The good:
I was interviewed for a local Seattle paper this week. That’s pretty exciting – hopefully I’ll see my name in the www.northseattleherald-outlook.com paper someday soon.
The timing is perfect, because it looks like The eBay Marketing Bible is rolling along on schedule to be released in June. I need to start getting the word out about the book. This week I received the spring catalog and the book was included – it was fun to see the cover and read the description. It made the whole project a little more real. Of course, I had to head over to Amazon.com to see if it was listed yet – and there it was!
The bad:
I opened up my email the other morning to find a VeRO violation notice from eBay. They pulled one of my products. The claim was that I used “Unauthorized Listing Content” OK, I know what that means, Mr. X, claims that I used a photo or copy that they have rights to. However, I used photos either taken by me, or supplied with permission to use from the distributor and text was mine, except specifications. How can product specifications be copyrighted?
So, I was (annoyed to say the least) but befuddled as to what exactly I had done in the listing the violated copyright. So, I wrote to Mr X to find out what it was that violated copyright and received no reply. I wrote to eBay and asked, and they sent an email that stated:
“When we get an official request from a participant of our Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program, we’re required by federal law to end the listing.
We don’t have any specific information about how your item infringed the right’s owner’s intellectual property or how you can avoid having your listing ended again.
The rights owner isn’t required to explain how the item infringes on their intellectual property, and a listing that looks fine to us may actually violate someone’s intellectual property.”
Ok, so what I’m reading here is that once you have a VeRO account set-up with eBay you can cause havoc with other sellers livelihood, just report them without having to prove anything….. ummmm
Well, it caused me to ponder – several things actually. One, is that anyway to do business? Can sellers on eBay really continue to sell when they don’t know when and where the ax will fall?
And, more constructively, it caused me to start looking into my rights. If this happens to you here are a few really good resources to check out:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/881803/how_to_fight_ebay_over_false_vero_rights.html
It turns out the VeRO owner who filed against me has five working days to respond to my request for information before I can take action against him. I’ll let you know what happens… guess it’s a good thing I wrote The eBay Marketing Bible with a lawyer, I’ll know where to turn for help.
It also made me ponder my next purchase of goods. I import a very small number of goods from China and what happens if an unfriendly or rival seller decides that they can knock me off by filing an unjust VeRO claim. Well, of course the answer is sell products in multiple places online. But, eBay is one of my sales channels and I need to protect my interests there as well.
However, I won’t let them push me around, and hopefully you won’t either. Part of owning your own business is to step around the bullies, find a new path to avoid them, or get a really big body guard – LOL
My solution is to create a Vero ‘about me’ page for my products and register them with eBay. I think anyone who manufactures, creates a product or imports a unique item from another country should set up an VeRO account with eBay.
It’s easy to get disappointed, as a small business owner we’ll always run into bullies. Heck, it even happened when we opened our ‘bricks and mortar’ garden store. A supplier didn’t like us trying to join the good ol boys network and caused all sorts of havoc when we started.
Have you been targeted with an unfair VeRO claim? I’d love to hear about it, please leave a comment.
That’s it for this week! Here’s to your business success.
One Response
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Hi Cindy,
I have a similar situation but a little different. I reported a seller for copying our photo and text. At first eBay did nothing and then I reported it again. They removed the seller’s listing and also removed mine. They said ours was in violation. After several go arounds, they gave us the listing we copied. It was nothing to do with our isting. Several more go arounds and they came back with…I kid you not…We may have copied the listing by accident so read up on this policy and don’t do it again. Huh?? Now our policy compliance shows poor on our dashboard and we are upset. Any suggestions?
Donna
A Priceless Princess