Pre-global test? Duplicate listings cut to 5-max on eBay IN

By Garry HJ | November 13th, 2009 | Category: Commentary, eBay IN | No Comments »

Coming into effect next Friday (20th November), eBay India has announced a major change to its duplicate listings policy immediately before the seasonally-critical peaks of the fourth quarter selling period.

eBay India has long been a test-bed site for policies that later roll globally across the eBay platform, most notably the International Visibility Fee (used on eBay.in for years before being foisted onto Trans-Atlantic trade in early 2008).

Next week’s change drops the maximum number of duplicate listings per seller per item down to five, with warnings that bundling very low cost additional items does not constitute sufficient variation to evade the classification as duplication. The example given in the announcement is -

Sellers who are selling individual same-model mobile phone shall not add an additional item of insignificant value to the listing in order to “create” a unique listing:

List 5 individual same-model mobile phone with a scratch guard each
List 5 individual same-model mobile phone with a pouch each
List 5 individual same-model mobile phone with a pair of ear bud each

These listings would be considered as 15 identical listings and shall be considered a violation of the policy

Additionally the announcement calls out -

Sellers may not concurrently have more than 5 listings for identical items.
If a seller chooses to list in more than one category, the seller must still adhere to the multiple listings limit of 5.
Sellers may not use multiple User IDs to list more than 5 identical items.

Historically, eBay globally has never been too good at targeting the seller as an entity. Traditionally they have targeted the individual selling or buying ID, without applying the restrictions to other IDs held by the same person. Recent announcements from Planet eBay have been increasingly mentioning the “all accounts” and “seller’s other accounts” phrases a lot – but most especially where they are waving big sticks at sellers to keep them toeing the corporate line. As the SE Asian eBay headquarters announced in early October -

“Sellers are also required to resolve all performance issues on accounts that are not in good standing before buying or selling with other accounts. Accounts that have been restricted or sellers who have a lowered search standing are not considered to be in good standing. Sellers who are not in good standing are not allowed to register new accounts or use an existing eBay account to avoid buying and selling restrictions or other policy consequences.”

This type of language is a major shift in focus by the San Jose Sheriffs, but notice how it is 100% focussed against their revenue source (the sellers). There is no word about what will happen to buyers who are not in good standing – where’s the global restrictions for persons with too many non-payment strikes, bid retractions, or non-delivery claims across ALL their IDs? How about buyers feedback pages display a similar DSR stars panel to that of sellers, but where the scores displayed are the average of ratings they have given to others?

India’s announcement on the cut-back in listing duplications, and the widening of the net that describes what constitutes a duplication, should be of major concern to sellers outside of the sub-continent. If it proves to be effective in achieving whatever ulterior motive it was designed to fuel, then sellers everywhere can expect the policy to arrive on other eBay sites, probably in the 2010-SR1 round of changes (we know eBay only tests for weeks rather than months, and that all their performance (and enhancement) targets are monthly instead of annually).

Alongside eBay UK’s current (never officially announced) culling of private sellers with high volume listing counts – via new-listing upload blocks in Turbo Lister, and relisting / new-listing blocks on the SYI form – which is now rolling across all user IDs of individually affected sellers, cutting back on maximum permitted duplicate listings (already restricted to auction-format-only in NATO-land) is probably seen as yet another way to reduce the flea-market serendipity that made eBay famous.

Will it improve the appeal of the site? Personally, I think not.

When I buy on eBay, I don’t want to buy from corporate giants (I go to their website or bricks and mortar stores to do that) – I want to buy from individuals, I want to browse through listings with misspelled titles and find a bargain, I want to find items that are not in the shops, or I want to save some money by purchasing a pre-used item. I want the car-boot, or yard, sale experience on eBay. I want to while away my twilight years browsing other people’s junk to find hidden treasures that got left behind in my youth.

I do not want to have to wade through endless pages of latest and last season homogenous goods that are cheaper on the High Street, instantly available to pick-up in the real world shopping malls, and for which I can also dive into a Dairy Queen or StarBucks to closely inspect my purchase within a minute of paying for it.

This is the portion of the user experience that current eBay executives are completely missing, and all their latest policies are just demonstrations of their ignorance of what made eBay a household name.

Gaz

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