Question
Hey everyone. This is a thread I took from the nasty eBay boards. I started it over there, but I would rather discuss it with kinder, more knowledgeable people. I was just wondering what you thought of this. There are 4 selling ID's that have very similar listings, and same TOS, along with other glaringly obvious similiarities. They're all Titanium Powersellers. I think it's quite clear that it's by the same company, and that they have created these ID's to post more than the limit of ten auctions. One ID will say "headset for Nokia" another "headset for kyocera" another "headset for Motorola" when the same headset fits all 3 phones (although they picked different brands).
Anyways, thought I"d bring this here to shoot it around. To me, it's another HUGE PS (probably the biggest there since they have at least 4 TITANIUM 200 000+ acounts) getting aweay with whatever they please.
Here is the OP from eBay below.
Howdy, I'm a seller of Plantronics items right now (about to expand into other electronics) and there isn't a ton of competition, but what is there is fierce. I often scan through listings to see what I'm up against and if I can beat their pricing (like any seller would).
Well, somewhat recently a few sellers have come in and started selling our hottest item. It's a Plantronics MX505 in case your curious. Anyways, I noticed that all these 3 selelrs had similar titles. When I looked in their descriptions, they all had different templates but their pictures were all the same, but different. The pictures had each individual seller's ID in the same font and colour. Their TOS are all the same. They all have 200+ thousand feedback, and all their locations say "titanium power seller".
It's quite clear to me that these are all run by the same person/company. I'm just curious as to why the same company would open 3 ID"s and offer the same products at the same prices. I've seen this before between 2 ID's, where the seller had "Seller A" and "Seller B" and at the btotom of seller A it said "company fo seller B". I don't get the logic behind this.
I suppose it's an attempt to run a monopoly, but why not list 9 items under one ID instead of 3 under 3 separate ones.
Besides logic, I'm looking to see what YOU all think about this? It seems a little strange to me, and frankly, I don't trust it.
Thanks for reading this long post, opinions are much appreciated!
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It is 10 similar items per seller id running at around time. Not sure I ever read any rules about a seller not allow to have multiple IDs selling the same things. Sounds legit to me.
Regarding the titles, they will come up differently for different searches. Should be max of 10 showing up if I search by make. So I see nothing wrong with that.
May be skirting the laws but so what. One can argue thinking outside of the box.
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Nm
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Let me think a min. Oh you want to be able to sell that many items? Would love to see these folks go away right?
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Commentary, I wasn't sure when I first started that thread if any rules were being broken at all. Someone made me aware of the 10 item limit, and when I looked it up, it said that you can not sell more than 10 of the same item. It also gave the exact EXAMPLE of "10 for kyocera, 10 for nokia, 10 for motorola" when they're all the same in the help section.
10x, I"m not going to get them to go away, and that's not my intention.
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1 id or 100 ids = total 10 of the same item only.
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Yep, those are the rules. Yet this seller, who to myself and others is obviously controlling all 4 accounts, has easily gone over that with 15 items, or more that are the same but disguised to be different.
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3 id's = 30 auctions of identical items running at the same time
Dutch auction fee avoidance... that is, IF that's what they're doing.
Cheers
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Originally Posted by Roundabout
Commentary, I wasn't sure when I first started that thread if any rules were being broken at all. Someone made me aware of the 10 item limit, and when I looked it up, it said that you can not sell more than 10 of the same item. It also gave the exact EXAMPLE of "10 for kyocera, 10 for nokia, 10 for motorola" when they're all the same in the help section.
10x, I"m not going to get them to go away, and that's not my intention.
They may be the same but you will never get an eBay employee to understand that. Unless the title and descriptions are 100% the same, the dummies will simply ignore it. Even then, I am not sure if eBay will do anything. Think of all the listing fees they lose.
You can try and report them if you want and see if anything comes of it.
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Originally Posted by Sai-Jin
1 id or 100 ids = total 10 of the same item only.
Link please.