BAD eBay! BAD VeRO!
September 6th, 2006 by Jackie
Imagine you’re a small business owner who sells your merchandise through eBay. You’ve got kids to support, a mortgage, car payments; you’re barely making ends meet despite the fact that you’re working 70 or more hours per week.
Imagine eBay pulls your auctions and suspends your account because a malicious competitor, customer, or corporate big wig claims you’re infringing upon a copyright when you’re not. Imagine the lost revenue. How are you going to pay for your groceries now?
This is what happens: someone files a report with eBay’s VeRO program claiming they think you’re infringing upon a copyright. They don’t have to prove anything. They just have to think your infringing. Well, eBay immediately pulls the products. Maybe they suspend your account too. You receive a brief notice from eBay letting you know what’s happened.
When you call VeRO, they inform that it’s your responsibility. You have to directly contact the people who filed the claim against you and have it out with them. Of course, since VeRO will not give out the accuser’s information, all you have is an e-mail address by with to contact this person/company. There is nothing, VeRO tells you, that they can do about it.
VeRO has no check and balance procedures in place. When VeRO receives a claim of copyright infringement, they do no work to ensure that the claim is valid.
Despite numerous days and e-mails to the accusatory party, you get no response. In the meantime, your income has been stopped in its tracks. Your innocent and you’re losing money with every passing hour. When you call VeRO again, they say they will take the case under consideration. Of course, your account will remain suspended in the meantime.
This is not the first time this has happened to you and you’re certainly not the only seller who has been faced with this problem. Companies and competitors file false claims against eBay sellers all the time. This is nothing new. The process is arduous and costly to innocent eBay sellers.
Many eBay sellers find accusations against them unfounded but take no action. Whether intimidated by the corporate monster, confused by the ethereal and complicated counter-notification process or simply disenchanted, eBay sellers frequently find themselves feeling helpless once their items are pulled or accounts suspended.
When, after however many days of stress and frustration, either VeRO decides that you were in the right all the time or the accusatory party decided they were mistaken and your account is reinstated, you find that there is little to be joyful about. You’ve been screwed. You’ve already lost a week worth of revenue (a quarter of your month’s salary), your wondering just how your going to afford little Johnny’s birthday present this year, and you know full well that you won’t receive so much as a sniffle of apology.
When eBay established VeRO in 1997, it did so in order to comply with the regulations of the soon to be established Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DCMA. Designed to protect against online copyright infringement, the DCMA included provisions under which companies like eBay would not be held accountable for fraudulent merchandise or copyright infringement upon their site.
Under the DCMA, all eBay (VeRO) has to do to keep its nose clean is pull any items that are claimed to be fraudulent. It doesn’t matter if the claims are true or not. It doesn’t matter if the seller loses income. It doesn’t matter if the seller is left with a marred reputation, VeRO has no responsibility to the seller at all under the DCMA and it doesn’t take any either.
Imagine you’re that eBay seller and your account it finally reinstated. Do you think the claim against you is going to be excused? Erased from your sellers record? Well it won’t. Even if an eBay seller is found innocent and the merchandise is reinstated, the record is not cleared. The eBay seller’s account will still show the claim of copyright infringement leaving the seller vulnerable to potential permanent shut down. On the other hand, VeRO members who make false claims again and again are not reprimanded in the least. In fact, they are free to bombard sellers with willy-nilly accusations as they please.
VeRO is unfair to honest, hard-working eBay sellers, if it doesn’t affect them (which it doesn’t), they simply don’t care. Furthermore, if you think eBay is going to change its policies anytime soon you’re kidding yourself.
If you’re an eBay seller you may as well just get accustomed to getting the shaft. It’s eBay’s way.
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