eBay restricting branded goods sale in India, Promoting grey market?

October 1st, 2008 by Annkur

eBay India seems to love unbranded goods. Our sources tell us that they have recently banned sale of Kingston, Transcend and Sandisk products for 30 days. This means any one trying to upload these listings faces an error:

“In order to help maintain a safe trading environment, selling limits are occasionally placed on listings. At this time, you are limited as to the listing of certain branded items. Please do not attempt to relist this item for 30 days.”

Accorsing to info placed on OSAI – Online Sellers Association on India forums even reputed powersellers are facing this issue. Also quoted is a mail from eBay CS confirming that this is a Site Wide restriction. If true this is really sad and will promote unbranded goods, though these brands are still live on the site; if sellers are not able to upload new listings they will dry up pretty soon.

Here is the response quoted from the eBay CS:

“I understand that your items are authentic, however, it is important to note that the restriction you encountered was not directed specifically to your account but rather a site-wide initiative that we’ve implemented. As such, all sellers that regularly sell brand-name items on our site were faced with this restriction at one time or another.”

OSAI is a closed group of sellers http://groups.google.co.in/group/OSAI (access by invitation only)