Petition to remove EU Trade Barriers

4/07/2009 at 13:49

How suppliers are blocking online trade

How suppliers are blocking online trade

Have you ever been prevented from buying stock because you want to sell it on eBay or other online outlets? Have manufacturers ever used VeRO to remove perfectly legitimate listings? Do you believe brand owners restrict re-sale of their goods online? Have you been told you can only sell products sourced from one particular distributor in your country?
 
Next week eBay will survey thousands of buyers and sellers across Europe asking them to sign a petition regarding trade barriers. This will be presented to European decision-makers asking them to amend EU competition law in order to make it harder for certain brands and manufacturers to block the sale of their products on eBay and other marketplaces
 
eBay was built on the principle of enabling ordinary people to buy and sell practically anything to or from anywhere in the world. It’s enabled thousands of people to turn online selling into a business and at the same time provided great deals for buyers from the widest possible selection of goods.
 
Brand owners (and not just those supplying luxury goods) are threatening free trade by attempting to restrict sales of their products online, or by imposing onerous conditions on sellers. According to the latest Online Business Index, two in five online businesses have experienced mysterious problems with suppliers or manufacturers which they suspected were due to selling their products over the internet.
 

“We have 4 or 5 suppliers that would threaten future orders if we sold online. One company actually dictates a price to sell their products at, and if we are seen to sell lower, then supply has been restricted until we explain our position and resolve it. Others only allow us to sell on our own website, not on online marketplaces, which makes life a lot harder for consumers because they want to be able to shop around easily. Some suppliers can be pretty intimidating – they know the power they have over small companies like ours.”
Sporting equipment retailer, Yorkshire

You should receive an email in your eBay My Messages towards the middle of next week. If you believe you shouldn’t face restrictions on what you buy or sell online we’d encourage you to sign the online petition and make your voice heard.

06/07/09 Edited to add
eBay have started emailing users and the petition is now live and can be accessed by linking your account to eBay Government Relations.

The full text of the petition is:

We, the undersigned, oppose attempts by certain brand owners and manufacturers to unfairly limit the sale and resale of their products on the internet.

Increasingly, these brand owners are blocking the sale on online marketplaces and other websites of luxury items, as well as everyday items like children’s toys, electronic equipment, lawnmowers and pushchairs – regardless of whether such items are new or second-hand, genuine or fake. If we want to prevent other brands from following suit, we need to act now.

We believe that such restrictions represent an unfair restraint on the right to buy and sell goods freely in the European Single Market and are based less on a motivation to benefit consumers than they are on a desire to artificially inflate prices and profits by eliminating competition from online sellers, many of them small businesses.

We accept that brand owners should be able to determine, within limits, how their products are initially sold. However, we believe strongly that they should not be allowed to impose blanket bans on internet selling, and any other restrictions on trade must be based on objective and publicly available criteria which are of proven benefit to consumers. For example, manufacturers should generally not be allowed to insist that internet retailers must have an offline retail store before they can sell online, or impose more onerous sales conditions to online sellers. Above all, consumers should be allowed to resell items they have paid for.

We therefore call on European policymakers to amend EU competition law to outlaw excessive limitations on internet selling and force brands to publish all vertical agreements which are designed to limit the trade in their products. At a time when consumers’ purchasing power is increasingly under threat from the current financial and economic crisis, we urge European policymakers to take decisive action to promote competition and free trade within the European Union and call on political parties across Europe to support the right to buy and sell freely over the internet.