@m60driver wrote:
You sell womens beauty products, one of the most protected categories by manufacturers. They will claim that any product sold outside their distribution network is counterfeit and Ebay will pull the product every time. Resistance is futile.
Understand that these products have astronomically high profit margins which the manufacturers wish to protect. Your or my selling of these products threatens those profit margins where the product itself costs very little to produce and costs are almost entirely bottling, marketing, and shipping. Again resistance is futile and never relist the product line or your account will be closed.
My cousin is quite "Up the ladder" with Mary Kay and the issues are far far far more complex than this. Sure, there are counterfeits of products, buckets of em', literal buckets atop buckets of them that in fact drive prices of legit product up. 99% of said products are not made from the same ingredients nor quality thereof that legal standards define. They don't call them "Beauty products" they call them "Health and Beauty products" and that right there is KEY. Every lady using beauty products also knows there is expire dates for example just like medications on most all products. You would be astonished as to how many people take out after the product originators when they buy a knock off/counterfeit and end up havin health problems. Costs HUGE amounts of money to the likes of Mary Kay and others having to navigate the waters.
For example people think Mary Kay won't allow one to have an independent online storefront due to greed. Nothing to do with that, its the fact that said associates may engage in activities of selling that in fact damage Mary Kay when Mary Kay had nothing, knew nothing to do with any of it.
Cosmetics are a "hot bed" because its one of the industries as a whole that has taken up the subject in big ways along with medical professionals and the FDA to point of Congress and other public representation entities globally. How would you feel if you bought say Drakkar Noir, looks same, smells same, you use it and end up in the hospital in a life threatening toxic shock or you're daughter buy's knock off Mary Kay eye liner and ends up blind. Happens.
Quite different than buying a pirated copy of Autocad for $300 vs $1500 (x 100,000) thereabouts whilst folks scream about how the economy goes whilst they purposefully undermine it. Keep $1200 in their pocket then scream and yell when prices go up for everything related to usage of Autocad.
I can't even begin to tell you in technology how counterfeit/piracy literally demolished consumer choice, pricing, competition and more and the IT developers allowed it. How did Microsoft come top dog in office software and operating systems? I'll tell you, they allowed pirated editions to be sold whilst pretending to pursue it sorta/kinda. Consumers go, "Oh hey, MS Office $40 versus $499", I'll take the $40 box Jim!
So the consumer literally handed Microsoft the monopoly and those others choices such as Word Perfect and Lotus to name two had to allow the same thing or completely loose any market share. Top Dog became Microsoft and now they basically can choose how to dictate the market to the consumer, handed to them by consumers wanting save a buck.
With cosmetics, health and beauty its one of the very focal zones, a spear tip towards regulating internet eCommerce right out of the hands oh every third party indi seller albeit not the only one.
Last year or maybe year before was a story I saw in news report on I believe CNN. Guy invented a gizmo to wash motorcycles and turned out be good for cars and such too. He got venture capital from that TV show Shark Tank and things were going absolutely stellar. Then all of sudden Chinese knock off's start appearing, lower price, lower quality yet his company is getting constant literally calls of consumers raging. It'd come to a point the company was literally stifled in operating because of bad reviews and constant attack by consumers. They had hire a firm that goes after the sellers and listings all over the place. Crazyness but I or you or any of us put yourself in that position.
If you or the wife/hubby/daughter work for say Chanel or Lancome and you're job's fielding those calls that just never stop of people raging on you or telling you how their wife or daughter lost their vision, is in the hospital, five days a week, eight hours a day. Are you going to be consoling to those counterfeiting? Those fellow American's in their homes who just bought a new living room set through the money they made?
I've said it many a time here that I don't blame eBay for much anything. Vero nor Trust and Safety even be needed if everyone acted responsibly. Here perhaps we've a case of a seller wanting sell legit products and unable to do so, account to sell at all perhaps threatened yet did nothing wrong. It's not eBays fault that sellers past or present list illegitimate, expired etc product nor other products.
If you created a widget that get's counterfeited or counterfeits damage people and you're getting the heat how would you feel? You gonna blame those doing you harm? Are you gonna blame the venue's where they are sold yet you are selling to? Both? How about spending every waking moment of the day trying to defend more or less pursue those who are stealing from you?
In the end these are HUGE escalating problems across a gigantic spectrum of merchandise and NOT A SINGLE LICK of it is eBay's fault.
