The Times puts the boot into eBay.In summary, journo has watch stolen, watch turns up on eBay, people do not just take journo’s word for the fact that this is his watch and hand it over (even though he emails them from The Times!), watch and owner eventually reunited.
Highlights:
Let me spell it out: there are people who are criminals; there are people who profit from the proceeds of crime; and, then, there is eBay.
EBay is not a thief, nor does it knowingly trade with thieves.
Can you guess which sentence the lawyers wrote, children?
It would just be churlish of me to say that if Mr Morished’s watch had been sold at a car boot sale or street market or in a pub, he would have had neither his watch back, nor a soapbox to stand on to write his piece. We have a lot to thank eBay for 😉
4 Responses
To be fair to the Journo, the seller is a business, it should have been a simple thing to find his details
The fact that it obviously wasnt does ebay no favours.
If they are going to have rules, they must not only enforce them they must be seen to enforce them.
Currently they do neither.
#1 This is an issue that we hope to address in the very near future, the fact that buyers should be able to easily locate contact details of their trading partner.
#2 It’s not something that can be addressed *off* eBay, it needs to be addressed *on* eBay.
There are many ways to help situations like this, some require the input of eBay others don’t.
I agree that eBay should do a lot more but we all know that eBays priorities do not always match the needs of it’s users.