Hard drive company threatening me because I sell a used hard drive on eBay

[adventurer_f48]

Hi Ebay community

I am selling a single used hard drive from a well known hard drive company. It's a rather old drive and the value is less than $100. It is marked as used (seller refurbished).

I am curious what this practice is and what it means. I don't think I am doing anything wrong by selling a used hard drive and have no obligation to prove to them that it is not counterfeit (it is not, it's an original drive that has been doing a great job for a long time).

Is this Brand / Trademark bullying? Is i20 doing the bully's job for Seagate? What happens if I simply ignore them? Are there legal avenues they can take or is this just a common scare tactic? I am willing to hire a lawyer over this and take it to court if it comes to it. I don't like being bullied.

Thank you in advance for your help!

[simba6]

If they were a VERO member they could have that listing removed. Since they just sent an email, you don't have to do a thing. It's just a common scare.  Even their reply to address looks so official.  A real law firm would have a FAX number at the least along with an actual mail address.

[a_c_green · Accepted solution]

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@adventurer_f48 wrote:

Is this Brand / Trademark bullying? Is i20 doing the bully's job for Seagate? What happens if I simply ignore them? Are there legal avenues they can take or is this just a common scare tactic? I am willing to hire a lawyer over this and take it to court if it comes to it. I don't like being bullied.

Thank you in advance for your help!

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Obviously you have no obligation to respond to an unsolicited third-party email regardless of their claims. The fact that it was sent to you from a throwaway account using an image of a scanned document means that they are attempting to evade eBay message filters.

There is no indication that this is a legitimate message. It looks more like a patent troll hoping to bully you into paying money to them. Given that there are over 50,000 listings on eBay with the word "Seagate" in the title, I don't think Seagate is really attempting to enforce anything (nor is there any indication that Seagate is even aware of these spam messages).

A real legal issue would come to you via a legal summons delivered by a member of the court (e.g. a sheriff's deputy), after which you'd have at least 30 days to consult counsel and respond. Sending out images of threatening letters via unsolicited spam from throwaway accounts is hardly the same thing. I see no obligation to respond for any reason, and in fact doing so would simply encourage them.

[brwil85]

It is probably a competitor. 

[adventurer_f48]

Thank you very much for this answer - this really puts it into perspective for me!

[adventurer_f48]

Thanks, that makes sen.

[writercranky]

A couple of years ago eBay removed my listing for a set of 4 years-old but still in their original packaging StarWreck (disguising the names here) Hullmirk PassedIt  notepads. They had been given to me as a gift long ago and I had never even opened them. The reason given for the listing removal was trademark infringement (!) which is very odd since I have sold a few other licensed collectibles from various universes over the years. These were the original licensed items, not homemade knock-offs, and if I recall correctly, the item photos very clearly showed all of the labeling that showed them to be exactly what they were. I was not told which of the 3 trademarks listed above was being violated, and none of my questions were ever answered.

[gwzcomps]

This thread is amusing to me considering I have been selling used hard drives for years now.  As pointed out there is no reason why you can't sell it here.

What I really want to know is what you did to "refurbish" a used hard drive.

[adventurer_f48]

For all hard drives I sell, I clean all contacts with contact cleaner, take all dust off with high pressure spray but most importantly do a 3-pass secure erase as well as disk and SMART tests.

I believe selling them as seller refurbished shows that I have put effort it to make sure the drive performs well for the next owner. Different from many hard drives I have bought on Ebay that oftentimes contained quite sensitive content - chuckles.

[tvr-inc]

I received the same message on Ebay. It was from a 0 feedback name. They demaned invoices from my supplier and all the contact info from my supplier. It could be someone else who is trying to find out where to source product. A competitor. Or someone who wants to steal my info and pretend they are my company .

I just ignore and reported to ebay, so their account gets taken down. I have been selling hard drives for years and have never had a problem. Dont respond. You might want to give them a good telling off, but you will probably only make them go after you more. They are like telemarketers. When you mess around with them they change your call setting to call you more often.

[adventurer_f48]

Great advice!

Yes I simply ignored it and after the "3 business days" nothing happened. I will report their account to Ebay.

[adventurer_f48]

So turns out you cannot report Ebay members anymore for inappropriate or fraudulent messages. Ebay has disabled the link to do that. However, you can still talk to them over the phone which is what I just did.

The Ebay representative was very nice, listened to all my concerns and looked up the Ebay member I reported. They could see that this person had been sending 1,300 messages all of the same type, trying to intimidate sellers from electronics to sun glasses.

He said he will report this internally and the Ebay member will likely get suspended for this.

Thanks again to everyone in this thread who helped.