Something is Rotten in the state of eBay...

[Mercian]

I have noticed a strange phenomenon on eBay, and I am posting this topic because I want to warn other FPN members about it.

 

I will be searching for a particular model of pen, and I will find multiple listings, from 'different' sellers, all of which appear to list the same particular individual pen.

 

To be clear, I don't mean just e.g. 'a Lamy Safari in Red' (of which there are always going to be many available, because many are manufactured), but I might see e.g. a pen that happens to have a specific name engraved on it, and yet that same pen will appear in multiple listings, all of which are apparently 'different' sellers.

These strange listings will typically use the same photographs as each other (or sub-sets of the same photos), and will often all make the same mistake(s) in their listing as each other.

A really good example of the phenomenon that I am describing can be found if you click on the following links, all of which appear to be the same individual pen:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/405339169900

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296839452842

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226455222546

 

As a member of FPN, you will notice straight away that all of these listings repeat the same two glaring errors in their description of the item in question.
You may also notice that all three listings are asking for much, much more than the item is actually worth.
To me, it is not credible to suggest that three separate individuals would all make the same two glaring errors in their listings of this class of object.

It is also clear that three different sellers cannot all be in possession of the same pen - so at least two of these sellers must be violating the eBay rule against offering for sale anything that is not currently in one's own possession. Or else these three 'separate' sellers are in fact the same individual/gang, posting items in multiple accounts.

 

So, what is going with these listings (and the several others that I have seen that are like them)?
Is one seller perhaps posting multiple listings under different aliases, at different vastly-inflated prices, in order to make people think that his lowest listed price is a 'bargain'?
Are all three 'different' sellers offering an item for sale that that they don't have, but have seen listed on a domestic-only market, and are offering it for sale internationally on eBay at their own different vastly-inflated prices (with the intention of only buying it IF some foreign fool pays their rip-off price first)?
It seems to me that one, or perhaps both, of these guesses must be correct.
Both practices violate eBay's terms and conditions for selling items.

 

I once reported to eBay a set of four such listings (for a pen that was engraved with a name, in a distinctive Latin script), and in each of my reports I included the links to the other three listings, and explained why at least three of the four listings must be dodgy.
What did eBay do about it?
Apart from sending me four emails to say that they had received my reports, they did NOTHING AT ALL - all four listings remained up, and live.

 

As eBay appears to be content for this practice to continue, I have been tempted to compile a list of all of the sellers that engage in this practice, so that I know to avoid their listings in future.
For now though, I am just making sure that I don't ever attempt to buy any item that appears in multiple listings of this type!

 

So, I urge you all to watch out for - and avoid - such listings, and the sellers who list them!
And I would also be grateful if anyone could explain what is actually going on in them, and why eBay refuses to take them down.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[inkstainedruth]

I noticed at the three listings were at different prices.  And the photos DID look the same for all of them (just showing them in different order.

I suppose it's POSSIBLE that the seller did in fact have three of the same pen, but just used the same photos in each listing.  (I ran into that a few years ago with a seller that I now refer to as "that third-rate pawnbroker" -- who was apparently ACTUAL a member of the clergy(!) selling off a parishioner's collection.  Dropped the price of a 3rd tier pen from $100 US to $30, and I got it -- only to (1) realize that it was probably worth about $10 since I misunderstood that it had the wrong brand nib on it as well; and (2) the seller THEN ran another (mostly identical) listing, where the pen was dropped from $100 to $40.  And I wanted to contact THAT buyer and say, "NO!!!!  It's NOT worth what you paid for it!"  When I contacted the seller?  The seller claimed that there were in fact THREE identical pens in the collection....

Now?  If a seller DOESN'T have 100% positive feedback and is NOT a seller I've dealt with before?  I look VERY carefully at the negative comments to see WHY that seller *doesn't* have a 100% positive rating....  (Although that's actually more because a seller who has literally tens of thousands of transactions -- but who stiffed me and then was an a-hole about it and did NOT have 100% positive feedback).  In that case, I was NOT allowed to provide feedback because the dispute I filed was adjudicated in my behalf in a matter of hours -- I got my money back AND could keep the item -- but the experience made me wonder about how many OTHER buyers got the same treatment from BOTH the seller and from eBay....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Christopher Godfrey]

Mercian, you are late to the party!  😉

 

 

[I-am-not-really-here]

The practice is nothing new and not limited to pens, I observed similar activity back in my rangefinder camera days.  My personal solution has been to cease even considering eBay items from Japan. 
 

As to why eBay won't take the listings down, how would they determine which of the four are illegitimate? 

[Seney724]

I am interested to see that this untoward practice has now spread to the UK eBay site.

It has been ongoing now for well more than a year on the eBay USA site.  The numbers of such sales posts for the same pen by different sellers is staggering.

They all "seem" to come from Japan but let me qualify this comment by saying:

1. I surely have not seen all such sales posts and there may be some such sales posts from somewhere other than Japan.

2. There is a member here who gets very exercised about this unseemly practice being ascribed to Japan because he maintains the activity is the work of people who are not in Japan.  He states these individuals have hijacked Japanese seller's sites.  (Or, at least, I think that is what he is saying..........)

3. The member I am citing has not posted anything in the way of data or evidence that the sales are not coming from Japan; however there have been contrary posts documenting that the pens have come from Japan as evidenced by the shipment coming via Japan Post and/or having return addresses in Japan.  One is left having to draw their own conclusions.

4. The icing on the cake is, after all this nonsense, the pens received are often fake.

 

Regardless, this activity is quite prevalent and eBay does nothing about it, in spite of the fact that it seems to violate their policy.  This is not unusual for eBay, they seem far more interested in enforcing their policies when they believe their revenues are being threatened than when doing so might negatively impact upon their revenues. 

 

This said, as little as I think of eBay, I have to believe that if they know one (or more) of their seller's sites have been hijacked and some one else is selling items using the hijacked site (aka eBay store) that they would be skating on very thin ice by ignoring it.  For this reason it is my conviction that eBay has validated the activity as coming from the the sellers who are the owners of the eBay stores which are selling the pens.

 

Some have likened the practice to a form of arbitrage; others see it as drop shipping. But, with only one item ultimately available for sale, I have a hard time seeing it as any sort of type of drop shipping.   Instead, I see it as an annoyance, at the least and more in line with a scam and/or fraud.

 

As a final note, there are times on the eBay USA site when suddenly a couple of hundred sales posts from Japan (or listed as coming from Japan) appear.  Many of these sales posts offer the same item but from multiple sellers and at different prices.  Also, some sellers post 20 or 30 pens all at the same time.  As a result of this some poor sellers have their newly posted item for sale bumped 3-4 pages back within moments making of their sales post.  Very unfair.  IMO the number of sales posts any one seller can make at one time should be limited by eBay so as to not advantage "the little guys." (This, too, never going to happen.)

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

As to why eBay won't take the listings down, how would they determine which of the four are illegitimate? 

 

Well, what I would do if I were a moderator at eBay would be as follows:

 

1- remove all the listings, and send a message to each of the sellers, in which I tell them that the listing has been pulled because many people are using the same photos, and so the ownership of the item is therefore in question.
Tell each seller that, to prove that he is the owner of the pen in question, I require him to use different photos than those on the listing that I have removed.
I would add the following requirement for the new photos for his listing;

2- E.g.s :

tell seller A that the pen must be shown on a red background;

tell seller B that the pen must be shown on a copy of a newspaper for the day on which he uploads the listing;

tell seller C that the pen must be shown on a wooden surface;

tell seller D that the pen must be shown on a shopping bag that has the logo of a locally-widespread store;

tell ALL the sellers that each of their photos must also include, next to the pen, a piece of paper with the seller's eBay alias written out by hand, in their own handwriting.

One could also require the pen to be lit from a different angle that is specific to each seller.
You know, to make Photoshopping of stolen photos a bit harder.

 

Setting each 'suspect' seller a different requirement for the photos ought to demonstrate rather swiftly which - if ANY - of them actually has the item in their possession. Or at the least make the non-genuine listings disappear.

[Sh.Andrews]

After you guys recently enlightened me that my 2009 Orange Lamy was a Limited edition going for extreme prices on Ebay, I decided to list it.  It's absolutely amazing how many brand new 2009 L'amy orange LE pens are for sell on Ebay - all of them look the same and the sellers have a bunch of them in stock.  They must have cornered the market back in 2009 - I was lucky to get one I guess.  But of course, I ended up with just a Lamy instead of a L'amy.

[Sh.Andrews]

Follow up: I just searched Ebay for examples of all the 2009 L'amy Safaris listed and I hate to say they must have all sold.

[I-am-not-really-here]

3 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Well, what I would do if I were a moderator at eBay would be as follows:

 

1- remove all the listings, and send a message to each of the sellers, in which I tell them that the listing has been pulled because many people are using the same photos, and so the ownership of the item is therefore in question.
Tell each seller that, to prove that he is the owner of the pen in question, I require him to use different photos than those on the listing that I have removed.
I would add the following requirement for the new photos for his listing;

2- E.g.s :

tell seller A that the pen must be shown on a red background;

tell seller B that the pen must be shown on a copy of a newspaper for the day on which he uploads the listing;

tell seller C that the pen must be shown on a wooden surface;

tell seller D that the pen must be shown on a shopping bag that has the logo of a locally-widespread store;

tell ALL the sellers that each of their photos must also include, next to the pen, a piece of paper with the seller's eBay alias written out by hand, in their own handwriting.

One could also require the pen to be lit from a different angle that is specific to each seller.
You know, to make Photoshopping of stolen photos a bit harder.

 

Setting each 'suspect' seller a different requirement for the photos ought to demonstrate rather swiftly which - if ANY - of them actually has the item in their possession. Or at the least make the non-genuine listings disappear.

If seller A, B, C, D are in collusion then your solution is easily defeated. Or if these sellers are all the same person then the solution can also be defeated.

 

It would be nice if, after a listing violation (in the eyes of the reporter) was rejected by eBay that they provided the reason(s) why.  But they don't so you're left with deciding what level of avoidance you wish to take. Or do nothing since you now know that eBay seemingly does the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[senzen]

I've come across this a few times, puts me off all those listings; in general sellers from Japan seem to be more trustworthy than those from several other countries but you will run into blatant scams from time to time. I've mostly had good luck with sellers on eBay, but I do research their reputation and treat each purchase as a potential risk.

 

My few eBay sumgais:

 

Minerva 60 for $34: very stiff piston, some TLC brought it back to life.

Parker 105 for $16; in perfect nick, albeit a very finicky model.

Waterman Gentleman 33 for £24, new.

Rotring Renaissance for $44.

 

Didn't quite work out:

 

Omas Milord, busted piston.

Parker 51 "restored": stuck filling system.

 

Best deals from Japan: green demo Sailor 1911S for $68, Pilot 912 for $115. So not sumgai but decent.

[Mercian]

15 hours ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

If seller A, B, C, D are in collusion then your solution is easily defeated. Or if these sellers are all the same person then the solution can also be defeated.

 

That is true

But at least my idea would get rid of any listings by people who don't have the item in their possession.

[I-am-not-really-here]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

 

That is true

But at least my idea would get rid of any listings by people who don't have the item in their possession.

What impact then to eBay's 3rd party reseller program?  I've bought the occasional item on eBay that was actually shipped by Amazon.  The eBay seller did not have possession.

 

Though eBay could have some required indicator on the listing user's ID as warning.  

[Seney724]

40 minutes ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

What impact then to eBay's 3rd party reseller program?  I've bought the occasional item on eBay that was actually shipped by Amazon.  The eBay seller did not have possession.

 

Though eBay could have some required indicator on the listing user's ID as warning.  

To my way of thinking, there is a big difference between the program you are describing and the sham which is being perpetrated by these alleged Japanese sellers.

In the program you are describing, there are large numbers of the item available to be sold and multiple sellers can fulfill the sale working out of that one, common warehouse location.

In the Japanese pen sale there is only one of the item to be sold.

So, in your program, many sellers can all sell the same item and have the order fulfilled.  But, in the pen sale, there is only one pen for sale, if that.

In the pen sale, or for any similar type sale with only one of the advertised item available to be sold, I agree with the poster who recommended that the seller needs prove they have the item in their possession, available to be sold and shipped upon completion of the transaction as opposed to the item's being located in some other location with no assurance that it will be available once the transaction is completed.

[I-am-not-really-here]

I don't think eBay's 3rd party reseller program makes the distinction.  
 

In this particular instance a potential buyer could simply request additional photographs "proving" possession before committing to a purchase.

 

As in all things, caveat emptor.