Deadlord36 wrote:TheThis is a perfect example of how the American lack of accountability works. It's so inane, and so obvious, that it is almost amusing. I'm sure there are plenty of non-American companies who use the same tactics, but in the US, not only countries but individuals swear by lack of accountability. We all have heard of the dumb broad who got a coffee at McDonald's drive-thru, spilled it on herself and sued them. And won millions.

Breaking News:
COFFEE IS FUCKING HOT.

.

BTW, the old lady got a pittance on appeal...less than $400,000.    The funniest part of the story, is that McDonalds brought it all on itself.  Her medical bills were $11 grand and they offered her $800 bucks.  An independent arbitrator recommended $200k.  Although McDonalds had previously settled over 700 cases resulting from hot coffee burns before this one, some genius in corporate decided no, we make our stand here.  McDonalds said no, bring us to court...and McDonalds got hammered.  No fricking kidding, giant conglomeration against poor little old lady with burns.  Whoever decided not to pay the broad off in the first place should have been fired.
  How this relates to the Ebay case, well it's going to be settled out of court I'm sure, Ebay certainly can't be as stupid as McDonalds was.  Although I don't like a lot of wht Ebay does and how they do it, please, how can I root for Tiffany.  Yeh, the seller of stratospheric overpriced jewelry and other froo-froo crap, boy are they they uhnderdog here.  It's all about money and don't think anything otherwise.  The fact is all the giant money making conglomerates hate ebay because it means money out of their pocket.  You think all the chains selling cds, dvds and such wouldn't be elated?  They could go back to charging $20 for a brand new cd.  If Ebay loses it just means higher fees for all of us, they aren't going to go out of business, and then good luck finding that Character Archaic or ST1 without Ebay as a venue.  I hope they tell Tiffany to shove their expensive sparkly crap up their asses.

Mike B.

Xaxaxe wrote:As a collecting community, we absolutely do NOT want eBay to lose this lawsuit. The argument Tiffany is presenting attacks the foundation that supports the entire eBay structure: namely, that eBay is simply a venue. If that foundation is brought down and eBay is somehow forced to monitor every auction on the site (and exactly how would that work, BTW? would every item for sale have to be sent to Mountain View, CA for verification?), then its costs will skyrocket. And of the two groups of people eBay must report to — shareholders and users — guess who will pick up the tab for those costs?

You make some excellent points. Using logic not emotion to figure this out, you've come upon the essential truth here, that all a win for Tiffany would mean is higher fees for us all.

Addressing some interesting points:

Marlith wrote:I would agree but there has to be an allowance for research. How does eBay verify the allegation. What is to stop a seller from reporting competitors auctions that might be of the same item.

I'll take it a step further: if eBay loses this suit and is forced to act on every complaint it receives, then I'm reporting every single one of Cougar's auctions. Why? Because I don't like him. eBay will need to hire three more people just to keep up with the volume of my Cougar complaints. Sure, none of his auctions will actually get banned, but at least I'll have the satisfaction of keeping both eBay and Cougar constantly jumping through hoops.

Before you accuse me of excessive exaggeration, remind yourself that forcing eBay to monitor every item on its site is exactly what the Tiffany suit is about. I'm dead serious: if Tiffany (or another company down the road) forces this sort of change, I'm reporting every single auction from every single seller who has ever annoyed me.

Ditto. It's absurd to think that Ebay has the time, or should even have the responsibility to make sure everything sold there is legit.  Once again, forcing Ebay to monitor every single item sold means, that's right, you and I pay more in the end.

Blackmoor wrote:This is a ploy by Tiffany to reduce the aftersales market of there junk! Nothing more. Simple business decision.

This is an important point. Tiffany is not some lawful good paladin out to help the little guy; Tiffany is interested solely in helping Tiffany. Which is something that, normally, I would have no problem with ... except that, in this case, it's going to raise my eBay fees by a factor of 10.

Yeh, I can REALLY get behind "Tiffany" as my savior.  Sheesh.  It's like hoping Paris Hilton wins the Academy Award just so she can stick it to the academy, who cares. I don't give a flying flip about Tiffany and I can say that absolutely no one posting on this forum does either.

Deadlord36 wrote:Forum-based trading would not only be safe, but FAR cheaper for all of us. People who screw others over on trades/sales do not survive long on forums ...

Sure they do; they just change e-mail addresses (or whatever other identifying feature they need to change) and pretend they are someone else. To say rip-offs don't happen in the rec.games.marketplace arena is wishful thinking at its worst. At least eBay requires some level of identification before creating an account ... not to mention that it actually has a built-in feedback system. (Sorry, Frank, I don't mean it to sound like I'm singling you out; I'm just using your post as a springboard for an opinion I've had for years).

I got ripped off far more on the marketplace than I ever have on Ebay.   Don't even get me started on potential buyers that stiffed me on a sale....that might be around 100 or so. The Marketplace was fine for it's time, when it was virtually the only venue to buy and sell games.  But the model has advanced to the point where Ebay is a pretty reliable, easy to use venue, and I'd hate to give it up and go backwards in quality and ease of use.

guerret wrote:Then, why doesn't Tiffany issue a cause against Tim Berners-Lee for creating the World Wide Web? Or to Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn for the TCP/IP protocol?

Or here's some examples from other marketplace-style services: if my dream job turns out to have been misrepresented by the company, do I sue CareerBuilder? If my dream date turns out to have lied about her height and weight, do I sue Match.com?

Just shows you the ludicrous thinking involved in the Tiffany lawsuit

bclarkie wrote:My point is this, do I expect EBay to take down every listing as soon as it comes up? No. But, I do expect that they should take action within a reasonable time frame to take down auctions that are reported as being fake.

Yes, eBay can be absolutely maddening at times, both in terms of enforcement and consistency. But, as with most things involving eBay, scale must be considered. To use you as an example, Brian: you are one eBay user who is an expert collector in one pretty specific area, thus allowing you to easily spot and report questionable items. No problems so far (and everyone here recognizes that your effort has helped stop some really questionable eBay activities).

However, now consider the galactic size of eBay.

If you want to deal on Ebay, you take the good with the bad.  It does no good to complain and then continue to use Ebay..a lot like the guys here that would rail against JonB or Creep yet buy from them when they can.  Right now Ebay is the 800 lb gorilla of internet purchasing. Someday there may exist a better venue, but until then you just have to deal. The best thing to do is support Ebay's competition and not wish for Ebay's downfall. A legitimate competitor to Ebay would bring about improvement and much needed changes, not hoping they loose to a purveyor of jewelry 99% of us will never own (because frankly they don't want peons like us owning their stuff).

I hope Ebay kicks the shit out of Tiffany, but realistically I guess it will all be settled out of court about, oh, ten years from now.

Mike B.

Xaxaxe wrote:

Badmike wrote:McDonalds said no, bring us to court...and McDonalds got hammered. No fricking kidding, giant conglomeration against poor little old lady with burns.

The other result from that suit has been those classic signs that are now conspicuously posted in every McDonald's: "Coffee is served hot."

Maybe someday someone will freeze the end of their tongue off with a fudge sundae and they will also have to post "Ice Cream is served cold"

Mike B.

Deadlord36 wrote:The fact that the lady got a single penny is absurd. You're right, McDonald's should have just paid her off for being so smart as to sue for being a fucking idiot.
Then the price of hamburgers would go up. Oh wait, isn't that what we're worried about with the eBay thing?
I don't care if eBay stays or goes. But the fact is, they make NO ATTEMPT to be accountable for what goes on. If they even made a decent attempt, I'd be fine with that.

I hope competition will improve Ebay.  Look, AOL charged by the minute until Prodigy upped the ante by providing unlimted internet for a flat fee.  It will take someone offering similar services with some improvements (such as lower listing fees or selling fees, at least initially) to get Ebay  off their asses.  Right now they have no incentives to improve services, I just dont' see how a lawsuit by Tiffanys will improve anything in both the long or short run for consumers like ourselves, since it's not covering any of the issues most of us have with Ebay.

Mike B.

Deadlord36 wrote:The fact that the lady got a single penny is absurd. You're right, McDonald's should have just paid her off for being so smart as to sue for being a fucking idiot.
Then the price of hamburgers would go up. Oh wait, isn't that what we're worried about with the eBay thing?
I don't care if eBay stays or goes. But the fact is, they make NO ATTEMPT to be accountable for what goes on. If they even made a decent attempt, I'd be fine with that.

   I have not googled the issue lately but I believe the lady did not end up getting her big award on appeal.  I believe a second jury, or a judge or whatever, knew an idiot when they saw one.

Mark  

a2jeff wrote:I'm with Frank all the way on this one. Ebay does virtually nothing to police their venue. You'd think they could at least hire a couple more Indians at $20K per year to focus on this stuff....have you ever tried to deal with live ebay help or customer support?? OMG it's a trip... I can't believe improving policing on obvious piracy/copyright violation, shilling, etc. would have a noticeable impact on shareholder returns.

    Actually, I had to deal with their support team last month. Had a horrific glitch that was making my Ebay descriptions unreadable, the problem turned out to be with AOL.  Even still, the support team got back to me in a few hours after I emailed them, gave me several suggestions (one which solved the problem), and did a follow up. Then again, I'm a silver powerseller (or something like that, not a ruby encrusted titanium one unfortunately) so they are required to get back to me in 24 hours or less I believe, but still I was impressed.  Actually, all the dealings I've ever had with a real human being from Ebay (as opposed to form letters and computer generated emails) has generally been helpful.  Couple years ago one of the support team called me at home (?) to let me know about half my listings were in violation due to keyword misuse and they would rather I just revise the items instead of having to cancel them (I'm suppose the prospect of cancelling some 500 odd auctions might have deterred them, but still was nice of them to do). Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe you have to generate a steady stream of revenue for them before they become helpful (about $6k a year for many years now), but IMO they are no greater or no less helpful than any gigantic money grubbing corporation I have to deal with.  Hell, I've written Taco Bueno six times about the horrific state of the store down the street from my house (you don't want to know, you'll never eat a taco again) just in the last year and never gotten a boo from them yet.  
    That being said, I too am constantly puzzled why certain things seem to catch their attention and be taken care of immediately and others are put on the back burner to slowly stew.  Re: the Eastern Treasure Chest/Game Emporium/JonB crap that goes on every year or so, why they can't get a handle on this criminal has always amazed me and left me wondering what good it does to shut someone down you uses the word "SciFi" as a keyword while letting JonB run rampant, just totally misplaced priorities.

Mike B.

It's impossible to get 3rd degree burns from coffee.

1st degree: Reddened skin, pain
2nd: Blisters, severe pain, eventual sloughing
3rd: Deeply charred, black skin, no pain or sensation. Nerves dead. Possibility of amputation or gangrene.

Terminal_Frost wrote:Read:

http://www.atla.org/pressroom/FACTS/fri ... ecase.aspx

Deadlord36 wrote:It's impossible to get 3rd degree burns from coffee.

1st degree: Reddened skin, pain
2nd: Blisters, severe pain, eventual sloughing
3rd: Deeply charred, black skin, no pain or sensation. Nerves dead. Possibility of amputation or gangrene.

Check this out: http://www.burn-victim-center.com/types.html

From the way the article reads and the different burn types listed, if she had spilled the coffee on her leg only, she may have only had second-degree burns since the thickness of the skin factors in.  But she spilled it backwards into her lap burning her privates (including her perineum  , good lord that would hurt!) as well as her butt-cheeks.  I wonder, did they use photographic means to prove it in court or did they just ask her to drop her pants in front of the jury.  :lol:

Terminal_Frost wrote:Read:

http://www.atla.org/pressroom/FACTS/fri ... ecase.aspx

Wow, great link to clear up an issue I, and evidently others, have been wrong about for years.  Thanks.