Ebay & Gambling Commission

[badpenny]

I agree Never say never but after more than 20 years chasing this one around the mulberry bush and always ending up in exactly the same place every time, I fear TF we are unlikely to get better news from the group who met The Commission.
Not only has it taken that group several months to circulate the minutes of that meeting which they initially suggested would be out in a fortnight.
But .......
Even if they were to have a brainstorm of common sense and recommend exemption for our machines then that finding would go to Rt Hon Hugh Robertson MP Minister for Sport and Tourism who clearly says in coppinpr's letter above....

I consider that pursuing such an exemption would not be in the public's best interest ........ I do not intend to bring forward changes in the legislation to exempt historic gambling machines.

[pennymachines]

Not only has it taken that group several months to circulate the minutes of that meeting which they initially suggested would be out in a fortnight.

Actually, we had to wait several months for the Commission to send the minutes (apparently due to an administrative error). They contain a few inaccuracies and omissions which await correction. Then our group needs to compose a response.

If members are interested, I will see if it's in order to publish the full minutes here (redacting names as appropriate). However, I think Coin Op's post on the previous page provides a concise and accurate summary of what was actually discussed.

(I've moved and merged the two long threads "Ebay & Gambling Commission" and "Important message please read" here to the Open Forum).

[marktol]

Topic merged - Site Admin.

There are currently 2 Hi Tops on ebay at the moment and I was amused earlier when I noticed they both seem to share some identical text. I seem to recall some time ago a debate about if people would just make up their own permit numbers just to satisfy the ebay police. Without of course jumping to conclusions, it would appear this may be the case...

First Item listed:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181245744617? ... 1438.l2649

PERMISSION AS BEEN OBTAINED UNDER PERMIT NO.1000089

Second Item recently listed:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/350911708101? ... 1438.l2649

PERMISSION AS BEEN OBTAINED UNDER PERMIT NO.1000090

Notice the text still contains the same typo - looks very much like a copy and paste to me...

[aristomatic]

The Mills Bellomatic guy started his listing with no mention of a permit, then added the line... 'I do have a permit, etc.', then added the line.... 'permit number 90, etc.'.

Life is full of surprises though... so he may well have a permit. Whether it's for fishing, parking or selling a gaming machine, only time will tell and the seller will be hoping he's caught a whopping big buyer with a bag full of cash for his machine before the ebay detectives are on his individual case...........

GP.

[jimmycowman]

Good on him. Sounds a good plan... this permit thing is a farce.

[coppinpr]

As we know, it's not actually ebay who find the machines, but a third party with a vested interest reporting them to ebay. I suspect that our detective friend reports these machines but ebay don't remove them because they say there is a permit - his word against the sellers. Ebay would simply say, "looks good to us, legal as far as we know and that's all we are interested in."
Of course the seller may well be using a selling template, in which case most of the input on the ad would be the same. He could have bought the legal two permits per year at the same time (89 and 90).

[marktol]

Different sellers Paul.

I also don't think it's just a mischievous person at play either, as I've had machines removed from ebay before they have become publicly viewable.

There are some things (based on keywords in the title) that seem to trigger a manual review by someone at ebay before it's put live. You can tell if you're going to get this treatment, as you get the yellow/red box come up warning you about selling things you shouldn't, if you use a browser on your PC to list and not a mobile device. It usually takes up to 4 hours for them to appear active when this happens.

Previously, when I tired listing a machine, ebay made me email a copy of my permit to them - I suspect that's because I had several 'listing policy breaches' on my account already, but these two appear to be one-off sellers.

I had argued with them that I didn't want to list the permit number publicly (especially as they had a copy of the permit) because you can look up the personal details of the permit owner on the Gambling Commission's website using the number. I'm happy to share my address with someone who has purchased something and I'm probably not a difficult person to track down anyway, but I'd rather not give the information out on a plate to the world, if I can avoid it.

[jonesthegarage]

I bid on something this morning and ebay offered me a link to the Gambling Commission website for me to check whether the vendor had a licence or not. Needless to say I didn't follow it in the grounds of not giving a flying f... if he had one or not.

Anyway, I placed bid and was informed by ebay 3 hours later that listing had been removed.

the key I guess is to just not get too excited about the possibility of obtaining the machine until it's in your hands.

[treefrog]

Forget about ebay, Auctions are the way forward as below Hi Top that made £660 about a week ago....even with high commission still a good return and no legal quibble......

[coppinpr]

Auctions are the way forward as below Hi Top that made £660 about a week ago....even with high commission still a good return and no legal quibble...

I agree, but in this particular case from the sellers view only, would have cost the buyer over £700 to walk away with this machine,which it is not worth.
as to the legal quibble I think we discussed before that in many cases (not all) it is not actually legal to sell machines at auction for the same reasons as its not on ebay, it is however quite legal to buy them. although not legal to use them in certain ways >>>>> oh bugger,here we go again