Sellers are struggling to understand and comply with a new initiative from eBay that is preventing some from listing items during the critical month of December. eBay launched an anti-counterfeiting initiative during the last week in November. While eBay staff made phone calls to some of its sellers inform them of the changes, it's clear from reading eBay forum posts that some sellers remain in the dark.

AuctionBytes has received several emails from sellers such as the following:

"eBay's new policy has frosted me in this cold winter season. I am a victim of eBay's new policy about fakes. A restriction has been placed on my account and we're a bonded buy safe dealer. I've been selling on eBay since 1997. It is very frustrating that emails won't solve this problem."

Despite being aware of the new policy, this seller has been unable to communicate with eBay effectively to find out what he needs to do to regain his former selling status: "How did I find out about the restrictions? We didn't. There was no notification. It was by accident that we discovered that we had been prevented from listing a purse. I have tried different methods to resolve this, but it still isn't resolved after a week of emails."

eBay Senior Director of Seller Development Todd Lutwak told AuctionBytes last month that there are four safeguards with which sellers must comply (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i29/s01). However, eBay never posted those requirements on the eBay Announcement Board, nor is it found on eBay's help pages on counterfeit items (http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/replica-counterfeit.html).

eBay does not actually tell sellers what items are on eBay's anti-counterfeiting list, but it appears to be designer items in such categories as clothing, shoes & accessories and jewelry & watches.

In order for sellers of items that fall under the new initiative to continue listing items, their eBay selling accounts must be linked to a PayPal verified account (http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/ebay-payments-my-payments.html#verified); they may not list those items in 1-day or 3-day auctions; they must change the ship-to location on listings to uncheck China and Hong Kong. In addition, sellers must pass a manual review conducted by eBay, which considers "a variety of factors" before letting sellers list items prone to counterfeiting.

One member on the eBay Discussion Boards summed up the frustration that sellers have expressed since learning of the initiative:

"I don't have a problem with the policy to clean up bad sellers, what I do have a REAL PROBLEM with is that ebay didn't bother to tell anyone before hand and decided to institute this 2 weeks before Christmas. This could realistically put me out of business. I just bought thousands of dollars worth of authentic inventory I can't list. I am a 350+ verfied Paypal member, Power Seller & have an ebay store. I didn't realize that my ebay account was linked to an old email address. I receive my payments at the correct one, I have for years, so how would I have known? I am so mad that Ebay didn't send an email out to sellers about this before they implement this policy. Ebay has a duty to inform sellers that they are instituting this policy before they do it. ESPECIALLY if they are doing it right before Christmas."

In response to a query last week from AuctionBytes about the new program and seller concerns, eBay said in an email that it was too soon to comment on the new initiatives.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000399987

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=2004782388