Wonder if ebay will ever be sued

moursund

Because of ebay's stance to the effect of "it isn't our responsibility if crooks are cheating and stealing using ebay auctions; we just provide a medium for sellers and buyers to reach each other", and (in my opinion) ebay's apparent lack of concern about fraud, I wonder if a huge class-action lawsuit will ever be filed against them.

am

ritchiewan

Yep

Yep

wallstreetman

Im sure they have been sued many times already!

DCAMFranklin

Wouldn't it be a nice if we lived in a world where the first option was required mediation and we could tell the maggot trial lawyers to go get real employment?

I'm with Wallstreetman. I'm sure they have been sued many, many times.

merz2

They have been sued.The judge agreed with them.I don't know why though.

relayer

Actually with the aquisition of PayPal, it would be nice to get a class action combined from everybody screwed by either ebay or PayPal

Libertad

Class action suits would encourage attorneys to breed, wouldn't it?

Say for an exercise, Sally collects antique widgets. Sally asks Dick if he knows where she might find one? Dick mentions he knows of one for sale, and directs Sally to find it.
The widget is not an antique. Does Sally get to sue Dick for being responsible for the monetary loss ? If Dick sent Sally to eBay? Or a pawn shop?

Caveat emptor rules.

coppercoins

I think that depends on what day of the week it is, what moon phase we are in, and whether Jupiter is a rising or setting planet. Of course if it's before the third Sunday after the solstice and Venus is north of the equator and more than 30 degrees off of the zenith, the rules are completely reversed, only if it's a Tuesday.

moursund

In general, I'm not in great favor of class action lawsuits. I just am not satisfied with ebay's attitude toward fraud, and am speculating about what would change it.

It doesn't look like there will be an "ebay alternative" which offers all the advantages of ebay, but also protects customers better.

If lawsuit pressure and/or legal ruling caused ebay to significantly change its policies and practices (e.g. better background checks, some way to keep NARUd clients from simply joining under a new name, better policing and enforcing of anti-shilling rules, etc), this would presumably result in higher ebay costs, and potentially loss of ebay revenue (as they stop "looking the other way" to power seller infractions). Would this result in higher ebay fees for all auctions? Would it be worth it?

What if ebay tried to start charging, say, 1% fee to BUYERS for each auction won? When you set up an ebay account, you had to establish a paypal account balance, and you couldn't bid on an aution unless your balance would cover the (non-refundable) fee (which would automatically be charged if you won the auction). Would buyers stand for this?

am

robertpr

Sorry people, but suing eBay for fraud conducted over their site is like suing the telephone company because they let fraud occur via their phone lines.

silverandvinyl

I think they will or could be sued under the Federal Racketeering Law.I'm not sure about E-Bay but,I believe a seller that sells a product that he or she knows it's a phony or it's not as it was described.This would come under the fraud guidelines of the Federal Govt.I think if anyone wanted to push this all they would have to do is call the department that handles these cases. I could be wrong.

silverandvinyl

Another thing: All of the major auction houses are responsible for any phony items that are sold through their auction houses.Regardless of what E-bay thinks they are an auction house and should come under the same guide lines.

Conder101

<< <i>: All of the major auction houses are responsible for any phony items that are sold through their auction houses.Regardless of what E-bay thinks they are an auction house and should come under the same guide lines. >>



The problem is eBay is NOT an auction house. Yes the auction houses are responsible for phony items in their auctions but that is because the auction houses have taken physical possesion of the items, have examined them, have created the descriptions, produced the catalogs and are providing the assurances that the items are real. the auction houses are making the representation and are therefor responsible.

Ebay on the other hand is like a convention center where thousands of flea market dealers each have their own booths where each of the dealers is running his own little auctions. Ebay is providing the location, advertising, and "secretarial help" (The software that keeps trak of the bids and send out the notices) but does not create the listings or describe the items and does not do the collection sevices. they can not realy be held responsible if one of the dealers renting a space from them cheats someone with a fake since they had nothing to do with the actual sale.

Now yes eBay does have rules of conduct which would alow them to throw a dealer selling fakes out but it isn't easy to weed such dealer out even if you want to. the whole size of the operation makes it practically impossible. Lets say that ebay is right about the fraud rate that is occuring. (Many people say it is much higher than that but I want to demonstrate what happens even with the very low numbers.) Now eBay tends to have around 4 million auctions running a week of which eBay says there is a .1% fraud rate. That is 4,000 fraud complaints a week, or close to 600 per day, 25 per hour, or 1 every two minutes 24/7. Now the problem is you don't want to take punitive action just on the basis of a complaint so an investigation into the charges is needed and that takes time. Plus if the complaint is one of misrepresentation of an item you have to have someone who is an expert or at least very knowledgeable in the field to do the investigation. But there a thousands of catagories of items up for sale on eBay. Even just for coins you might need a dozen or more experts for all of the different fields that are covered. After all how many of us here could pass judgement that a Scottish communion token was a fake? The attribution on that large cent was wrong, that (name your coin here) was clearly a MS-65 and not a MS-66 and thousands of variations on this theme. And that is just in coins! What about fake gemstones, hummels, autographs you name it. You would need a staff of tens of thousands of experts and even then you are asking them to render opinions on things they can't actually examine.

Then there are the complaints of shills, non payment, not receiving items, etc. All should be investigated but they are still coming in at a rate of 1 every two minutes. Spend 10 minutes investigating one complaint and come back to find five more waiting. And it is just getting worse over time. So even if you can provide all the documentation that a fraud is occuring the chances of resources being seriously applied to it is small. So probably most compalints are given lip service and shoved under the rug. It is like expecting the police to catch every speeder and or drunk driver on the highways. It can't be done so the best we can do is grab the few we can and hope our flashing lights scare the rest into behaving.

Sorry for the rant but I get frustrated sometimes at the number of people who whine because they can't have things the way they think they should be, and if they just thought about it awhile should realize that what they want is not possible.

gemseeker

Condor101 - I second many of your statements. Ebay, IMHO, is nothing more than a mail order flea market. Nothing more and nothing less.

Mikey

I also agree with Condor. ebay has tapped into a huge market and is quite successful at it. In my opinion, there are no grounds for winning a lawsuit.

JJacks

I just saw this thread and also wanted to mention that I agree with Condor. It would take a massive division at ebay to investigate every possible fraud. And certainly newspapers will post ads without ever checking on the people who list them, etc, etc.

JJacks