Re: There's a simple solution
> Wow, that's pretty bad, I'm glad things don't work like that around here. A "restocking fee" is illegal, as simple as that
Fair enough, round here (the UK), its pretty common, especially on Ebay. The logic being that if the item is faulty or not as described, the seller is at fault and has to absorb the cost of shipping the item back and restocking it.
However, if you just "change your mind", and there is nothing wrong with the item, then it is not the sellers fault, and you have to pay the return shipping and the restocking costs of the seller.
> A shop is allowed to have their products placed in the webshop of the big retailer, but the retailer must show that it's actually a third party that's selling the product. It's not possible for a small shop to resell an item as if it's from a big retailer and just apply a markup (certainly not without informing customers).
This is a bit different. What I think people do, is create the ebay shop, then just scrape the top 20 most popular items off amazon, list them on ebay with 30% markup, and if someone buys it, they just order it from their amazon account for 30% less, ship it as a gift (which allows different delivery address to purchase address, and also does not come with invoice, so you don't know how much they paid for it), and pocket the difference as profit.
It's basic arbitrage. I guess it is a way to catch out people who don't price-check across Amazon/Ebay, but also catches out people like myself that may be willing to pay more specifically not to buy from Amazon.
In theory, with APIs at both ends, you could well automate this, and have it just bring in money every so often, which is what I suspect they do.
> Seems to me there's a lot of work to be done in regards to consumer, as well as worker protection in your neck of the woods.
I guess so, I don't know what kind of protections exist outside of the where I am, but we do have distance selling rules here and some protection.
Paying more for an item is not illegal here though, and I am not even sure how you could protect against that. People are allowed to resell new items for more money, and if someone pays that price it's a sale.
If I bought something at my local shop, and listed it online for 30% more, and someone bought it, how would that be different?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
