eBay Corruption
August 12th, 2006 by Jackie
Imagine you’re a small business owner selling your products on eBay. Your products are copyrighted. You have paid the copyright owner a good deal of money (which was NOT easy to come by) in order to sell these copyrighted items. You are a completely legitimate seller. You work hard. You are trying to make ends meet. Your business is not doing well despite the fact that you work over 70 hours a week. Why? You have a good product that people want. You have a fair price. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be doing well.
Of course, there is a reason why you aren’t doing well. There are a number of reasons in fact. First of all, there are people selling fakes for much less. Second, there are so many instances of counterfeit merchandise on eBay that buyers simply do not believe that anything on eBay is legitimate. Third, eBay does nothing to remedy the situation. Buyers assume that ‘authenticated’ material is a sham and sellers are liars out to take advantage of them. Because of this, people buy the cheapest product out there, fake or not.
There is nothing you can really do about this. You’re not the only honest seller with this problem. You’re not the only seller losing money because of eBay’s negligence. Counterfeit items and buyer apprehension have become, most unfortunately an eBay phenomenon.
eBay does not monitor it’s auctions!
When you call eBay to let them know there are many, MANY fakes on their site, they tell you it’s not their responsibility to troll the auctions looking for counterfeit materials. Furthermore, they argue, they just don’t have the staff available. If you want counterfeits off of eBay, they add, you should monitor the auctions yourself.
The idea is astounding really. If eBay doesn’t have the man power to check the auctions for legitimacy than how are you, small business owner that you are, going to be able to do it? It’s ridiculous.
With all the money eBay is reeling in, shouldn’t they hire a couple of trained individuals to check the auctions everyday? It would take no time at all for someone who knew what they were looking for. In the meantime, the small amount of monitoring eBay does is counterproductive as eBay’s untrained employees’ pull items from legitimate sellers. They just don’t know the difference between counterfeit and legal product and eBay’s policies DO NOT instruct employees to do any outside research such as verification of copyright ownership. Again, honest sellers AND buyers pay for eBay incompetence.
Somewhere along the line you realize that eBay is making money off legitimate and counterfeit sellers alike. If they did make the effort to monitor the auctions, they would ultimately lose money. Sellers of counterfeit materials have to pay dues too.
eBay knows that as long as they can continue to make buyers feel secure with offers of secure buying and buyer protection, then they can keep making money without losing their profits. In the meantime, they are doing nothing to protect either buyers or legitimate sellers.
eBay claims that they are tough on counterfeiters with their VeRO program, but really, they’re just out to make a buck and watch their own bottom line.
eBay does not care about buyers or legitimate sellers!
Read These Related Articles:
WordPress database error: [Table 'pugsterwordpress.wp_comments' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '160' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date