eBay removes 500,000 listings in a few weeks! Zero tolerance for price gouging

Last week, the eBay community issued an announcement reminding sellers that eBay has a zero-tolerance policy for price fraud and said it is taking steps to prevent and remove listings that make false health claims or are suspected of illegally raising prices to offer high-priced products.

Last year, due to the raging epidemic and the panic among the people, supermarket items were looted. Coupled with the blockade of some areas and the closure of supermarkets, the epidemic prevention materials in the market were in short supply. Related products on eBay and other e-commerce platforms also entered a hot selling period, and prices soared, making it a paradise for price fraud and questionable health products.

Due to the skyrocketing prices, eBay severely restricted the sale of all masks, hand sanitizer, cleaning wipes and pads, baby formula, and toilet paper. Today, eBay has issued another statement reminding sellers that this policy still applies now.

According to eBay's emergency listing restriction policy, only eBay sellers on the whitelist who have undergone strict review can continue to trade these products at appropriate prices. Sellers who are not on the whitelist and attempt to sell epidemic prevention materials will receive warnings, their products will be blocked or deleted, and even their accounts will be frozen .

Although eBay developed a filter algorithm in early February last year and set up a global security team to work around the clock, some unscrupulous merchants still tried to bypass the filter and illegally sell epidemic prevention materials on eBay. For a time, a guerrilla war broke out between sellers and the eBay platform.

By late March, the situation was out of control. In order to curb price fraud and unscrupulous price gouging, eBay deleted more than 500,000 listings in just a few weeks.

The tragic scene at that time must have caused a certain psychological trauma to eBay's management team. Now is a critical period for vaccination and epidemic prevention and control. The eBay platform may have detected some signs and immediately issued an announcement in the eBay community, telling those who are ready to move: Hey, we are watching, don't mess around!

Now, eBay not only said in a statement: "As a reminder, we have a zero-tolerance policy for price fraud to ensure that buyers can find necessary items at reasonable prices, especially during the extraordinary and challenging times we are facing today." It also encourages buyers to report illegal items they see .

Although eBay expressed its care for buyers in the announcement, some buyers seem to be unappreciative: "eBay only said that the buyer charged too much, but it always showed more expensive shipping options. eBay put buyers and sellers against each other, but took itself out! The last time eBay enforced this rule, there were still a lot of hand sanitizers and masks being sold at prices higher than the market price, and eBay was not very efficient in removing them..."

Some buyers also expressed their incomprehension. It is clear that the price will drop only if the sales are liberalized, but eBay has been banning the sale of these things: "In Germany, we can easily buy more goods. Almost every store has a large stock of FFP2 masks, and they can also be ordered online. Without quantity restrictions, the price of masks is almost the same as before the epidemic, so why does eBay still ban sales?"

Others believe that eBay's encouragement of buyers to report will lead to abuse of power because "there will be some shady sellers who will report their competitors under fictitious names." In the seller's view, "if someone thinks the price is too high, then don't buy it. Problem solved."

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