Legal Conundrum...

[Captain Insano]

Ok so peep this..

My little computer company has been selling on the auction networks for about two years now. We have our own website and are entrenched in a lot of the shopping networks and such and for the most part we are doing well.

One of the things that we used since from day one was selling on eBay of all places... While somewhat of a pain the ass we have gotten tons of customers this route. 60 percent of our eBay customers come back and buy again directly.

On top of that we are Titanium PowerSellers. This basically means we consistently sell over 150k a month on their site. At this time there is less than 175 of these accounts in the world. We have our own dedicated representative in San Jose at their corporate HQ and the whole nine yards of tier 1 support.

Here's the problem... We have literally helped destroy a couple of key computer categories marketplaces with the help of a few other key sellers. I won't go into too much detail but one of these categories used to have 30,000 different seller on average and now has 3000 which can be partially attributed to our presence.

At this level we get alot of negative attention from small time soccer-mom types trying to "MAKE 10k dollars YOUR FIRST MONTH ON EBAY!" types who just bought the $19.95 e-book they found through a Yahoo! search.

Moving along...

Basically we have found out that there are supposedly two people out there mad as hell at us and having been trying constantly to get our store taken down and our auctions. Some research has proven that this is a relatively simple task that involves either emailing or faxing a form to eBay that says:

Name, Address, I agree under perjery that my statement is correct bullshit and a reason why seller "X" should have their listings taken down.

Reasons commonly that this happens are because someone steals someone elses photo or steals their listings... Simple shit etc etc.

Well these two individuals have managed so far to convince eBay's little police to suspend our auctions on two occasions. Both times they were total bullshit and after further investigation they went right back up and our money was refunded. The problem here is that the 2nd time cost us 20k in sales and probably another 40k in lost momentum.

At the level we are moving as a company any interruption these days is BIG bucks lost.

So what can I do about this?

I seriously want to get the originating fax information and/or IP information from the two people who have been fucking with us and sue them for loss/damages and libel. I have 300 hours of pre-paid legal time to do this with and want to see these fuckers get assraped in court.

Thoughts? Am I completely out of my mind on this one?

[dammuzis]

no conundrum here, serve the papers and get the information and sue them into non existance

[kaharthemad]

you can do one of two things, one since they are a buyer with ebay the email they have has to be a functional one. From there you can get local provider and such.

2 call ebay talk with them and ask them for the personal information about these two ass clowns. Let the guy know you are filing libel charges against them and would like thier assistance in the matter. Explain what they have done and why you need thier help. who knows you might get lucky. Worse case ebay tells you to go fuck yourself.

[Phlegm]

You can ask ebay for information on these two complainers but most likely they won't give it to you so you may have to take ebay to court. I say go to court and sue ebay since they are suppose to investigate the complains before shutting down a site, then sue both of those complainers.

[Captain Insano]

Yah I thought about actually filing against eBay, but them shutting us down in the process would probably be a bigger loss than recouping the money we have already lost.

We're waiting on a response from them and hopefully considering the status of our account we can get the information we need. Then our lawyers will have to subpoena the perps hosting company to finally find out 100 percent who is behind this.

Another question: Basically I can sue these fucks for libel. Can I sue them for the loss occured by their actions? If so, I can't wait to see the soccer mom bitch's face when she gets slapped with a 20-40k lawsuit.

[brinstar]

starve wombats for 3 weeks then mail them in a box to the jerks in question

seriously, is there any legal conundrum a box of hungry wombats won't solve?

[Minrott]

Can I sue them for the loss occured by their actions?

Generally speaking yes I believe so, however it's your burden to prove how much was actually lost, and even if you do, recouping the money is another issue.

[DangerPaul]

Can I sue them for the loss occured by their actions?

Generally speaking yes I believe so, however it's your burden to prove how much was actually lost, and even if you do, recouping the money is another issue.

Biggest understatement of the year. Proving your loss is next to impossible, the phone book "forgot" to list my ad about 2 years ago so I wasn't in the white pages nor the yellow pages and even had to fight the pricks for a refund for my yellow page ad. Once I got my yellow page refund we spent more in legal fees and time determining our losses that we were never able to put a real number on it. Once we determined it was over $100k we then spent $20k in legal fees for the judge to tell us, "if you do not like the service they offer, do not use them." You can try to push ebay around so it never happens again, but odds are the only people that would see a financial benefit of you suing them would be the attorneys.

[Captain Insano]

actually many of the auctions taken down had hit their reserves. Therefore, I should be able to prove the difference between my buy price and the reserves and sue for that loss. That alone is probably 6k.


But really Brinstar's comment is really the direction I think I would be prudent to take.

[Yamori]

Being these people are likely in the computer business, there is a decent chance their identity probably won't be able to be as easily traced as just having Ebay hand over their account information (what with hijacked/fake ebay accounts, IP masking, and all that fun).

As Dangerpaul said, the losses are potential income so they aren't particularly tangible or provable - I'm guessing it wouldn't hold up in court particularly well - unless your goal is mostly a vindictive one and not financial. :P

Probably the better move would just be to deal with it from the Ebay side and get them to stop being idjits. If you're pulling in 150k in sales per month and have a representative there and all that shiz they'll probably cut it out. What is that - like 40k+ fee money for them per year?

[Thon]

i say hire a hitman to track them down and kill them. probably much cheaper than lawyers, and you're dealing with a higher grade of human being

[Captain Insano]

Being these people are likely in the computer business, there is a decent chance their identity probably won't be able to be as easily traced as just having Ebay hand over their account information (what with hijacked/fake ebay accounts, IP masking, and all that fun).

As Dangerpaul said, the losses are potential income so they aren't particularly tangible or provable - I'm guessing it wouldn't hold up in court particularly well - unless your goal is mostly a vindictive one and not financial. :P

Probably the better move would just be to deal with it from the Ebay side and get them to stop being idjits. If you're pulling in 150k in sales per month and have a representative there and all that shiz they'll probably cut it out. What is that - like 40k+ fee money for them per year?

the funny thing is that almost ALL of our competition is small time. These people basically buy 5 of one type of computer on a great sale. Hold onto it for a few weeks and then resell them on eBay and if they are lucky make 50 bucks a machine. All small time. I'll be shocked if this person turns up to be a professional. I'll know monday if eBay is going to turn over the information.

We are hitting this from two directions...I hope to have a written agreement from eBay that makes us immune to any future action like this and to also nail the dipshits ass to a wall.

Hopefully it will all be quite simple. Get the IP info from eBay. Turn that and the profit/loss statements over to my law firm and then they go to work.

I got to admit I hate eBay and am at the point where I really don't need them that badly anymore but they are going to be a huge player in the online shopping market in the future.

[Jesus]

Can you prove that the people who were going to buy the computers when your auctions were shut down did not buy at a later time?