Not 'allowed' to buy cutlery on Ebay

[Tiredallthetimeneedsleep]

I'm 50 this year. Not owned a credit card
For around 10 years now. Went to try and bid on a Viners cutlery set on eBay but was unable to do this until I'd registered a credit card to prove I was over 18 due to the set containing knives.. eBay Cust service says the seller has set this so they were unable to help and ri contact seller. Seller said to contact eBay. Upshot I couldn't bid on the bloody cutlery . Surely the fact that I'd been an eBay customer for 20 should've helped. I could've bought from elsewhere but the particular one I need ( to top up my existing set was around £6 plus p&p on eBay

Those are the rules the seller has set so you can't buy it.

Was it a business seller? It's illegal to sell knives to people under 18 in the UK, even if it's cutlery.

They are just following the law.

(Caveat to say the law is slightly different in Scotland, cutlery and kitchen knives can be bought at 16)

If only there was somewhere you could easily obtain cutlery in person.

There are strict rules around knife sales so that was their way of ensuring it. It's just one of those things

No advice about eBay sorry, but try Vinted- I recently got some Viners cutlery there. There's quite a lot.

I believe it's illegal to sell knives to under 18s in the UK. I get that a Viners table knife isn't much of a weapon and your eBay history makes it unlikely you'd be under 18, but for a large selling platform, administering that kind of nuanced approach would be a logistical nightmare and they have to be able to demonstrate they are following the law.

YABU, you can't expect them to bend their rules on selling knives which they've set up to comply with the law.

Rules exist for a reason. Out of the millions of people in our society, sometimes certain rules don't quite apply, but when you live in a society of millions, you have to apply the rules to everyone otherwise it's chaos.

(see also "my child works hard and isn't disruptive, so why do they have to wear their school uniform correctly same as everyone else")

If a BIN and still available at £6 I would ask a friend to buy it then reimburse them.

I ordered some scissors and various bits through Dunelm website. Went to collect and they'd been "put in a different place because of the safety issues" and couldn't be located. Told to come back the next day when they might have found the parcel. I was literally in the shop, so I just bought a pair there. What a huge waste of delivery and someone parceling it up?! I assumed they'd see if they had stock at the store first!

YABU. The option to get around this was to register a credit card. You don’t have one, so there is no option. Hard luck.

Go on The Saleroom, get one at a proper auction