Apologies to William Shakespeare, but after the winter and spring of discontent comes the summer of reflection. It appears many eBay sellers are seriously questioning whether they should continue using the company’s sites, and those questions are not related solely to fees, but a growing awareness of the dirty tricks being played on them.

One seller has written to me, and I quote them below with identifying data changed to generic information -

I usually have 500-600 store format listings running at any one time. The prices range from around 100, nickel-&-dime multi-item listings (to help with total items sold counts), through several hundred listings in the site-wide ASP range of $10 – $30, up to items running in the hundreds of dollars. This has always been a good mix for generating both revenue and PowerSeller status.

Back in January it was announced that from the summer, stores format on eBay.com and eBay.ca would have introduced a minimum per item price of $1 and I mentally noted it, but it then took so long to arrive that I forgot about it because no reminders were issued.

Now, weeks after it was put into force, I find that many of my sub-$1 store-items are still auto-relisting according to Selling Manager Pro (SMP), and according to my Seller Account, I’m still being invoiced the insertion fees, but those US & CA listings are not visible anywhere on any of the sites to buyers – they are only visible within SMP, which had caused me to believe they are live on the site for buyers to find. I stress this only affects store items under $1.00 price per item.

To me, that is deliberate theft by eBay. They announced the changes nearly 6 months ago, they should have put into place an automatic notification system that kicked in at the start of June, advising sellers that their listing number XYZ would not be auto-relisted as the per-item price was below the impending minimum per item under the new policy.

To have not done so and to continue collecting fees, whilst “fooling” sellers into believing the listings were live by showing them in SMP, is gross criminal intent, or negligence, worthy of Federal investigation. The cost per listing, and maybe per seller, might be small, but the cumulative effect across millions of listings brings the value to levels normally investigated by the organised crime units. If something like this was perpetrated in a Las Vegas casino, the entire operation would be closed down by the Nevada Gaming Board.

What can I add?  The seller above is (in my mind) absolutely correct in their conclusions.  eBay appear to have failed to perform due diligence to protect their paying customers from fraudulently charged fees.  I’ve checked my own seller accounts, and can confirm it has happened to me too.  I contacted a few of our regular forum posters who list on multiple sites, and it’s happened to them as well.  As far as this small sample indicates, the practice is therefore widespread.

Now all we need is to get this situation, and a mountain of affit-davits, to the Californian Attorney General, and something may happen to teach eBay a lesson and wake up both executives and stock-holders.

Anyone willing to organise it?

Anyone at eBay willing (or brave enough) to comment here on this blog?

Pass the link to this article to everyone you know who lists on dot com and Canada – save them some fees.

If you’ve fallen victim to this, add your comments below – I’d love to hear from additional sellers (and bloggers and journalists) on this topic.

Ed