Are there any policies against sellers grabbing photos and selling from other marketplaces?

Summary: tonimarie324 expresses frustration with eBay becoming difficult to use, due to sellers posting duplicate listings and reselling items from other sites like Mercari without possessing the items. They describe a practice of sellers using photos from Mercari to list items on eBay at inflated prices, frequently canceling sales when the original items are no longer available. femmefan1946 confirms that such practices aren't allowed on eBay, emphasizing the need to report dishonest sellers. reallynicestamps is surprised by this issue and requests eBay's Security team to investigate, as it affects the credibility of the platform. tonimarie324 adds that legitimate sellers are struggling to compete with these resellers who saturate the market with copied listings, making it hard for true sellers to reach buyers. They express hope that eBay will address this issue more effectively to prevent such scams.

I used to use eBay more often, now it feels almost unusable. There are certain searches that are both flooded with duplicate listings and especially resellers grabbing and posting links from eg. mercari that are not actually in their possession, and trying to sell it for two or three times higher. If a buyer from eBay doesn’t know this, you’re not only paying double the original price (or more) but the seller will often cancel your order if someone else bought the item before they did. It’s annoying, dishonest, and then then they’ll try to sell you similar items from similar listings (again, none in their possession). My seller referred to it as having a difficult “inventory” system, until I found all of their exact product and identical photos on mercari under many different seller accounts. It’s unique artwork, so it isn’t something that can be sold more than once or in the possession of multiple people — they’re definitely stealing the photos of those sellers. There are many sellers doing this so my eBay searches are absolutely flooded with duplicate items that aren’t necessary the same eBay sellers making “multiple” postings. They’re multiple people, just grabbing some person’s photos from other marketplaces, and only making a purchase or bid if they’ve already made the advance sale on eBay. It seems extremely scam-driven but I have reported this experience, and so far nothing. I was just wondering if it was common, and if it’s made eBay almost unusable for others. It is way easier to look at those marketplaces now than the resellers or scammers selling you a product belonging to another user that they have zero assurances on. And obviously cheaper, because they’re reselling product from other marketplaces as any entire business venture. Is this practice legitimate or allowable on eBay?

tonimarie324

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Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 3 years ago

5 comments

reallynicestamps

·3 years ago

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....so I politely declined and was refunded “at my request”. ...and only then did they refund at buyer request.

As you likely know, "at buyer request" is a fault -free option.

The scammer has no penalty for the failed transaction even when it is blatantly dishonest.

I'm actually shocked by this, because one of my prejudices is that the Japanese are meticulously honest. Of course, just as we Canadians often list on eBay dotCOM, others can list on eBay dotCO dotJP.

Those are adorable! I had to google them, because I had them confused with netsuke.

And then I Searched and two listings for the same item showed up on the first page of my Search (I use Highest Price First ) and that with only 500+ lisitngs.

@devon@ebay

Could you have the Security team look into this?

The two I spotted were 314553191552 and 166076453049. A third showed up when I looked at these in the Sponsored Items 155500995409

devon@ebay

Admin3 years ago

Community AdvisorView listings

@reallynicestamps wrote:

....so I politely declined and was refunded “at my request”. ...and only then did they refund at buyer request.

As you likely know, "at buyer request" is a fault -free option.

The scammer has no penalty for the failed transaction even when it is blatantly dishonest.

I'm actually shocked by this, because one of my prejudices is that the Japanese are meticulously honest. Of course, just as we Canadians often list on eBay dotCOM, others can list on eBay dotCO dotJP.

Those are adorable! I had to google them, because I had them confused with netsuke.

And then I Searched and two listings for the same item showed up on the first page of my Search (I use Highest Price First ) and that with only 500+ lisitngs.

@devon@ebay

Could you have the Security team look into this?

The two I spotted were 314553191552 and 166076453049. A third showed up when I looked at these in the Sponsored Items 155500995409

Hi @reallynicestamps! Thank you for sharing this with me and I will be sure to have these listings passed along to the Trust and Safety team.

tonimarie324

OP3 years ago

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Thank you! I am not trying to target any international sellers, in fact many of the eBay listings by actual kokeshi sellers in Japan are being lost amidst this continuous grabbing and using of endless photos and listings found on mercari. Most individual sellers will only have a limited number of options available, so are not continuously posting new items. Because the potential resellers (who have yet to even bid on the item they’re selling) are posting pictures of almost every and any kokeshi listing they see, honest sellers are buried and less likely to find buyers for their items. All of the stolen images and items are from jp.mercari.com and a lot of the actual listings can be found under the search “こけし” (kokeshi). It’s also not the case that it’s the same seller using an eBay account since many accounts will use photos from many different sellers.

I think re-listing other seller’s products was just discovered to be profitable, diminishes the risk of something not selling or having to keep an inventory/storage and if an item sells out, that’s typically put on the unknowing buyer (unless you’re really assertive about changing the refund to sold out/seller’s request, which I only did after suspecting it was a scam). It harms eBay sellers too, so I don’t know why this practice has become so prevalent (at least for this particular search).

Again it’s always a singular, unique item being listed by three or four different sellers, none of which have made an actual purchase and are highly unlikely to have any agreement or contract with the real seller. Because they’re posting so many listings, they spend little time monitoring whether the mercari listing is still available. When someone unknowingly tries to purchase it here, they’ll finally check the original listing (likely for the first time since they’ve posted theirs). And again, these tens or hundreds of new listings are flooding out actual sellers with actual products that they’re entitled to sell.

femmefan1946

·3 years ago

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Caveat emptor.

It's Latin (but you already knew that) and that's because it is a problem that has existed for thousands of years.

BUYER BEWARE

And not just eBay. Not just online.

until I found all of their exact product and identical photos on mercari under many different seller accounts.

EBay does not discourage dropshipping, which is a system in which a reseller contracts with the supplier to find customers.

But

It’s unique artwork, so it isn’t something that can be sold more than once or in the possession of multiple people

The dropshipping eBay allows is the one with the contract. Both supplier and reseller know the score.

What you are talking about is NOT allowed. The supplier has to be a willing party to the transaction.

(It is not required to let the buyer know.)

If your seller cancelled your purchase as "out of stock" they got a Defect on their selling account. Those are Very Bad News for sellers.

If the seller cancelled "at buyer request" you can report that to eBay (I'd suggest one of the social media covered by eBay reps) and again the seller may get a Defect.

On a tangent.

It’s unique artwork,

There's not much artwork that is truly unique these days. What medium was being used?

You could even post the number of the listing that you are annoyed about, just not the name of the seller.

tonimarie324

OP3 years ago

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It’s for kokeshi from Japan, which are not unique as in “completely inventive” but oftentimes they’re individual enough to tell each one apart. Some of the creative ones assigned to individual artists might have certain flaws or age spots, or slightly different painting of facial features or dress. Even the same kokeshi by the same artists might appear and age differently, dependent on who owned it and when it was created. There is no guarantee of artist authenticity, I get that, but eBay listings being flooded with photographs grabbed from other marketplaces and re-listed has rendered the search mostly useless (there are still a few good sellers, but difficult to find them amidst this). The photos they are using are virtually identical to the original listing. You can also tell they’re grabbing the photos from many different sellers because all of the backgrounds are inconsistent (while the backgrounds are usually consistent within each mercari seller). I don’t think the mercari sellers have any idea, the postings go up very quickly and are always lagging behind in being removed. But I couldn’t say that for certain. I get that I could investigate this further, but it feels like a lot of responsibility is being handed over to the buyer rather than the seller or marketplace assuming any sort of accountability for the sale.

When it happened to me, I messaged the seller after payment and told them that I was confused, because another eBay seller had the same kokeshi for sale and I wanted to ensure that I had already purchased it. They told me they mistakenly posted the wrong photo and grabbed a bunch of other listings, saying I could purchase these instead. I believed them, so I politely declined and was refunded “at my request”. Then I purchased the same listing from what I thought was the “correct” photos, listing and seller. Again I was mistaken, only this time the seller (possibly the same person) told me the item had sold and that they couldn’t update their inventory system. They wanted to cancel it at my request since I didn’t want to buy any of their “similar” listings (more listings that they’ve grabbed from mercari users). I told them I was confused about what was happening and would ask eBay, and only then did they refund at buyer request.

There are way too many accounts doing this to name them all. The accounts that did this to me include both interhc5 (claimed to have post the wrong photo in their ad and cancelled at my request) and wutianzh-43 (claimed it was sold and tried to cancel at my request because I didn’t want to buy “borrowed” listings of other kokeshi, so my fault). If you look through their accounts, you will see an endless number of backgrounds and photographic inconsistencies, because they’re grabbing the photos from any seller they find on mercari. These sellers include everythig_jp777, myj-04, sunlucestore and many more. I don’t think there is any explicit agreement, commission or profit margin being shared with the original sellers of these listings (but again, I have no idea). There are so many sellers doing this, I thought it might be allowable or then purposely ignored, because it’s pretty obvious, even in browsing, that something isn’t right. That’s why I originally sent a message, to ensure the other eBay listing would be taken down and that I had successfully purchased this singular item.

For every seller who is listing their own product (or contracted, good to know), there are five others duplicating mercari listings at whatever profit margin they feel is appropriate. Sunlucestore currently has an identical and active ad to a kokeshi that I’ve already purchased from Mercari and know it’s out of stock now. They’ve taken the identical photos from the original seller and listed them here, but I bought that listing at $60 CAD and they’re still selling it on eBay for $200 CAD (not including shipping). With many sellers doing this, it also lends to duplicate listings of identical items, and it isn’t like a car part or something that is typically manufactured to be identical. They’re all listing ads to one single item. It makes every listing feel like a scam, because how do multiple sellers claim assurance to this one single item when they’re essentially competing with each other and all possible buyers of the original seller. I don’t know if the rest of eBay is flooded with duplicate listings in this way, or if there’s a language barrier and maybe people just don’t realize these listings are from Mercari. The only advantage I can see is that it makes some of the listings more accessible (so long as the user doesn’t know they’re being ripped off, they wouldn’t have used Mercari otherwise, and the seller actually ends up with the merchandise they’re betting on). But I don’t think that argument is worth the lack of confidence or gamble on a listing being “borrowed” in advance of its sale.

Again, at least for me, it makes eBay seem almost unusable. Both inventory and assurance are completely made up. Hopefully you won’t take that to some extreme, and suggest that everything is technically a conception or made up in one way or another. No offence, because I do somewhat appreciate your level of cantor, but I’m not trying to have an intellectual debate (my posts are already exhaustive enough). I am trying to convey an issue between buyer and sellers on eBay - generally speaking, it’s not a normal level of assumed risk. The listings are more like an after-thought and a higher profit margin than the original seller will ever receive. It does happen on other marketplaces, including Etsy, but resellers usually buy the product before selling it at a higher profit margin, which is far more legitimate than what is happening here. I’m not quite sure reporting single accounts will be as helpful when there’s an influx of sellers doing this, but again might only be for cultural, niche, and/or vintage items. I do feel, when it becomes common enough, that eBay should revisit its policies rather than its users being responsible for every single one of these seller propping up. And I did send a message, but those users haven’t been restricted at all. Hopefully other users don’t keep running into the same issues, but it’s an issue that I haven’t encountered to this extreme with other marketplace, including high reseller prices on Etsy (again, not declaring that as an absolute truth, but generally speaking and in my experience so far).