Traders Vs Ebay

[Figure Mad]

At last the traders may have the last laugh about the fakes on Ebay.........

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/technolo...&pagewanted=all

Dave

 

[Dan Morton]

Dave -

I don't like fakes anymore than anybody else, but I'm not sure who wins if e-Bay gets sued out of business. I'm rather fond of ol' e-Bay. Maybe they should change their business model to include a very large font message on top of all their screens - "BUYER BEWARE!".

I don't know the answer on this one, but IMHO law suits don't often solve such problems. [No intended slam against the lawyers on the forum! Are there any by the way?]

All the best,
Dan

 

[renarts]

I wouldn't worry too much about ebay going out of business Dan. Even the cigarette companies didn't fold under their record breaking law suit judgements. Ebay had a $367 million dollar profit ytd this year and moved $3.4 billion in transactions. This is pocket change and they'll write it off as the cost of doing business. Probobly bump their transaction fees a bit and do as you suggested. But..... as in all law suits, winning and collecting are two different things.

Huge settlemets are not so much to pad lawyers bank accounts but a means to get someone in the board rom to pay attention. A good example is the McDonalds flap over hot coffee. Everyone threw the blame on the lady that got burned for frivolous law suits and the facts of the case were far from frivolous. McDonalds was clearly at fault and in the end settled for far far less than was rewarded. But..... McDonalds changed their practices and the boardroom paid attention.

Maybe its going to take something like this to make ebay look coser at the source of their profits and do more to prevent the econmy of counterfeits.