ebay: Protesters Appear to Be Stepping Up Their Campaign

Bad Listings and Ebays Silence Are Focus for Criticism

Last weekend, a group known as CORE – The Campaign Of Rebuffed Ebayers – organised a four day protest. Today I received a Press Release from them. I will report it in its entirety for all to see and invite comments before following up with my own opinions in a later article. 

The remainder of this article is the test received from CORE: 

CORE, the now ‘international’ Campaign of Rebuffed Ebayers, have reported some alarming findings following their ‘Clean up Ebay’ campaign. The protest itself involved an international 4-day boycott of eBay from 14th September to 18th September. During this period, eBay experienced a significant drop in the amount of listings displayed on their site. In categories being monitored, falls of up to 50% in the amount of auction and Buy It Now listings was evident by the end of the protest period. 

The allied Clean Up Ebay (CUE) campaign aimed to report as many ‘bad listings’ as possible. It is this aspect of the protest CORE can now report some alarming findings. A spokesperson for the group said: “We reported numerous ‘bad listings’ to Ebay during CUE. Apart from the usual fee avoidance and general scams, we also found evidence of hijacked accounts and listings of counterfeit goods. In most cases it took up to 24 hours to remove offending items, if this happened at all. This demonstrates what we see as the woeful inadequacy of eBay’s ability to police their site effectively. In too many instances reported bad listings were not removed at all, and quite often, the ones that were removed reappeared within an hour.”