Daniel Spisak on Technology

So after keeping a watchful eye on PS3 pre-order sales on eBay thanks to this handy link I noticed that pre-orders were being stopped from becoming delisted by eBay in the past few days. Apparently eBay has come up with a special set of rules that applies to the sellers of the consoles only, and not to the buyers. This seems like an attempt to protect the buyers from getting scammed I guess but it also means that people who only casually use eBay are going to be screwed out of trying to sell their pre-sale order on eBay until they have the actual console in their grubby hands on 11/17. I haven’t been able to find an offical listing of this on eBay anywhere but a number of the live and unpulled auction have this information listed in them, check it out:

Sellers must have
1. I must have a Feedback of 50 or more.
2. My Feedback score must be 98% or above.
3. I may only list one system. I may list 1 PlayStation 3 and 1 Nintendo Wii with a photo of my pre-order receipt for each system.
4. I must accept PayPal as my only payment option.
5. I must include a photo of my receipt in the listing.
6. No Buy It Now will be allowed.
7. No one day listings will be allowed.

So if you’re an Average Joe who hasnt sold or bought enough stuff on eBay to have 50 feedback or more you have to sit on your hands and watch pre-sales going for $1700+ and up until you can list your non-pre-sale-actually-exists-in-your-hands PS3 unit on launch day. In addition to following the above rules all pre-sale auction have to follow the below rules as take from this page on eBay’s site:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/pre-sale.html

Pre-sale listings are those that describe items for sale that are not in the control or possession of the seller at the time of the listing. These listings generally consist of items that are sold in advance of a delivery date to the public.

eBay permits Pre-sale listings only on a limited basis. The seller must guarantee that the item will be available for shipping within 30 days from the date of purchase (i.e., the day the listing ends or the date the item is purchased from a store front listing). The seller must also clearly indicate within the listing the fact that the item is a pre-sale item with a delivery date that indicates the item will be shipped by the 30th day from the end date of the listing. Additionally, this text must be no less than the default font size of the eBay Sell-Your-Item form. Currently, the default font size is HTML font size 3.

Violations of this policy may result in a range of actions, including:

* Listing cancellation
* Limits on account privileges
* Account suspension
* Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
* Loss of PowerSeller status