Hi! I have never posted here before but I am officially fed up and I am not sure what to do anymore. My account is restricted for 3 days and I am close to getting another violation in the same category, no fault to my own.
I am posting this on Oct. 13th and I have received 3 different, unjust policy violations since Sep. 29th. The first was on my listing for Nutrex Lipo 6 supplements. eBay took the listing down after they were all already sold with no notice, claiming it was a batch review and they were flagged for a while beforehand. The reason was" "We do not allow the sale of vitamins, supplements, medicines, or drugs that make claims about treating diseases or claims of improved health that are not approved by the FDA. Please do not relist this item." There are currently 138 active listings and over 300 completed of this same item. This item has an official eBay item number, catalog description, and provided stock photos. The 'specialist' on the phone said you cannot base the legality for listing an item based on eBay's own catalog or how many people have active / completed listings of it and that it was my fault because the FDA released an advisory on this item and I need to research my items better before I list them. I understood but decided to do my own research, because that did not entirely fit the policy violation description quoted above. The FDA in my home country, the United States, did not release an advisory or warning on this item in any recent year and this product is still a best seller on eBay, Amazon, and GNC. The FDA in the Philippines did. (http://www.fda.gov.ph/fda-advisory-no-2019-075-public-health-warning-against-the-purchase-and-consum...) Their advisory was also on the slightly different blue box, known as Nutrex Black Hers. My listings were for the black and red box. I do not offer intentional shipping on any items and I am not enrolled in the Global Shipping Program. There should be no reason for a foreign policy affecting my listings here in the states. I took down some other supplements afterwards to be safe and did not escalate any further, assuming I was now safe. I checked a few days later and funny enough all of the largest sellers of this item I remembered from my initial pricing research were still active, weird how no batch review has caught them hundreds to 1,000+ sales later.
But today, something similar happened. My listing for Panadol pain reliever was removed. The reason being: "You listed pain relief medication with world wide shipping. please be aware of our UK policy 'Prescription and over-the-counter drugs policy': https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/prescription-overthecounter-drugs-p... If you choose to relist you will need to exclude the UK and Ireland from your shipping options." This was much more straightforward than the other strike, but at the same time I still do not offer international shipping. This item is obviously allowed on eBay because there are instructions on how to relist after my restriction is over. This listing was almost a year old and during that time I never offered any sort of global shipping option. One of the representatives on the phone muttered something about not specifically stating the UK and Ireland were excluded on my listing itself, but I looked through shipping exclusions and both countries are listed under Europe and both were checked. There is no way to make Ireland and UK appear on the exclusion list of your listing that is visible to buyers, they're just included under Europe. And I have the same shipping exclusions on every listing. eBay informed me that you cannot directly contact their highest departments who handle these cases anymore and that they are strictly offline, so I have to wait 24 hours or 1/3rd of my restriction to see if they fix their obvious mistake or not. I think it is pretty clear that I did not break the guideline in question.
Before I was made aware of the batch review, eBay ALLOWED me to relist the already sold Nutrex Lipo 6 supplements because I found 2 more bottles in the lot of vitamins I recently purchased. They both sold days before my initial listing was taken down. If they are also included in the next batch review, whenever that may be, my account will be restricted for at least 7 days. I made that clear to the 'specialist' when I initially called and got no options or insight on how to save myself. He claimed he made a note on the initial violation but there is no way to know if that'll even help.
The 3rd violation I mentioned was on a legitimate, genuine adidas logo iPhone case. In my initial research last year, I found the model was discontinued and exclusive to adidas New Zealand. Again, other listings are still active to this day. "Due to several risk indicators which could be, but are not limited to: price, branding, stitching, blatant language stating the item is counterfeit, logos, information from a Brand or a Rights Owner, etc., we have chosen to remove this item to protect the eBay community." This was not a VeRO strike, this was not a trademark strike. adidas was not involved in the slightest. This was another listing I had on for almost a year with no complaints. I know how adidas operates on eBay, some of my acquaintances were caught listing fake Yeezy socks and got VeRO struck within a short amount of time. The model is CJ8326, there are still some EU websites who sell these cases. eBay took down my listing on their own accord with no basis whatsoever, completely out of the blue. I did not sell very many over the course of the listing but I had no returns, no complaints or messages, and no negative or neutral feedbacks from any buyer on them.
There are countless other complaints I could talk about in the past 60 days, like eBay siding with a buyer who returned a different ravpower power bank almost immediately even though I provided detailed pictures and the max number of characters to describe the situation. Or the vitamin company Gundry MD abusing VeRO to claim my perfectly normal Vital Reds powders were 'counterfeit'. I rarely ever ask eBay to step in for me as a seller, but every time I do I am shot down. Before this period, eBay was amazing to me. When I was smaller and only sold Pokemon cards and Nintendo games, I had no complaints. But sadly, my collections cannot pay the bills anymore. This is my job, not a hobby. I sell hundreds of items a months. I have been selling vitamins and supplements for years now. I am not sure why, all of a sudden, I am getting all of these unjust policy violations. I read all of the guidelines for listing vitamins and supplements before I started. I do not sell anything not allowed by the FDA. I do not sell products like colloidal silver, everything is sold at other stores and by other eBayers with little to no issues. I am still awaiting eBay's final decision on their mistake with the Panadol. I still cannot list or do my job. I have never broken a legitimate policy and I have never sold an inauthentic product, my seller standards are basically 100% across the board and my only negative in over 4 years is about to disappear next month, and yet here I am. I wake up anxious every morning because these past few weeks have made me genuinely worried. I am not sure which listing will be removed next. I have no way to prepare, the amount of time a genuine listing has been on does not seem to matter and even following eBay's policies to a tee still gets me in trouble. Maybe someone has some tips or similar experiences, but for now I am just going to stop selling any sort of supplement altogether even though I have so much invested in them. But I still do not know which genuine item they are going to claim is inauthentic next. Thank you for reading.
