Ebay Listing Removed (Legit or Competitor?)

So I got my very first listing removed due to: Parallel Import Violation.

It was only 1 product. Here is the message I got:


"After reviewing your eBay account, we've taken the following action:
- Violating listings have been removed. A list of items that were removed can be viewed at the bottom of this message.
- We have credited all associated fees except for the final value fee for your listing(s).

Your listing was reviewed after the rights owner notified us that your item violated their rights.

Importing certain products from other countries without the rights owners permission may violate their intellectual property rights. Because of this, eBay reviews these items when we are contacted by the rights owner.

We encourage you to contact the rights owner directly to better understand their position, as well as the countries or regions that they are concerned about. You will then want to exclude these regions in your listings and will also need to state that you won't sell to buyers in these areas.

For more information on our VeRO program, please visit:
xxx

If you have more questions, contact our policy experts:
xxx

Please be sure your current and future listings follow these guidelines, keeping in mind that additional violations could result in the suspension of your account.

The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, (brand name of product), notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

We encourage you to contact (brand name) directly if you have any questions.

You can send an email to:
xxxx email. "


So my questions are:

1) I tried to contact the email that was given, but it looks like it might not actually be from the actual company of the item. It looks like an email from some other person, maybe just another competitor??
Are they allowed to simply report a violation of property rights even if they are not the actual property owner themselves? So, could another seller simply report my listing and claim it's a violation? Or does ebay make sure that it's a report from a verified company only?

2) I noticed that about over 100 other listings of this product was also on ebay and most of them looked like from people just like me (non-company sellers). Why aren't those removed? Are only a select few chosen at random? Was I just unlucky to be the one out of 100+ listings to get chosen for listing violation?

3) I won't relist just to be safe, but I guess I should ask anyways, can I re-list it eventually later on (after a month or two)?

4) I don't see in my seller dashboard of performance ratings if these things are marked on my account or how many of these "warnings" I get before they might suspend/restrict/ban your account. Does anyone know how many chances you get and how long does this strike (if it even is a strike) stays on your record?

This is a first, so I'd like to learn as much as I can.
Thanks.

Just an update. I called the actual company's number and spoke to a representative and asked if anyone had that email that I was sent by ebay who filed the violation of my listing. They said NO. Nobody's name matches and the email provider itself is also different from what the company uses. So.......it looks like this is a case of some random competitor just being a dick and filed my listing as a violation claiming to be the intellectual/property rights owner of this product which they are not. The actual company that makes this product denied it.

I guess people on ebay can make false reports. This is very disturbing. Good thing it wasn't a good selling item anyways. I was about to drop it.

Is there anyway to report this back to ebay to let them know this? It's not good to know that anyone can just claim to be the property owner of something to get your listings removed when it's perfectly legal.

oatmeal said:

Is there anyway to report this back to ebay to let them know this? It's not good to know that anyone can just claim to be the property owner of something to get your listings removed when it's perfectly legal.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be so sure that the canceling is due to fraud from a competitor. Sometimes a company has exclusive rights to sell something in a country. For example I know that there is a company that has exclusive rights to sell Tory Burch products in Korea. If you were selling Tory Buch products on eBay Korea, that company would take you down, not Tory Burch. And most Tory Burch employees wouldn't know anything about it if you called them.

And don't relist things that they took down. It will result in temporary or permanent account ban.

that email is what veros automated system sends you when it removes stuff.

I'm fairly confident theres some form of setup where ebay associates and makes agreements with various companies, and once the paperwork is signed their items get applied to the list of VERO stuff, thus when it catches someone selling them it auto-attacks and says the company that makes the product "told them to"

it would be impossible for the company to have someone hired to just sit there and attack ebayers selling their stuff, there'd either be too much or too little work to warrant it.

if you used stock pictures you could try re-upping with home taken pictures, I've had a few issues becuase I used stock images that instantly got fixed when i changed. Thing is if you re-up items that have been removed once before you may get suspended for it if this theory is wrong, so do it at your own risk

Just to follow up: I always take my own screen shot of the item I'm selling. I don't download a stock photo from the web. I screen shot it, edit it the way I want it and rename it, so I doubt it's the photo that red flagged it.

I also sold other products from the same company but those ones didn't get taken down. So it's very weird that this one which is simply a different style (ie, apple flavor or whatnot), was flagged.

I never did find out if this was a legit claim or if it was just some other competitor flagging it and claiming it was a copyright infringement etc.

To this day, I still see other people selling the exact same product and it does on for 10,20 + pages i stopped looking.