Ebay sponsors duplicate listings

[gbemandrelbending]

Ebay sponsors duplicate listings but calls it "marketing strategy" ILLEGAL!!!

2 weeks ago I had my account frozen because I was told I had duplicate listings. (you cant when you create an item as ebay will red flag it)  

I was told that because my pictures looked the same that my ads were duplicates.  Even after showing the out of country ebay rep the size difference and material difference in the title and description I was still told they were duplicates. REALLY???  I was banished for a week because someone felt I was in the wrong.  But after fighting this and being on hold multiple times, out of country ebay rep removed me from the sanctions and allowed me to relist.  After a week of trying to redo ALL of my 219 listings with new pictures new descriptions in the title and body of the items so I would possibly even be thought about in duplicated being performed, I was finally ready to resell and not have ebay flag me because someone on ebay cant read or differentiate the difference in my items even though there are multiple sellers using the same pics for the same 300 items they sell, but the title shows different as mine did. (there's are slightly different)

Well, my sales went from $8500 a month, to barely $300 a week from ebays erroneous actions.  Boy did I and Ebay lose from someones bright ideas to flag a good upstanding business seller with NON duplicate listings! (I have 99.9% + Feedback)

Well, it gets better!  I was doing a generic search on my items and another company came up with identical titles, pictures, and body of the ads on their multiple listings.  I looked up the item number and ebay has BOTH of these items using the same item number.  (illegal duplication) The only difference is ebay has the words "sponsored" on the item page.  In other words, IF you PAY ebay to sponsor the item, then not only do you get the sponsored ebay page, but you get to keep the original ad as well. Therefore making duplicate ads LEGAL by paying ebay to allow you to have duplicates! Uh, isn't that illegal in Ebay's policies?????

Here is a few of the item numbers that are illegal duplicates and you will see what I mean:

Also, the pictures tell the story- illegal duplicates sponsored by ebay

Ebay is supposed to be fair and all should have equal advertisement for their products that is why they have the non-duplicate items in their rules.  Otherwise, someone can post 15,000 duplicate ads for the same item making it difficult to see others ads.  Kind of like google.  If you are looking for something, and there is 92,000,000 items that come back, what is on page 110? how about, what is the last item #92,000,000??? you will never know.... 

ebay should remove the duplicate listings as it is illegal to do so, even if someone paid extra money. PERIOD

[gbemandrelbending]

2 weeks ago I had my account frozen because I was told I had duplicate listings. (you cant when you create an item as ebay will red flag it)  

I was told that because my pictures looked the same that my ads were duplicates.  Even after showing the out of country ebay rep the size difference and material difference in the title and description I was still told they were duplicates. REALLY???  I was banished for a week because someone felt I was in the wrong.  But after fighting this and being on hold multiple times, out of country ebay rep removed me from the sanctions and allowed me to relist.  After a week of trying to redo ALL of my 219 listings with new pictures new descriptions in the title and body of the items so I would possibly even be thought about in duplicated being performed, I was finally ready to resell and not have ebay flag me because someone on ebay cant read or differentiate the difference in my items even though there are multiple sellers using the same pics for the same 300 items they sell, but the title shows different as mine did. (there's are slightly different)

Well, my sales went from $8500 a month, to barely $300 a week from ebays erroneous actions.  Boy did I and Ebay lose from someones bright ideas to flag a good upstanding business seller with NON duplicate listings! (I have 99.9% + Feedback)

Well, it gets better!  I was doing a generic search on my items and another company came up with identical titles, pictures, and body of the ads on their multiple listings.  I looked up the item number and ebay has BOTH of these items using the same item number.  (illegal duplication) The only difference is ebay has the words "sponsored" on the item page.  In other words, IF you PAY ebay to sponsor the item, then not only do you get the sponsored ebay page, but you get to keep the original ad as well. Therefore making duplicate ads LEGAL by paying ebay to allow you to have duplicates! Uh, isn't that illegal in Ebay's policies?????

Here is a few of the item numbers that are illegal duplicates and you will see what I mean:

Also, the pictures tell the story- illegal duplicates sponsored by ebay

Ebay is supposed to be fair and all should have equal advertisement for their products that is why they have the non-duplicate items in their rules.  Otherwise, someone can post 15,000 duplicate ads for the same item making it difficult to see others ads.  Kind of like google.  If you are looking for something, and there is 92,000,000 items that come back, what is on page 110? how about, what is the last item #92,000,000??? you will never know.... 

ebay should remove the duplicate listings as it is illegal to do so, even if someone paid extra money. PERIOD

[goodluckselling]

I think what you are seeing is promoted listings by which the seller is buying a promotion of a listing.  When this happens eBay creates a duplicate of the original listings and when a buyer purchases the sponsored (promoted) listing the seller pays the fee that was agreed upon that in addition to the normal FVF for the listing.  If a buyer purchases from the original listing then the additional fee is not charged to the seller.

Click here to learn more about eBay promoted listings

Good Luck Selling!

[hillbillymedia]

While I agree that ebays duplicate listing policy isn`t evenly or consistently enforced, the examples you provided are ebay generated sponsored listings.

It is my understanding that all aspects of a listing must have differences to NOT be considered duplicate. Title, price, pictures, description and condition all must be different. This link is to just one tool online to check for duplicates http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

Here is a link to ebays duplicate listing policy: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-policies/duplicate-listings-policy?id=4255

[gbemandrelbending]

The listings are 100 percent identical including the item number.

[hillbillymedia]

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@gbemandrelbending wrote:

The listings are 100 percent identical including the item number.

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You are exactly right. Ebay CREATED the second listing to "promote" it and they get paid extra if the item sells thru that duplicate listing. The seller did NOT create that second listing.....he`s paying ebay to do it. You can do the same thing if you wish. Here is a link that should help you:   https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/listing-and-marketing/promoted-listings.html

[fern*wood]

I've stated this many times.  It feels very unethical to me to punish a seller for a duplicate listing (many times they aren't actually duplicates) and then promote others by creating duplicates because they are willing to pay extra.

[goodluckselling]

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@fern*wood wrote:

I've stated this many times.  It feels very unethical to me to punish a seller for a duplicate listing (many times they aren't actually duplicates) and then promote others by creating duplicates because they are willing to pay extra.

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I get it.

One of the reason why duplicates are not allowed is that external search engines do not allow them and eBay who pays millions of dollars to different search engines on behalf of its seller base to promote listings and bring in potential buyers.  External search engine can and do and have before penalize marketplaces when they have to high of an occurrence of issues with the feed they send to these external search engines.

The promoted listing that the sellers can buy on eBay are strictly eBay based listings and not sent to external search engines.  I assume they have some kind of source coding changes which signals eBay feed to not choose these listings.

Good Luck Selling!