mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@my_boston_baked_beans wrote:to claify: Sellers are not looking to cheat the system , as has been implied, but rather the OP has asked a question regarding reconstruction of an ending or existing auction.
We appreciate your time in directing us to the actual printed information in regards this question.
Thank you
Are you sure?? When you list something on Ebay for sale and it sells. The listing closes. For those with the OOS setting on their inventory, the listing is still active if it is GTC, but just with a zero quantity available.
To then go in and revise that listing to be something completely different than the original listing, add quantity and put it up for sale is done for what reason? The only one I can think of is to save an additional listing fee for creating a new listing or save using up a free listings from you allotment. What other reason do you see? I'm asking so I can better understand your point of view. I absolutely could be missing something here.
Now when you take a listing that has had sales on it, revise it to be something totally different, not only is this fee avoidance, it is search manipulation. Fee avoidance because the listing was revised in this way to prevent a new listing fee or use of the free allotment. Search manipulation because this new item doesn't have any sales history, but because a listing that did have sales history was revised, it makes it appear as it does.
@mam98031 wrote:
@lightlily_arts wrote:
Can you point us to eBay's policy regarding changing a listing to a different product? I was looking and couldn't find anything that expressly forbids this practice.
Would you guys like to clarify this for those that are considering significantly changing a listing to a completely different product in order to save a listing fee.
@Anonymous
Hi @mam98031, there isn't a policy against completely revising a listing to be a different item. The guidelines of what can and cannot be revised within a listing still need to be followed and can be found here.
With that said, I strongly discourage revising an active listing and changing it to an entirely different item. This creates confusion with buyers who are watching the item and/or buyers that have recently purchased some quantity of a multi quantity item and that multi quantity item is still active and revised to represent an entirely different item. I've personally worked with several buyers that raised concerns when an item they purchased is revised to represent a different item soon after a sale. A common concern with these buyers is whether they will get the item they ordered or the newly revised item instead, or if they made a mistake and ordered the wrong item entirely which can lead to a cancellation request. These types of revisions can also make it difficult for Customer Service to research the items history if needed. Lastly, doing massive revisions like this regularly raise the chance for strange corruptions to occur in the listing over time, which can lead to unexpected behavior within the listing.
@fern*wood wrote:
@my_boston_baked_beans wrote:Hi @mam98031, there isn't a policy against completely revising a listing to be a different item. The guidelines of what can and cannot be revised within a listing still need to be followed and can be found here.
Okay, NOT a legal policy against, but advise given regarding the disadvantages of employing this.
Therefore, after all the dust has settled NO ONE is cheating eBay of 35 cent. We are not avoiding nor refusing to be responsible for what we owe, but some have been very unkind with their remarks.
Time to put this to rest.
I don't think anyone cleared this up to mean it didn't cheat ebay out of listing fees. The OP even honestly stated they asked in hopes of saving money.
Even if there is no written policy prohibiting this, it still feels wrong.
I agree. It feels wrong because it is wrong. It is unfortunate that Boston took this so personally as it was never intended that way.
