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RSGP: what can the disappearance of many of their third-party sellers bring to **bleep** and eBay?
Summary: boutikpro2.0 expresses concerns about the new European General Product Safety Regulation, which could lead to many listings disappearing on **bleep** and eBay starting December 13, 2024. The regulation’s requirements are seen as impossible to comply with for cultural items and collectibles, since it is difficult to provide the required information for each product. This could force many small businesses to shut down, while eBay risks losing substantial commissions. boutikpro2.0 asks the platforms to consider Article 51 of the regulation, which exempts certain products from these obligations, in order to avoid significant economic consequences.
On December 13, 2024, hundreds of thousands of listings for cultural items and collectibles will disappear from **bleep** and eBay, if the requirements these platforms choose to impose, or believe they must impose, on the sellers who use them, in order to comply with the new European General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), are actually enforced as they present them and are already putting them into practice.
These listings will disappear because it is impossible for their sellers to provide the new information being demanded, indiscriminately and without any distinction, for each item and product, whatever their type and nature, already for sale or listed in the future, new or used, and which, according to the interpretations that **bleep** and eBay have of this regulation, would be mandatory on December 13, 2024.
The original idea in Europe is to protect consumers by systematically making available, for each item/product they may buy:
- the name and contact details of the manufacturer/producer/publisher
- the name and contact details of a responsible person, whom they can contact if needed
- the document(s) relating to safe use
At first glance, this is commendable and relevant for the many items/products whose type and nature justify and allow it, although one might think that all the required information is already on their packaging, and that their placing on the market is already very strictly controlled and regulated.
It is completely absurd for cultural items, collectibles, and lots made up of several different items and products, whose nature justifies none of this and/or makes it impossible, and which may have been placed on the market decades ago (non-exhaustive list):
- DVDs, Blu-Rays, vinyl records or music CDs on which appear several company names with no contact details, possibly all identifiable as the “manufacturer” (do they still exist? And if so: which one of them is the “manufacturer” and what are its contact details?). On which sometimes no name appears at all (self-production by the artist). On which “a designated person responsible with contact details” is never mentioned. And for which no safety notice has ever been necessary or provided, because it is irrelevant, therefore unjustified and nonexistent.
- Books, magazines, documents for which, although the publisher and its contact details are generally indicated and provided it still exists or has not changed its name and address, none of the other required information exists and will never exist.
- Pins, postcards, religious images, religious objects, bookmarks, stamps, old photographs, keychains, antique dolls, old tools made decades ago or even longer and sometimes by their only user, works by artists and unique handcrafted objects on which there is no other possible identification than the possible signature of the creator, vintage or “obsolete” photographic and electronic devices, some sold non-working for parts, and whose manufacturers no longer exist...
- Different items sold in a lot.
Moreover, in order to be profitable and last, this type of business, which rarely has more than one copy of the same reference in stock, and no possibility of replenishment (items often rare and/or acquired in “blind” lots - without knowing the exact contents), requires a constantly considerable number of different listings, in the hope of selling regularly and enough of them. Because these items/products do not sell quickly and can remain unsold for years before finding a buyer. And because offering more and more listings increases the number of entry points to one’s catalog and boosts visibility.
So there are hundreds of companies in Europe, similar to mine, from sole traders to SMEs, that will cease operations because they are unable to continue selling their items and products.
So there are hundreds of thousands of euros in sales commissions that these sellers would have generated on their site, which **bleep** and eBay will be deprived of and no longer benefit from.
If all it takes is to read **bleep**’s communications and its responses to the confusion and distress expressed by the sellers who use this platform, to realize that it truly does not care and that, on the contrary, it seems to at least accept, if not want to intensify and profit from, the cleansing and impoverishment that this will cause.
Because **bleep**, unlike eBay, is first and foremost a seller itself. Like all other sellers, it buys items and products and offers them for sale on its site, in competition with other sellers.
**bleep** will only lose the commissions from sellers who cannot withstand the cleansing. Which in fact will mean fewer competitors for the most in-demand items and products, therefore the most bought, and thus the most profitable for it. The other items and products, the ones it does not sell itself, probably bring it little and their disappearance should have only a negligible impact for it.
There is therefore nothing to expect from **bleep**, except through the sole external pressure it seems to fear somewhat, that of warnings and fines from Europe.
As for eBay, which has nothing to sell and lives only from the commissions and fees generated by sales made on its site by sellers, a listing that is no longer present on the site will never bring it anything. The disappearance of these listings will also be a total loss for eBay.
eBay knows it. Of course. And yet, although its communication and responses reveal obvious embarrassment and evident nervousness, the measures it is putting in place, accompanied by threats in the event of non-compliance ("your listings will no longer be visible at all!"), seem to this day indisputable and their consequences considerably downplayed.
Misunderstanding, or denial, of the vital issue for a large number of sellers on their site, and therefore, at least in part, for it. Very surprising and worrying from a company of this importance, with this much experience, and such quality (in my view and based on my experience with it over the past 20 years).
Because for now, whoever one may speak to within eBay, it is hard to understand what they do not understand, in the description of this existential situation with no ambiguity whatsoever.
It is simple enough: as things stand, the measures put in place with immediate sanctions in the event of non-compliance cannot be complied with without communicating false information and without devoting time to anything else, for months or even longer depending on the number of listings in the seller’s catalog. Because false or true, this information can only be entered listing by listing (except for the rare ones that have the same manufacturer/producer/publisher).
Personally, like other sellers, I am unable to comply with these mandatory measures, because what is being asked of me does not exist, is not justified, and even if it did exist, would remain impossible in light of the reality of my business (thousands of distinct references already for sale and a contextual obligation to keep putting new ones up for sale). In my case, I would have to spend more than 900 hours on this alone before December 13, 2024.
I will not communicate false information and I will not interrupt my daily work for 900 hours. So I will not do it. And on December 13, 2024, if nothing changes by then, none of my listings will be available on **bleep** and on eBay.
What is not crystal clear and what is moderatable in this observation? Nothing.
And yet, here I am writing this new text. Rather than working.
Should I today keep listing new items of which I mostly have only one copy and will never have another, when I already know it may only be for just over two months of visibility, while it often takes several months for them to sell?
Should I today seize the stock-purchase opportunities being offered to me? What am I going to do with that hundred or so new CDs and DVDs and just as many new books, unsold from a cultural store in my region, which it had had no use for in years, and which I bought this very morning, on the day I am writing and sharing these lines with you? And should I really seize this unexpected and unlikely opportunity to buy next week those 15,000 used DVDs and CDs, a sizable collection from a private individual who wants to get rid of them, and which will take me at least 2 years to list them all?
I no longer know.
If I do, will I simply be throwing my money out the window, since as things stand, if nothing changes, I will not be able to resell them? And what will become of those new stocks, like the ones I already own and that are not yet listed (several thousand distinct references)?
I won’t even be able to resell the whole lot to a colleague, because if my business does not survive December 13, 2024, due to the very impossibility of listing these items and products, the same will be true for all the companies that might buy them from me to resell them, because on the same markets as mine, they too will be dead. There will be no one left to buy anything from me.
Yet the solution to this totally absurd and extremely damaging problem is incredibly simple and was anticipated and taken into account when this GPSR was drafted.
As the eBay platform itself states on its information pages for professional sellers:
“Article 51 of this regulation specifies that products first placed on the EU market before December 13, 2024 and compliant with the General Product Safety Directive (2001/95/EG) may continue to be sold without the information required by the GPSR having been added to their listings. This applies even if the manufacturer has ceased trading. For example, if you are selling a compliant product that was made available in the EU before the stated date, you do not need to add GPSR information, such as the manufacturer’s contact details, to your listing. Article 51 of the GPSR also applies if you are selling used products first placed on the EU market before December 13, 2024 and compliant with the General Product Safety Directive (2001/95/EG). For these products, you do not need to provide the information required by the GPSR in your listings.”
Simple and clear: all items and products placed on the market before December 13, 2024 that are already, by virtue of being on the market, obligatorily compliant with the previous regulations, whatever their date of sale (before, during, or after December 13, 2024), as soon as they have been placed on the market, therefore manufactured or published before that date, are naturally and logically exempt from the obligations created by the new GPSR.
It would therefore be enough for these platforms simply to ask sellers to indicate the year or period of manufacture/publication of the item/product when listing it, or to add it for those already listed if it is not already indicated, so that everything can proceed easily and calmly, and be in compliance with the GPSR on December 13, 2024 and thereafter.
Except that as of October 3, 2024, the day these lines are being written and shared, both on **bleep** and on eBay, the measures implemented do not take this Article 51 of the regulation into account, and impose on sellers an impossibility that Europe is not asking for, at any price.
How far and for what reasons are **bleep** and eBay willing to pay for it? The question is all the more relevant with regard to eBay because persisting down this path is, for it, like shooting itself in each foot, in the hands, and perhaps even in the head...
A cry from the heart, faced with the absurd, from a professional seller whose sales on **bleep** and eBay for more than 20 years have been the sole source of income, and who on December 13, 2024, risks losing everything despite having committed no wrongdoing or error.
Thank you for reading me and for widely sharing this warning cry, in order to perhaps help enforce and save the work and investment of hundreds of people in Europe.
Boutikprov2.0 "La Caverne à Loulou"
*miss-tigri*
Mentor2 years agohttps://communaute.ebay.fr/t5/Aide-entre-membres/RSGP-13-d%C3%A9cembre-2024-l-Europe-va-t-elle-tuer-mon-entreprise/td-p/2948834
https://communaute.ebay.fr/t5/Aide-entre-membres/RSGP-l-Europe-va-t-elle-tuer-des-centaines-d-entreprise/td-p/2949182
All sales platforms are affected
https://www.economie.gouv.fr/dgccrf/nouveau-reglement-sur-la-securite-generale-des-produits-webinaire-gratuit-de-la-commission