Over the years we've had countless eBay sales, with regular price jacking by participating stores. We know this practice is illegal, yet it continues in almost every eBay sale. We see many complaints and negative votes on these threads, but I wonder how many people have actually submitted an official complaint to either eBay or the ACCC.
So, have you submitted an official complaint? What was the result?
Pretending it is a price reduction when it is not is misleading and deceptive. As much is plain as day. And ACCC does pursue it.
Who is pretending? The marketplace or the sellers?
This looks like, and smells like price jacking.
There has also been been precedent with Kogan doing the same thing.
@nomster: Kogan and eBay are not the same. Kogan is a retailer supplying goods and services. They can change the price on their listings whenever they want.
Ebay is a service provider. They don't control the prices.
Even if it might be arguably technically illegal, I don't personally think it's wrong so I'm not going to report it.
Who do you think it's not wrong? I think it's wrong, then I realise, eBay and PayPal makes such a huge commission (round 19% of item), that I admit if I was selling on there, I might raise the price a little too.
@Bargainbeth: Because they're still selling product X for price $Y. Nothing else really matters and if someone's influenced by the other stuff, that's on them.
but what if the final price is still lower than the pre-price jacked MSRP?
Would they do anything? Unlike Kogan, since eBay themselves aren't selling anything.
They facilitate it by their complicity (x% off deals).
To be part of a group of 20 stores that receive a special 20% discount.
There is collaboration going on in the background, it's not a random selection of vendors.
I haven't lodged a complaint, but I do keep a mental note of these sellers and don't purchase anything through them after this sort of behaviour.
A complaint to accc would most likely do nothing. Don't purchase from the store during the sale will be better, action speaks louder than words.
On the other hand, I reckon if ozbargain users group together & send a mass email to the actual store saying they would of purchased the item if they didn't jack it, that may get to them. I'm not talking about 5 emails, thousands.
A complaint to accc would most likely do nothing.
Correct. The ACCC do not investigate complaints from individuals. Fair trade is the organisation for individual complaints.
They do. Complained about bricks and mortar store in Sydney that sold me an item for double the price and ACCC helped to sort out when shop owner didn't want to deal with me.
They'll not read a single one. They'll track their profits and if it meets their expectations, your input is irrelevant.
My first input of not purchasing during the sale answers your comment.
The problem is, millions of people arent on ozbargain and wouldn't have a clue of what's going on. They see 20% off and think wow, a discount.
Ebay won't do anything to upset their big sellers.
Vote with your feet.
ACCC are toothless when individuals put complaints in……
They're too busy trying to send TPG out of the country.
Yep and Ebay did nothing, it is illegal though.
Pretty easy to spot, just look at history of item and will see the price change just before.
We're almost entirely a group of unpaid bargain hunters and we can easily spot the price jacking. Show evidence even.
If ACCC cannot do their own monitoring, much less respond to complaints with evidence spoon fed to them, nothing is going to change.
Just vote with your money. Stop using eBay and don't tolerate government spending. It is always spent extremely inefficiently.
ACCC doesn't work that way. You need to send them your evidence including conversations that you tried to offending party. If evidence is good then they will investigate.
I've complained before because the seller cancelled a sale since they forgot to price jack before my order. Nothing came out of it of course as expected.
Poll needs a "No, cos I ignore this type of Ebay sale completely." option
I've spoken with a smaller seller on ebay who says his business doesn't even get told they're part of the 20% off sales, they just get added to them automatically and ebay pays the difference
Add poll option.
I've stopped using eBay except for OzBargain deals.
Wherever is cheaper, I buy from, simples. If the retailer is only 10% cheaper than normal, due to them covering 10% of the, 20% sale, but they're still the cheapest around town, then I'll buy from them.
Why this even a issue, just buy the item when it's cheaper or you can offered it.
ebay is a trading platform who providing the discount, and business can sell it to whatever the price they can. Unless you can legally argue some what?
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/09/ebay-comes-clean-on-pr…
There's something I've seen more than once lately that's really bent my brain — items being listed with a tiny purchase price and a huge postage cost. E.g., an RTX 2080 Ti listed as $50 with $1,850 postage.
Huh??!
Off the top of my head I imagine they'd do that to avoid discounts from coupon codes but is there another story here? Is it something that's always happened and I've only just noticed?
eBay allows price jacking.
I pretend I have a foreign address for eBay deals.
I don’t complain about them if they don’t complain about me.
Sellers changing the price on a listing isn’t unlawful.