Originally Posted by
notoptube
Hi,
Ive contacted ebay repeatedly about this, including when its not my listings being stolen. This has been going on for 6 months at least but, accelerating rapidly now. You can search "bicycle groupset" and see in the solds how many high priced groups have sold for $26-48 range. A few are mine but, most newer groups. I'm sure many have received their money back but, you can be sure many arent familiar with ebay cases or they forget so just lost their loot. Ive reported that search several times.
What E-Bay could do is vet maybe a thousand long-term customers and give them the power to easily take down ads and cancel accounts with no further intervention from E-Bay. Allow some sort of appeal process... Say a seller could appeal a take-down for $20. If they win, the ad goes back up and the seller keeps the $20, and the person blocking the ad gets a reprimand. If they lose the appeal, E-Bay keeps the $20.
They could even add a monetary incentive, such as a 10% discount from seller fees, or a 1% discount off purchase prices for active "volunteers".
One could argue that spending money to improve the buying experience is good for everyone, Buyers, Legitimate Sellers, and E-Bay.
I realize E-Bay also likes to encourage new sellers, but perhaps require sellers from certain countries to do a $20 deposit, which gets refunded once they complete a certain number of transactions over time to unique buyers. Of course, like post minimums on forums, there are ways around rules like that, and it may just make the thieves smarter.