How to deal with Sellers who copy your entire listing?

[b86fiero]

Listed some Tommy Bahama Bottle Stoppers a couple of days ago.

Already had one steal several of my listings including item specifics that are easily identifiable as belonging to my eBay Store plus one of my photos.  Naturally the LL PS undercut my price by a few pennies.

How do you deal with these "people"?

[gwzcomps]

Nothing you can do. Generally those people are amateurs and will get what is coming to them naturally. Also lowball them by a penny 😉

[carolynnq]

People shouldn't steal your photos.

As to the item specifics, if someone has one to sell, goes to research what they're going for and end up at your listing, under the photos it says "Have one to sell?" and there's a "Sell Now" button next to it. If the person clicks that "Sell Now" button, a listing form comes up that's populated with all of your item specifics. So you can't really blame anyone for stealing the item specifics - that's eBay's doing.

But stealing a photo is another issue. Sigh...remembering fondly the days when we could host our own photos. Then if someone stole your photo, you could substitute another image. Sometimes the substituted image would say something like "Don't buy from me, I'm a photo thief"; other times it would be a picture of dirty socks or something entirely irrelevant. Fun times.

[inhawaii]

I've had people copy my listings text AND photos which had my username "inhawaii" watermarked and plastered all over them. Why would anyone do that?  Why would they want a competitors username all over their photos?  

I did complain to ebay several times over several months and nothing was ever done.

I came to the conclusion that ebay doesn't care. 

[b86fiero]

I add my own item specifics which pertain only to my store (like an certain mpn that I use for most of my listings or a free gift with purchase) and some sellers are not smart enough to remove them from the listing they copied from mine.

This latest with the Tommy Bahama bottle stoppers really ticked me off because this same seller has multiple selling accounts using different variations of his user ID and has copied many of my listings in the recent past.   He also has copied listings running right now from other sellers.

We do the work and they steal it.  Why bother putting together a good item specifics area?  Rhetorical question .... I know, so potential buyers get the most info before deciding to purchase ... and I get fewer questions.  

[nkpina2014]

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@inhawaii wrote:

I've had people copy my listings text AND photos which had my username "inhawaii" watermarked and plastered all over them. Why would anyone do that?  Why would they want a competitors username all over their photos?  

I did complain to ebay several times over several months and nothing was ever done.

I came to the conclusion that ebay doesn't care. 

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Watermarking your photos is actually against Ebay policy. Not sure when they started it, but it's there in black and white. I know a seller who got ALL of their listings pulled for watermarking. They had to manually recreate everything. But like most Ebay policies, it's not enforced... until someone reports you! 

[vanman1029]

Many years ago when I had an anchor store I had this happen to me quite frequently. You used to be able to hit the "report" button and explain why you are reporting the auction and ebay would take the auction down. I'm not sure if you can still do this today.

[civicwagonparts]

Just another way eBay is evolving, I call it "eBamAzon".

eBay is trying to give every item a "EPID", eBay product identifier. Look into this, really bad for small sellers.

They are changing to have all sellers to use same listing and pics, just like AZ does it.

I sell used car parts and went through a lot of work to get the correct OEM part numbers on my listings.

So eBay can develop the EPID, and make it real easy for my competition to undercut me.

I no longer put the part number in the title or item specifics.

I only put any information I have researched in the body of my description, This does go blank when other sellers poach your ad.  They can still cut and paste your description. 

[sassykzt]

eBay walked back that no watermark policy on 11/ 2017 due to so many complaints.  Here's the link:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Watermark-Removal-Policy-Enforcement-Update/ba-p/2780374...

[cashvaluerecovery2011]

Honestly i just worry about fresh good priced inventory and perfect customer service. Buyers will remember you and come back. A lazy person stealing listings will be just as lazy with customer service and not do as well. Concentrate on the task at hand instead of worrying about a leech. Much less stressful....unless you have time to stress haha.

[aldente28]

If they are your photos and/or your copy, you can contact the seller who took your property without permission and ask that they take it down.

If they don't, I would report them to ebay.

If ebay does nothing, you can sue them for copyright infringement. Not that it would be worth it, but you could. In my experience, most situations never progress this far. Every time I've asked someone to remove my content, they have.

[bigdeals.etc]

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@inhawaii wrote:

I came to the conclusion that ebay doesn't care. 

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Why would ebay care about copying when it’s clear they are trying to copy another e-commerce website themselves?

[wastingtime101]

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@inhawaii wrote:

I've had people copy my listings text AND photos which had my username "inhawaii" watermarked and plastered all over them. Why would anyone do that?  Why would they want a competitors username all over their photos?   

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Because they're lazy.

Remember the old days when people would steal self-hosted photos so sellers would replace the image with anything from porn to pig butts to text saying 'this seller steals'? That was always good for a laugh.

[kateinthe26th]

That's happened to me a few times in the past, i have also seen my pictures copied on listings uploaded to Etsy even before i started selling over there!

Sometimes i have shot off a polite message to let them know that they are using my pictures..... mostly ignored, one lied and said they were given them by the manufacturer.

I have seen my whole listing copied also but only because a long time buyer wondered if i had a sister store and could i combine shipping if she ordered from both stores.....i don't think there is really much you can do about it other than drop your price a few pennies so you get the sale as another poster mentioned if that's doable..

If your going to watermark your pictures i recommend putting the watermark slap bang through the middle as watermarks can be cropped off easily if placed on edges.

There are free programs out there which are really good, i use a nice easy one (when i can be bothered) you don't have to pay unnecessarily for subscriptions and more professional results than using something like microsoft paint.

[dinpavent0]

If it was me, I would change my wording slightly in my listing so that others don't think I copied the copier. As far as pictures, it is wrong. DOn't know how to deal with that. I have seen that posted on the boards several times, people report them and nothing happens. If it is just a couple of listings, I would just change my pictures slightly, the background or something. Not sure if we can put a sign in background with our user name or store name but I have thought bout doing that myself. I just don't know if it is ok within the rules of ebay. That is only way maybe to stop the copying of the pictures.
Other than that, I don't think there is much you can do. I once in awhile may look up another listing if I don't know a part number or item specific so I can put it in mine but i absolutely NEVER copy anyone's pictures or descriptions. It is lazy for one and I want my store to be just that, my store. I think it comes from laziness. The funny part is when someone uses your pictures on a used item and don't realize there is a small problem with your item or that yours is in great condition and theirs is not. Then they are asking for a SNAD case. I think that's funny.
Wish I had more ideas other than that, but you can just report or even talk to someone at ebay on chat. Ask for a supervisor, not one of those that get on and reading from a script. I called them out on that the other day and got a supervisor and credit for the extra money I had to spend at post office to ship since their "NEW" shipping page sucks and as soon as you put in weight you can't click button to buy label.. It took two days to fix but I refused their coupon and demanded a credit. I ended up getting a $50 credit on my bill.
Anyways, if you do go the route of reporting and wanting to talk to ebay rep, make sure you push for supervisor and that you want something done. They also send you a script of whole conversation to your email unlike talking to someone reading a script over the phone and then not getting what was promised to you that they would do.