Wow ... my first rant about nothing conected to paintballing.
eBay. What a crock of poop.
Firstly the warning (so you can skip any rhetoric I spew below).
DO NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE of eBays blatent entrapment scheme when they send you details of their FREE LISTING WEEKENDS. If you do, and you are now being warned, you may well run afoul of the predicament I find myself in.
I have used eBays online auction site very sporadicaly for the past 6 years or so. I am whats classed as a private seller, so can auction my pre-owned items online and make a small sum, which I can then fritter away on other useless junk. I was recently sent an email from eBay encouraging me to list as many items as I like, for FREE, presumably in an effort to get me using eBay again and for them to reap some fees off me should I sell some items.
Brilliant. I did just that - have a ton of old wargame figures (mis spent youth and all that) so proceeded to list them in single quantites, as you do. I listed about 120 items then gave up through sheer boredom, sat back and crossed my fingers that some would sell.
One day later I received an interesting email stating, I must now register myself as a Business seller or my account of long standing with a 100% track record would be basically shut down in 7 days. Why ? because I dared to take eBay at their word and list as many items as I wanted.
Apparently, and here is the warning, if you list over a certain number of items (varies according to source - I was told 100 by one of their so called support staff) eBay can and will class you as a business.
Ok, so what does that actually entail ? According to their ever-so-helpful staff all I need to do is click the 'upgrade account' button and I will be listed by eBay as a business seller and can continue to use their services. I asked how it would actually affect me as a private individual - the response ? "Not at all Sir, it just means you have access to a few more seller tools and you would be listed as a business and infact your search rankings would be better than they are now ... oh and you'll need a VAT number. Anything else I can help you with ? "
It seems there is a whole world of Poop connected to pressing that one upgrade button.
Firstly you will waive all your rights as a consumer when using that account and must abide by distance selling regulations, returns and refunds and loose certain consumer protections when buying items due you now operating as a business ...and frightenly will have your address displayed as a business registered address.
By having your address listed as a business premises, you suddenly find you must have and purchase a public liability insurance, you invalidate your home contents insurance and break the terms and agreements of any mortgage you have as you may not operate a business from home without prior agreement and other nasty leagle stuff having been completed. The home insurance part is quite priceless actually, because let's say you sell an old 14" CRT TV thats been knocking around for a few years via your 'business' on eBay. Now lets say you damage your new 52" Sony HD Plasma tv and try to make a claim. Your insurance company are quite within their rights to say " sorry sir, you once sold a tv on ebay so we can now class any other tv's at your business address as stock, which is not covered by your insurance. Have a nice life."
By registering as a business on eBay, you are now declaring you own / run a business to the world ... more specifically to our favorite man, the Tax man and his friends at the HMRC. Now you need to get yourself VAT registered or face a a possible tax investigation (somewhen in the future) and eBay should by law pass on business information to each countries tax department. yay ! So now you have to declare yourself as self employed and start completing tax returns and end of year return forms whilst at the same time working for someone else paying your NI and PAYE. It's a little world of joy eBay are creating for you isn't it ? Oh yeah, you now legally have to pay tax on any profits you make through your sales, which you cannot offset against any purchase reciepts because you don't have reciepts from 15 years ago for the item you bought or were given.
So eBay, upholders of consumer rights and moral protectors of all thing auctiony on one hand ask you to use their services and sell your unwanted items and on the other hand try to bully you into registering as a business. Of course, all the while holding their hands up and saying - "“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.", roughly translated as, "We know we have private seller's who are really registered business' who break our T&C's so they can avoid business regulations and paying their tax, but we can't be arsed to flush them out, so instead it's much easier for us to arbitrarily decide that joe blogs 'should' be a business and record high figures in banning shady dealers and making it look like we really care about making the internet a safer place". Cobblers.
I've spoken to 2 eBay reps, have several e-mails and also spoke to HMRC. eBay will not change their decision once made and HMRC really don't care for the extra work and hassle eBay seem to want to create for them.
Amazingly, the best bit of advice I received was from one of their operatives who said, "Well, sorry that you may have to close your account ... but you can always make a new one and list less ?". Eh ? That's a fairly dumb and hypocitical stance to take, no ? Ban me because I suddenly list too many items and call me business but advise me to list the same amount of items, just spread them over a few accounts.
/Discuss.
eBay. What a crock of poop.
Firstly the warning (so you can skip any rhetoric I spew below).
DO NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE of eBays blatent entrapment scheme when they send you details of their FREE LISTING WEEKENDS. If you do, and you are now being warned, you may well run afoul of the predicament I find myself in.
I have used eBays online auction site very sporadicaly for the past 6 years or so. I am whats classed as a private seller, so can auction my pre-owned items online and make a small sum, which I can then fritter away on other useless junk. I was recently sent an email from eBay encouraging me to list as many items as I like, for FREE, presumably in an effort to get me using eBay again and for them to reap some fees off me should I sell some items.
Brilliant. I did just that - have a ton of old wargame figures (mis spent youth and all that) so proceeded to list them in single quantites, as you do. I listed about 120 items then gave up through sheer boredom, sat back and crossed my fingers that some would sell.
One day later I received an interesting email stating, I must now register myself as a Business seller or my account of long standing with a 100% track record would be basically shut down in 7 days. Why ? because I dared to take eBay at their word and list as many items as I wanted.
Apparently, and here is the warning, if you list over a certain number of items (varies according to source - I was told 100 by one of their so called support staff) eBay can and will class you as a business.
Ok, so what does that actually entail ? According to their ever-so-helpful staff all I need to do is click the 'upgrade account' button and I will be listed by eBay as a business seller and can continue to use their services. I asked how it would actually affect me as a private individual - the response ? "Not at all Sir, it just means you have access to a few more seller tools and you would be listed as a business and infact your search rankings would be better than they are now ... oh and you'll need a VAT number. Anything else I can help you with ? "
It seems there is a whole world of Poop connected to pressing that one upgrade button.
Firstly you will waive all your rights as a consumer when using that account and must abide by distance selling regulations, returns and refunds and loose certain consumer protections when buying items due you now operating as a business ...and frightenly will have your address displayed as a business registered address.
By having your address listed as a business premises, you suddenly find you must have and purchase a public liability insurance, you invalidate your home contents insurance and break the terms and agreements of any mortgage you have as you may not operate a business from home without prior agreement and other nasty leagle stuff having been completed. The home insurance part is quite priceless actually, because let's say you sell an old 14" CRT TV thats been knocking around for a few years via your 'business' on eBay. Now lets say you damage your new 52" Sony HD Plasma tv and try to make a claim. Your insurance company are quite within their rights to say " sorry sir, you once sold a tv on ebay so we can now class any other tv's at your business address as stock, which is not covered by your insurance. Have a nice life."
By registering as a business on eBay, you are now declaring you own / run a business to the world ... more specifically to our favorite man, the Tax man and his friends at the HMRC. Now you need to get yourself VAT registered or face a a possible tax investigation (somewhen in the future) and eBay should by law pass on business information to each countries tax department. yay ! So now you have to declare yourself as self employed and start completing tax returns and end of year return forms whilst at the same time working for someone else paying your NI and PAYE. It's a little world of joy eBay are creating for you isn't it ? Oh yeah, you now legally have to pay tax on any profits you make through your sales, which you cannot offset against any purchase reciepts because you don't have reciepts from 15 years ago for the item you bought or were given.
So eBay, upholders of consumer rights and moral protectors of all thing auctiony on one hand ask you to use their services and sell your unwanted items and on the other hand try to bully you into registering as a business. Of course, all the while holding their hands up and saying - "“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.", roughly translated as, "We know we have private seller's who are really registered business' who break our T&C's so they can avoid business regulations and paying their tax, but we can't be arsed to flush them out, so instead it's much easier for us to arbitrarily decide that joe blogs 'should' be a business and record high figures in banning shady dealers and making it look like we really care about making the internet a safer place". Cobblers.
I've spoken to 2 eBay reps, have several e-mails and also spoke to HMRC. eBay will not change their decision once made and HMRC really don't care for the extra work and hassle eBay seem to want to create for them.
Amazingly, the best bit of advice I received was from one of their operatives who said, "Well, sorry that you may have to close your account ... but you can always make a new one and list less ?". Eh ? That's a fairly dumb and hypocitical stance to take, no ? Ban me because I suddenly list too many items and call me business but advise me to list the same amount of items, just spread them over a few accounts.
/Discuss.
