eBay Seller Says Something Doesn't Smell Right

by: etectra

I frankly would not sell any bottles with perfume in them due to potential liability issues.

Perfumes have a shelf life and expire. Bad buyers just wanting the bottle can say the perfume is bad inside.

Some of the vintage perfumes have some nasty biological ingredients that were replaced with synthetic materials so you could be looking a witches brew of materials that could make someone ill or cause other physical harm if used.

If the contents of the jar are evaporating then its not sealed. I remember in elementary school back in the 1970s one of the teachers bringing in a antique sealed canning jar with pickles in that was over 100 years old and they looked like they were picked yesterday because the jar has remained 100% sealed all that time.

People also pay big money for sealed iPods. Yet the batteries in those iPods degrade over time regardless of wether they are used or not. So that sealed iPod is likely to have a battery that not longer functions as originally intended and you will need to hire someone to replace the battery.

"If eBay only allows people to sell bottles that are full or empty, then unscrupulous people with partially full bottles will be motivated to top them off with water, alcohol, or any old random perfume just to make the bottles appear full enough to list as "new."

The biggest crook on eBay is eBay itself yet you continue to use eBay - they have literally ripped consumers off for billions!

by: Rexford

Some perfumes have a shelf life of up to 10 years.  A collector might want the sealed bottle despite the age and evaporation of the contents.

by: Bethofvt

Most collectors of vintage perfumes have no intention or desire to use the perfume. They want to own vintage fragrances. The empty bottle is all many of them want, but many others prefer that some or all content be there. eBay should understand collecting by now. They used to be a site that wanted collectors as buyers but they seem to move farther away from that all the time.

by: Snapped

It is an unfortunate and frankly boneheaded reality that eBay excludes all sorts of perfectly marketable items across many categories because they ‘technically’ run contrary to listing policies and restrictions.

That’s because they don’t really care to incorporate all elements of potential diversity such items encompass.  Their myopic ‘visions’ of what constitutes a successful eCom marketplace is copied from others, and those are all retail based models.  Been that way ever since eBay decided to trash their success and declare themselves transformative, to appear trendy in their prospectus.

And now that they’ve relinquished any potential for human intelligence to assimilate such diversity, even as they continue to exclaim a desire to embrace …, er…RE-embrace it, yet nevertheless turned it all over to a robot to assess that is programmed with unadaptable decision tree logic, eBay is virtually impossible to penetrate with common sense.

In the example case, OP could simply list it as an (the) antique item it is, and specifically not a mass produced retail item, also note the seal, and thus describe it as full, BUT that being an antique MAY have lost some content to normal evaporation processes.  Big red letters.  This way you should avoid any bot scrutiny.  Because, as noted, they don’t do nuance.

Such also ought to be self evident in the photo, but if not, it may well be questioned, and thereby answered without alerting the cop bot logic overseer.  It is also not ‘technically’ a lie.  It’s full.  It’s only the degree of which is debatable, depending on one’s level of ‘optimism’, right?

If not questioned, it can certainly be specifically delineated to the purchaser, with them given the chance to fairly reconsider.  Which yes, is a disadvantage overall because SNAD might be argued if not clarified by pre-shipment communication, but hopefully the purchaser of such type item, as is usually true for any such niche buyer, would expect to encounter such an attribute one way or the other, and be ok with learning such later.  But SNAD is always a risk on eBay, because there doesn’t NEED to be anything justified by pesky fact.  

Evaporation loss ought to also be clearly and blatantly noted as potential for any such items in your general terms and conditions for sale for any such item.

Otherwise, because that is a LOT of what ought to be unnecessary tap dancing for the meager portions of meat one might earn, it becomes just like way too may other items that are perfectly marketable and profitable and desired, and nevertheless forfeit by eBay because they, as is all too typical, have no idea what they are doing, or ought to do, for this and similar circumstances.  OP would likely do much better elsewhere with it.  And if they have no alternate ideas, perhaps ask their clients where else they like to search besides the eBay who has trashed their niche in favor of mundane mass production.  

Which is the part that really stinks the place up now.