Announced yesterday, on the eBay UK PowerSeller discussion board, but not as yet on the public Announcements Board, eBay staffer and forum “Pink” Olly posted in a “stickied” thread -

As part of our focus on proper business identification on eBay, we announced back in January that business registration would become compulsory for the UK PowerSeller programme. To complete this migration, all non-Business registered UK PowerSellers will be removed from the PowerSeller programme on July 20th.

Although the vast majority of our bigger sellers are correctly representing themselves as businesses on eBay, we have a number of PowerSellers in the Bronze and Silver tiers who still describe themselves as Private sellers on our site.

Please refer to our Business Centre page for more information about the legal definition of trading as a business and your obligations under the law. http://pages.ebay.co.uk/businesscentre/identification/index.html

To upgrade your account to a business account, go to My eBay > My Account > Personal Information, and change your Account Type to Business.

The ensuing thread filled up with questions about non-PowerSeller, non-Business-registered, sellers who were obviously businesses, yet had failed to register as businesses on eBay UK, and showed obvious signs of not having done so with UK tax and regulatory authorities.

Although not directly stated, most of eBay’s paying customers (posting in response) seemed pleased that the PowerSeller ranks would be getting thinned out (= less competition), but displeased that non-PowerSeller businesses would not be getting brought to task, or into line with business registration requirements.

It does once again seem that eBay have gone for the easy targets and avoided hunting out those in true need of educating and regulating.

Ed

Update 5 July - Still nothing on the UK Public Announcements Board, and no emails sent out to UK-registered PowerSellers - even Head of UK Trust & Safety, Richard Ambrose has conceded many times (in forum discussions) that, “a very small portion of PowerSellers ever read the boards“, so why has eBay not communicated direct to those whose livlihoods and discounts are going to be affected, i.e. their own paying customers?

Doesn’t exactly help me to “Be Inspired” to “trust” eBay with the “safety” of their marketplace as a channel for my business.

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