Governor Marley

The recent ruling against ebay in which there were fined £31M over selling fakes has a deeper seedier issue associated with it. In the background there’s a clear restriction of trade issue, there’s a battle to ruin consumer choice and ebay have to win their appeal.

The European Union need to step in here, slap the French courts around a bit and point out to them that freedom of trade is one of the core principles of the European Union, these are core foundations and companies simply can’t get away with this.

However this is an issue involving ebay and the European Union, come on, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Two of the most incompetent buffoons around clash, the result is likely to be chaotic but ebay must win.

I know ebay have a lost a lot of goodwill with their userbase, and rightly so. They have retreated from forcing paypal only in Australia. Prior to that users were only too happy to point out “Where’s the consumer choice in that?”, however ebay reneged, too little too late? Maybe. However they could hardly go into an appeal about consumer choice when they themselves were restricting it.

They still force Australian and UK ebayers to accept paypal, they still force them not to indicate they prefer another payment method, they still happily limit the choices of their sellers in these markets. They should cease and desist with this nonsense right away.

However ebay are absolutely right to point out that the deeper issue behind this court case is to protect uncompetitive business practices, that it is designed to restrict consumer choice. If someone buys me some aftershave for Christmas and I already have a supply of it, I should bloody well be able to sell it on ebay if I want. This isn’t a leasehold agreement, I’m not buying a license to use aftershave, who are these fragrance companies trying to kid? This is pure greed on their part.

The counterfeit issue is of course something they have every right to complain about, but why don’t they go after the counterfeiters?

Ebay themselves of course still have the obscene and unethical practice of taking people’s money and then deliberately giving some people an inferior service, going out of their way to give them an inferior service. The European Union and the courts should be spanking their arses for that.

Yes I do find it hard to give a company who will do that to their customers support, but in the case of their appeal against the fragrance companies, support is justified.