eBay to pay €16k damages to duped gold buyer
An Austrian court has ordered eBay to pay €16,000 in damages to a buyer who paid for gold they never received. The Austrian buyer paid for a kilo of gold from German company and ex-PowerSeller ML Agentur, which has since gone bankrupt. According to German watchdog site Falle-Internet.de, questions had already been raised in eBay.de’s trust and safety forum about excessively long delivery times and non-availability of advertised items with this seller, before this transaction took place.
According to Falle-Internet, eBay argued that their staff had been in regular contact with the seller, that they were unaware of any particular risks associated with the transactions, and that there was no justification for their withdrawing of PowerSeller status or other sanctions. They argued that it was the buyer’s responsibility to investigate the seller before purchase.
Falle-Internet concludes: “the court’s ruling sets out in pleasing clarity that eBay is not ‘only a venue’”. It’s a shame it takes cases like this to establish that.
Bigpoppa says
10:25 pm on 08/04/2010
A fool and his money…
eBay shouldn’t have had to pay this…IMO
JD says
5:00 am on 09/04/2010
Observation:
Without reading the full article/judgement the intonation appears to be that if eBay had withdrawn Powerseller Status from the seller then they (eBay) would not have been liable to the same extent in this case.
Luke says
12:14 am on 11/04/2010
I think you’re right there. It seems that the damages were awarded because eBay had been informed of problems with the seller but continued to promote them as a trustworthy powerseller. It could have the effect that in the future they may be much quicker to impose sanctions upon powersellers than they were before this case.
Ed says
8:05 pm on 11/04/2010
Like luke says eBay really have left themselves wide open to damages cost, by endorsing the seller, this will be a wake up call for eBay, to be more vigilant in future!
Ed.