AN EBAY seller has revealed how her $150,000-a-year business was shut down by the reselling giant – after she sold an “illegal” antique online.
Cassie LaBelle, who sells mostly antiques on eBay, revealed how her platform was shut down without warning over a 140-year-old “pill press” she put online.
Cassie LaBelle had her eBay account shut down[/caption]
The antique pill press Cassie sold online which resulted in the ban[/caption]
Speaking from her home in Aurora, Colorado, Cassie told The U.S. Sun how she had been selling items on eBay for some 20 years as a side hustle, before making it her full-time profession in 2017.
Last year, she made gross profits of close to $150,000, and she estimates she has made eBay more than $100,000 over the years.
But her decades-long partnership with the website came to an abrupt end recently when her account was shut down and with it her livelihood.
Picking up small items from flea markets and yard sales has been a “childhood passion” of Cassie’s, and over the years, she’s sought out quirky trinkets, such as a 1970s life-size statue of Ronald MacDonald from Japan and a digital voice recorder used by ghost hunters to pick up “signals” from the other realm.
In July, she went to an estate sale and picked up a number of antiques.
The sale included several old apothecary items from the 19th century, including a pill press from the 1890s.
Not thinking of any ties to illegal drugs, Cassie listed the item on her eBay account and eventually sold it for just over $250 plus postage and packaging.
A few days later, she received a form letter from eBay.
“There are lots of eBay policies and when you’re an ‘everything seller,’ which is what eBay encourages, you’re going to find stuff that hit some policy you never even thought of,” Cassie said.
“Usually, they’ll send you a warning and tell you, hey, this isn’t okay to sell. Don’t sell it again.
“And if you sell it again, obviously they’ll start suspending your account.”
As she had already sold the item, Cassie ignored the letter but made a mental note that she wouldn’t sell any item like that again.
“A few weeks after that, I get another message saying that my account was suspended for a week for multiple violations of their drug pill and press policy,” she said.
“My heart stops. I think somebody made a mistake because I didn’t do this again.”
After calling eBay and eventually getting through to customer support, Cassie was told that she was supposed to have been punished more harshly the first time around, so she was being penalized again.
Cassie took the punishment, hoping that would be the end of her issues.
But then in late September, Cassie says her account was completely shut down.
“They pulled all my listings, they froze my accounts, and they said it was for repeated violations of this policy.”
EBAY’S STATEMENT
AN eBay spokesperson told The U.S. Sun,
“Maintaining a safe and trusted marketplace for our global community of sellers and buyers is a fundamental principle of our business. eBay is proud of its well-recognized, proactive, and voluntary efforts to remove products that could be used for counterfeit pills – including dies, molds, and pill presses—and has zero tolerance for illegal activity on its platform. In this case, involving the sale of an antique press, we have been in touch with the seller and have reinstated their account.”
Cassie is still stunned that she is unable to make her living on eBay as she has done for years, after an “honest mistake” of selling the banned item.
“It’s from the 1890s,” Cassie fumed. “I’ve had multiple people who are in pharmaceuticals say that this cannot make drugs in the year 2024.
“It is not a thing that can do harm to anyone.”
I sold something that could not do any harm and lost my livelihood over it.
Cassie LaBelle
Cassie kept chasing eBay, spending weeks trying to get the company to review her appeal.
When they denied it this week, she took to X to share her story.
“I was hoping that rattling some cages on social media would make the right people listen to me,” she said.
“I understand that they want to prevent illegal equipment from getting into the wrong hands, and I am all for that.
“But this is clearly a mistake. I sold something that could not do any harm and lost my livelihood over it.”
She called on eBay to “stop relying on AI” to make these decisions.
“They need to treat us like business partners and not like disposable pawns.”
The U.S. Sun has been to eBay for comment.
A spokesperson said that the company had now reinstated Cassie’s account, but reiterated that eBay has “zero tolerance” for the selling of anything that could be used to make counterfeit pills.
Cassie made more than $150,000 last year in gross profits on eBay[/caption]
Cassie had sold items on eBay for almost 20 years[/caption]
