New seller asking for advice on kitchen knives

[Cookshop]

Hi all

We are a bricks and mortar cookshop based In the midlands area and we've had a website and eBay shop for nearly 6 years.

I've recently joined eBid to help with falling sales and have joined as a seller+. Have only listed one item so far just to see how things work. We are a specialist kitchen knife retailer and wanted to list knives on eBid but it seems they have followed eBay by banning kitchen knives although this isnt too clear to me what is and isn't allowed as I've read a few forum posts saying bread knives are allowed.

I would have emailed eBid directly to ask direct questions but the FAQ's suggest posting in the forums before emailing them.

Can I list knife block sets? These are professional kitchen knives ranging between around £200 - £1000 not the sort you'd buy from Argos etc.

What individual knives can I list? Cooks, carving, filleting, boning, utility, paring, bread, tomato, sausage, salami etc.

I didn't want to spend time listing anything that maybe deleted hence why I'm trying to find out the facts first.

I appreciate any help and advice.

Thanks

Martin

[cornishmaid1961]

Hi Martin, Welcome to eBid.

I've always avoided selling kitchen knives here as it says on the banned list :- All Knives, swords and machetes and you have to have proof of age to be able to buy them in a normal high street shop. However I see there are some kitchen knives listed now which haven't been taken down.
I would email support@ebid.net in the morning just to double check what is allowed these days. You will be sent a ticket number first and then get a reply soon afterwards. Support on eBid is very good.

Can you post back here when you have got a reply ? I would be interested to know what the policy is now.

[Cookshop]

Hi,

Thanks for the welcome.

I will contact the email you suggested and hopefully they will respond. I was just trying to follow their rules being a newbie. Although my first listing has already been deleted so not a good start. I only copied and pasted a listing from one of our eBay listings but it seems eBid do not want buyers to know any of the sellers contact details, email and phone number for info or advice.

As regard to selling knives, there are guidelines that we have to follow in order to sell these via our website so its not the law that eBay and eBid have used to ban the sale of knives from their sites. It was the Watchdog programme that started all this 3 or 4 years ago. eBay decided to ban the listing of knives on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie which was ludicrous because the knives that were featured on the Watchdog programme that caused all this were bought from ebay.com which I think was from America and not the UK. They did not stop this.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

[cornishmaid1961]

You are welcome.

Your buyer will get your email details when a listing finishes.
While the listing is still live they can ask you a question, which is displayed on the listing itself, and you can answer them in the message box provided.

I think it is probably very hard for the site owners to police a large auction site with many sellers and lots of different nationalities and I expect that is why they did a blanket ban at the time. eBid doesn't have a huge number of staff like the other side. It's a bit different on a website where you are just responsible for following the guidelines yourself and no other people are involved.

I hope you will be happy here with us and still have other things to list even if the knives are not allowed.

[suesjools]

Good luck, hope you'll be allowed to list your kitchen knives. I'd always read the policy as knives as weaponry not OK, knives as kitchen utensils OK, but I could be wrong, I frequently am. Do let us know what support says.

Oh and welcome to eBid.

Best wishes for many sales to all,