Cracking down on pandemic profiteering

Fuelled by fear and uncertainty, consumers picked supermarket shelves clean at Covid-19’s outset. The panic-buying led to opportunistic sellers taking to eBay to profiteer. This led to eBay’s press office being inundated with media enquiries. eBay’s in-house comms team, in partnership with Launch, set out to deal with this rapid increase in media coverage. We embarked on a stakeholder management campaign and engaged proactively to land the message of our block and removal statistics across national press. eBay was recognised by the Competition and Markets Agency and in the Prime Minister’s press conference for its efforts to prevent price gouging.