Business seller registration : some thoughts on enforcement

31/05/2008 at 18:00

“Why do ebay search results bring up more & more listings obviously business masquerading as private sellers?” It’s been one of the most popular questions on our a Skribit board, and it’s also something I’ve been wondering about myself.

Back in January, eBay UK began to change the rules to force sellers who are operating businesses on the site to register as such. It’s important to remember than this isn’t just an eBay rule: it’s the law, and anyone who is running a business but representing themself as a private seller is breaking that law.

And there are plenty of sellers on eBay UK who look like they’re breaking that law. Whether they believe that calling themselves private sellers will stop the taxman from noticing them, or whether they want to deny their buyers the legal rights they have when buying from a business, I wouldn’t like to speculate, but almost everyday, I get an email from someone saying “my competitor so-and-so is still registered as private, what can I do about it?” So I asked eBay to let us know exactly what they’re doing to enforce this rule. Here’s what they told me:

“Generally speaking, we lack the capability to investigate sellers outside eBay to identify if they are businesses or not. We are, however, reviewing member reports of sellers who should have registered as businesses but haven’t.

We have a GMV threshold in place above which sellers need to have a business account, and we’ve set it at a level that sellers could reasonably only achieve if they were a business. Below that, sellers have a legal obligation to self-declare if they are a business, but as mentioned above, we’re largely reliant on member reports of this – and on there being enough prima facie evidence available in the report or in the listings that the seller is a business seller. This applies to businesses trading on eBay across multiple accounts as much as to single accounts, although the former is of course harder to spot.

We will enforce reports of business sellers who are displaying only partial addresses, whether this is outright omission or selective concealment of address information in out-of-the-way places.

Sellers are usually warned for first-time infringements of our policies, and that’s the case here too. We remind them of their legal obligations when we warn them. Repeat offenders will face restrictions up to permanent suspension.”

Obviously the GMV level for compulsory business accounts isn’t being revealed, or illegal sellers would be certain to trade just below it to avoid notice. Otherwise, the message is clear: if you spot someone trading as a private seller when they should be business-registered, report them. And keep reporting them until they register correctly, or quit selling. If they choose to break the law, it’s up to all of us to stop them.