Shop Safe Act back on table, write your representatives & senators!

[tristartreasures]

The horrible Shop Safe Act has bene reintroduced by Congress & we all need to be phoning & writing our representatives & sharing the awful stories of the VERO program & how it has been used arbitrarily & incorrectly against legitimate businesses on here & elsewhere. The most dangerous part of the proposed law is that after three VERO strike you are permanently banned from the marketplace & barred from creating a new profile. That means no income whatsoever & there is no requirement for the reporting agency to provide evidence of their claim against you.

This is a massive threat to the free market and e commerce businesses in particular. I urge you all to take a second to message your senators & representatives about this. Thankfully both eBay & Amazon are going to lobby hard against it but we can't count on big money interests as that is part of the problem.

I have had a handful of false VERO complaints submitted by third party IP protection companies on here & I can tell you they would not think twice before flagging your used or new item as fake in order to fluff their reported takedowns to their clients & keep getting a check.  

[toomuchstuffagain35]

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@tristartreasures wrote:

The third party firms are required to provide their contact info when a takedown has been conducted. However, it is my experience that they hardly ever reply or simply will be like “ you are not allowed to sell this” & that’s the end of it. Even if you provide receipts proof of origin & other evidence they don’t have to accept it. 
This is exactly the issue as it stands right now (let alone if this act goes through). I've BTDT too. A company (or more likely these days one of these slimy IP firms) can have your listings taken down and then simply refuse to answer your contact and the marketplace says "oh well, too bad, too sad". No, that is NOT good enough. If the company  (or their agents) won't even respond then the seller should have the right to relist without further harassment.