offer to refund $1 or a percentage but claim they cannot afford to pay for return shipping. This even happened with an item listed as 100% modal which when arrived had a 100% polyester tag, to which I got this response when I started a refund:
"it is very cheap.
We are all losing money and we have no money to make.
If you want 100% modal,it is very expensive.
You should think before you buy it."
I have reported them but of course this doesn't cut down on the hundreds of other sellers doing the same thing. As far as I can tell these same sellers are still in business and even have the same listings up. I have left negative feedback, and some sellers harrass me to change it. I report them if they offer money of course.
It's not like I buy that many clothes on ebay but there are a couple of things I have been searching for recently but haven't found, moslty because of all these scams. In the process of searching I run into countless listings and have asked them about their product. It's clearly a common practice and people are buying these things all the time, maybe even thinking they are actually made of natural materials if they aren't familiar with textiles.
Some of these listings might actually be cotton or linen, but I really can't tell anymore.
Part of the problem is there doesn't seem to be a category for that specific infraction. The closest I could find was "keyword spamming" or "misleading title".
I am posting this partially to let other buyers know so they aren't buying these things and are watchful of sellers using this tactic, but also to ask what is Ebay doing about this problem? I have called a few times about it, they thank me and submit a report, but as mentioned the listings are still up, at least the ones I have checked when I remember. I know people in that department are probably working very hard with other scams suchas brand knockoffs and money laundering, but selling dishonest products is also a problem. As common as this is, I think someone should crack down on it. I would be happy to if someone would hire me 😉 But seriously, I'd like to know what other ebay members know about this.
