Legal Issues of Ebay

        Furthermore, legal issues that eBay has commited also include some unethical business practices in an unethical ways which is unfair to sellers or buyers who having e-business activities by using ebays website. An unfair trade practice consists of using various deceptive, fraudulent or unethical methods to obtain business. Unfair trade practices include misrepresentation, false advertising, tied selling and other acts that are declared unlawful by statute. It can also be referred to as deceptive trade practices (investopedia).

        First of all, eBay easily arise unfair business practice such as come out with a unfair business policy and terms which detriment to seller or buyer. For example, An eBay seller filed a class action lawsuit against eBay and Paypal by allerging that eBay has created a “buyers always wins” policy to the detriment of sellers, and touching upon several eBay and Paypal pratices that are commonly criticized by sellers. One of the unfair pratices is that eBay refuses to refund 100% of seller fees as the transaction is not complete while Paypal which under eBay website deprives seller authority to access to their money by placing day holding and reserves on seller funds and EBay also refused to credit back to the Plaintiff the Final Value Fees that were associated with the rescinded sales as EBay has the responsible to refund to the plaintiff as the sales already rescind. This suit is filed in the U.S. District court in Northern California (ecommercebytes.com).

Moreover, eBay also forcing ebay buyers or seller to settle their own dipute through eBay Resolution Center rather than allowing them to settle themselves as this practice will affect sellers Detailed Seller Ratings. As the lawsuit stated that policy that establish by eBay in deciding these buyers claims that the buyers is always right which is unfair to the seller. This also prove that eBay lack of seller protection which the usually supporting buyers instead of look at seller and buyers as equivalent. The reason for eBay to have this action is because eBay does not want buyers talking to sellers in order to shrink responsibility to eBay seller (ecommercebytes.com).

Moreover, selling fake goods online also consider as an unethical business practices that happen in eBay auction website. For example, A group of luxury goods company such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Fendi and Givenchy sued eBay who over sale of fake luxury goods online. That is a case stated that a Paris court has ordered eBay to pay $63 million damages to luxury goods company LVMH for allowing copies of its goods to be sold on the eBay auction site. The court ruled ebay for “guilty negligence” as they unable to prevent fake goods being sold on eBay. As an online selling website, it has the responsible to prevent seller selling fake luxury goods online as this will also known as a copyright infringnment which reproducing the goods and sell it online (CNN).