Buyer relisted with my images and text verbatim... should I care?

airplanenut

I'm torn over whether I should care or not... just sold a coin on eBay that ended last Sunday. Tonight it's been listed by the buyer--my images (hosted by eBay, not hotlinked from my site) and my description word for word. The coin's worth a few hundred dollars, and it wasn't terribly easy to photograph to get really accurate images. Should I even email the seller and say something, or pretend I never saw it?

ER

If it were me in this case, I wouldn't care.

mirabela

If it were me I wouldn't care much, but I understand you have invested quite a bit of time and expense in your photography in particular, and as such it is a service of value. You'd have grounds to get his auction shut down, should you care to. I can understand your annoyance.

Having said that, I'm puzzled why he would do that -- figuring that the net expenses of selling via ebay come to at least 7 or 8%, he'd have to sell the coin for 20% more than he bought it for to make it worth doing what he's doing. Why should he expect it to sell for more, given the same description & pics? Unless he's selling it at a fixed price that much above the closing price?

airplanenut

His BIN is about $15 over what he paid...

Trinketts

Well Jeremy it sounds like he is going to lose money on the deal... If it's a few hundred, talking 200-400 range, the listing fee was between 4-5 dollars.. and the end of auction fees will be at least 7-10 dollars. And if they pay with paypal he is out even more money. I wouldn't worry with it.

Boom

Always AT LEAST two ways of looking at this. He's probably figured he can never match your skills ( and he's right) and with that, since he's bought the coin, somehow he figures he's bought the right to use the pix.

Seeking to flip for a small margin is what everyone that sells on eBay hopes to do....and I DO mean small , especially by the time eBay and PayPAl get done with him.

Dunno Jeremy. It's totally up to you. You can consider this the ultimate flattery or you can get real worked up about it. Fact is, he could have at least asked, right!

Dave99B

Jeremy -

It wouldn't bother me. In fact, don't they say that "Imitation is the sheerest form of flattery"? No one ever steals my images - I'm the one who should be annoyed.

Dave

mirabela

Wow. What a dreary way to earn two bucks at a time!

fountainheadgold

Sounds to me like instead of returning the coin he just put it back on ebay, I do this from time to time