eBay is not doing enough to stop price gouging during Covid-19

[gussharp68]

ebay is clearly not doing nearly enough during this global pandemic to prevent unethical sellers to take advantage of buying up essential items like toilet paper and paper towels, etc and selling them at outrageous prices on their platform.  Sure they have a report button but there is no option to clearly report PRICE GOUGING and even if you do manage to find a way to report it as illegal activity or whatever, literally nothing seems to happen.  I've reported the same listing for a $7,000 4-pack of charmin toilet paper multiple times over two days and it's still up.

Allowing this behavior is proof that ebay is complicit in this illegal behavior and should be shut down by our government.  I don't know about you but I've had it with eBay's completely unacceptable behavior when we are all suffering though this terrible crisis.  Enough is enough.

[bermudawrecktangled]

Have you tried contacting Ebay? I believe they have initiated, or are going to start a 'White List' vendor initiative. It is targeted to a select group of vendors that can supply the banned items at the proper, non-gouge price point.

[gussharp68]

About **bleep** time

[gussharp68]

If you went out and hoarded masks in the hopes of turning a profit during a pandemic then I have no empathy for you.  On other hand if you’re someone that always had these in stock and are legitimately selling them you should have sold as “buy now” at retail price.  EBay is right to ban this stuff because their seller community apparently consists of the type of people that buy up supplies for profit while not giving any mind to the harm they are doing to their fellow human beings that need these items in a time of crisis.  I hope when the dusts settles, these sellers and eBay are prosecuted, fined and put in jail.

[plantaddict]

When trying to report listings using this method it pops an error message and won't let you do it. It shows you need to enter a valid listing number as if the listing has expired or whatever, but I'm sitting there watching the auction and even bid on one to ensure it was active prior to reporting and still wouldn't work.

[bermudawrecktangled]

You need to pull up the actual listing you are reporting. In the listing there is a 'Report Item' link... Ebay makes it hard to find, scroll down page and to the right of the 'Shipping ~ Description' tabs you will see the link. Click on the link, and the 'Report' menu will be available.

[gussharp68]

I’m guessing your using Microsoft’s Edge browser.  Try using Chrome or IE or Safari if you are an ipad or iphone, it will work then.  I had same issue on Edge.

[pebmets]

First, I think there are people just joking around with no intent of paying.  To stop this, EBAY should not allow for the cancelling of bids for toilet paper during the national emergency.  The seller will be forced to pay the EBAY fees for the thousands of dollars offered.  This leads to no auctions for toilet paper because who would take a chance?  This will force a buy it now, but then they can get flagged for price gouging which is a criminal offence in many states. 

I don't care how much work it takes to do this.  1/4 of all Americans are stuck at home and many suffering from this terrible virus.  I do not think they care how much of an inconvenience it is to EBAY and it's sellers to protect the masses from a shortage of a basic needs.

The excuse it is not the sellers fault that people bid outrageous prices does not wash.  They offer it in an auction knowing that desperate people will pay insane prices, plus it is unethical to have people bid for a scarce basic necessity.

[pebmets]

With all due respect, why are these masks being offered to the general public when there are shortages in the medical profession that could use them more than us? Is there a way you can sell them to the medical profession at normal prices? Imagine the good will and how it will help your business when we get through this. I appreciate that you are not gouging the public, but I think these masks should be offered to all the medical teams fighting this virus instead of the general public at this time.

[gussharp68]

Totally agree with you and it’s made me realize the real solution would be to shut eBay down until the crisis is over. Let the sellers that hoarded all the supplies sit on it until demand is normalized and they can sell it at retail prices at a loss hopefully. Would serve them right and would also punish eBay for being their behavior as well.

[pebmets]

You, pburn, said: "Did you know eBay staff has established a reporting protocol for item listing that violate eBay price-gouging policies? Did you know that, if reported correctly, you really don't need to specify "price gouging?" eBay can figure it out with you identifying it as such.

Why not make it simple and have a choice for price gouging? It is not difficult to add. The average person is getting at least two different ways to report this. Which is the correct way? Why make people guess? Just under listings have a choice, price gouging. Plain and simple. Why make it complicated and not intuitive?

[pebmets]

If people who work in hotels, restaurants, small businesses, airline industry, cruise industry, department stores, retain chains, are being laid off and their place of work closed, it may be time to shut ebay down for a couple of weeks. If these companies are not too big to sacrifice business, EBAY should also be be considered for temporary shutdown. 

It is clear EBAY can not keep up with the price gouging complants, (they may be trying, but they can not keep up.  I measured in a 1 hr period, 1:20-2:20PM EDT. Toilet paper listings went from 27,538 to 27,725). while 200 additions may not sound like many in an hour, it shows with all of the gouging complaints, EBAY is not keeping up with the re-listers or scammers.  Please don't say it is normal to have over 27,700 listings for toilet paper and growing.  

To prevent the shutdown of EBAY, they must make a real effort no matter how much it takes to stop price gouging or basic scarce needs.  If this means re-writing code, so what.  Saying it is too difficult solves nothing.  If it is too difficult then EBAY should do what many top companies have done, close down for a short period.  

If shutting EBAY for a few weeks it cuts down hoarding and allows for products to return to the shelves, that is more important to Americans and people across the world than the EBAY selling community.

[mam98031]

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@pebmets wrote:

If people who work in hotels, restaurants, small businesses, airline industry, cruise industry, department stores, retain chains, are being laid off and their place of work closed, it may be time to shut ebay down for a couple of weeks. If these companies are not too big to sacrifice business, EBAY should also be be considered for temporary shutdown. 

It is clear EBAY can not keep up with the price gouging complants, (they may be trying, but they can not keep up.  I measured in a 1 hr period, 1:20-2:20PM EDT. Toilet paper listings went from 27,538 to 27,725). while 200 additions may not sound like many in an hour, it shows with all of the gouging complaints, EBAY is not keeping up with the re-listers or scammers.  Please don't say it is normal to have over 27,700 listings for toilet paper and growing.  

To prevent the shutdown of EBAY, they must make a real effort no matter how much it takes to stop price gouging or basic scarce needs.  If this means re-writing code, so what.  Saying it is too difficult solves nothing.  If it is too difficult then EBAY should do what many top companies have done, close down for a short period.  

If shutting EBAY for a few weeks it cuts down hoarding and allows for products to return to the shelves, that is more important to Americans and people across the world than the EBAY selling community.

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Why?  I don't understand.  Because some sellers are experiencing slow or no sales, that isn't true for all of us.  In your effort to get Ebay to shut down, you do realize how many people you would affect across the nation and world that would lose their income, right?  We are talking MILLIONS of people.  

Clearly since my stuff is selling, which has nothing to do with any necessary supply for the health crisis, so why is it not OK for me to sell my stuff?  Some people are looking for things to keep themselves busy with all this extra time on their hands.  Constructive stuff.  That is mentally healthy for all of us.  And you want to take their access to this away because WHY?

It would not just be Ebay "sacrificing income" you are saying that millions of seller, selling stuff not related to the health crisis, should "sacrifice their income" too.  And that helps who exactly?

Ebay has removed 10's of thousands of price gouging listings.  And they continue to remove them.  Some sellers are extremely persistent in wanting to continue this bad behavior and they keep finding creative ways to get their items listed.  

You can do your part.  Report listings as you find them.  That will also help Ebay to find them as well.  That is a better approach that asking Ebay to shut down and leave millions with no money to eat of keep the heat on.

Ebay is NOT responsible for some sellers hoarding items to sell at significantly inflated prices.  That is completely on the bad decisions by that seller.

[plantaddict]

Yes that is what I was doing, another poster mentioned it may be microsoft and they had the same issue so I'm going to try to use Chrome per their suggestion and see if the same issue occurs again.

[plantaddict]

Yep that seems to have been the issue, thanks! I'm trying to report the auctions seems now the sellers have caught on and are listing them for short 1/2 days auctions to sell them. Hope they shut these sellers down, they actually should start booting these sellers!

[pebmets]

And ebay is profiting from the sale of these price gouged items, (posting and selling fees). They can prevent fire arms from being sold, why not toilet paper since it is a basic necessity? They may be removing 10s of thousands, but more are adding then EBAY is subtracting.