New Year, Same Tricks: eBay's Shady Strikethrough Discounts Persist In 2025
The new year is typically a time for reflection, resolutions to "do better" and turning over new leaves, but unfortunately eBay just can't seem to kick their years long addiction to shady strikethrough pricing and fake discounts.
This week, eBay is promoting an "extra" 20% off select tech, home and garden, fashion, refurbished items and more with code NEWYEAR20 to kick off 2025.
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As usual, the terms and conditions come with a laundry list of "events" for qualifying items, indicating the discount is likely being funded at least in part by participating sellers.
However many of these sellers have special agreements with eBay to participate in Daily Deals and other promotional programs. With those deals, eBay will often subsidize part of the discount being offered and the terms are often protected with non-disclosure agreements, so it's difficult to say exactly where funding for these discounts is coming from.
Participation in these sale events also often requires agreeing to confusing terms which may cause the seller to pay full Final Value Fees on the pre-discount amount and allow eBay to count the full price without discount in their Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) calculations on earnings reports.
Liz Morton
Also as usual, fake strikethrough pricing to present the false appearance of deeper discounts is rampant.
For example, this Total Gym APEX G5 shows a current price of $499.99, supposedly 53% off of the list price of $1,059.99 - plus the extra 20% off coupon brings it down to $399.99.
Total Gym
However, the sales history for this item shows it has not been anywhere near that list price in the last 3 months and in fact was actually sold for $427.49 as recently as December 15th.
This Hewlett Packard Victus Gaming Laptop is listed at a current price of $899.99, supposedly 5% off the list price of $949.99, with the extra 20% taking it to $719.99.
Hewlett Packard
The sales history shows you could have purchased it cheaper without a discount in November and December when it was consistently priced at $649.99.
And this DEWALT Cordless 4-Tool Combo Kit is at $459, supposedly 37% off list price of $733.99 plus the extra 20% brings it down to $367.20.
DEWALT
But the item history shows once again it has not been anywhere close to the list price in the last 3 months and you could have purchased it for less without a discount on December 3rd when it was $354.99.
This strikethrough price manipulation is nothing new on eBay of course - it is absolutely rampant on the platform and eBay willingly turns a blind eye.
In fact, rather than taking action to combat these consumer harming business practices, eBay has actually made a concerted effort to mask and enable them by removing the link to sold history from the View Item page in 2023, making it harder to determine if "deals" on the site actually represent legitimate savings.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
eBay no longer links to the sales history directly, but it can still be found with a bit of a workaround - for now.
If you use the URL https://www.ebay.com/bin/purchaseHistory?item=xxxxx and replace the xs with the specific item number of the listing you want to view, you can still access the sold history, but you have to be logged in to an eBay account to see it.
eBay's corporate Business Ethics policy has a whole section on "avoiding conflicts of interest" and "acting with integrity" that would seem to apply here, not to mention the section about advertising honestly and not making false or misleading claims.
Their Code of Business Conduct and Ethics for Third Parties also makes it clear they expect companies with which they do business or have agreements to follow ethical guidelines as well.
Perhaps Chief Risk & Compliance Officer Ryan Jones, Chief Ethics Officer Aaron Johnson and Chief Legal Officer Samantha Wellington should look into the longstanding serious conflicts of interest and unethical behavior by both eBay and the sellers who continue to flout the FTC's very clear guidance that shows misleading strikethrough pricing is considered a deceptive business practice.
Amazon has faced class action lawsuits and possible FTC action for allegedly using fake strikethrough pricing to present false Prime Exclusive discounts to consumers.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
But strangely, eBay has not faced similar scrutiny, which is unfortunate because it appears the only thing that will stop this practice is regulatory enforcement, like in Australia where eBay was forced to introduce a comparative pricing policy to curb these misleading strikethrough pricing claims.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
Consequences for violating the eBay Australia Comparative Pricing policy can be stiff:
eBay may, in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with the terms of the User Agreement, suspend or terminate a seller's account, or impose other consequences (such as removal of eBay Top Rated seller status at an account level) if you fail to provide substantiation, or if eBay or a regulatory body determines that the comparative price is false or otherwise misleading or deceptive.
It's clear that eBay absolutely can set policies and take action to make sure sellers are not manipulating strike through pricing and misleading buyers, but they simply choose not to do so unless outside pressure forces them to do so.
Unfortunately, eBay has shown time and time again that consumers cannot rely on them to simply do the right thing. As long as eBay and these sellers are allowed to get away with it, consumers will continue to be harmed by these deceptive discount promotions.
It's time for the FTC to get serious about protecting consumers from misleading discount offers and holding marketplaces accountable for the false advertising they allow to proliferate on their platforms.
If you see fake discounts being presented on eBay or anywhere else, here's how you can report it:
Do you trust that you are getting a fair deal when you shop on eBay? Let us know in the comments below!
