I read the ENTIRE Craigslist complaint against Ebay and was very impressed by it (though I am no legal expert). Ebay’s culture and business practices have changed greatly since the 90s. They now behave unethically like probably the majority corporate America and could almost be likened to Enron (except they are not failing). Corporate greed, and really the greed of the rich, and of executives in these companies is why we are in this recession. This kind of activity left unregulated, will cause the demise of our country and has already put a huge burden of debt on future generations of Americans.

Basically Ebay Sucks (even though I use it sometimes) and Craigslist rules!! Now my question is: What is happening with this case? Has it been heard or decided yet? Did Craigslist win? and if they win, could/would they sue Ebay in Federal Court?

Here is a list of ebay’s actions that we are most displeased about…

1.) Just in the past few years, ebay has slowly increased the percentage of their commission for goods sold from a little over 6% to 8.75% of the final ending fee!! A 50% increase in your commission/share of the profit in just a few years is absolutely unacceptable!!

2.) When overstock.com popped up as a competitor to ebay offering lower commission rates, ebay proceeded to buy them out, gut the auction portion of their site, and only then did it start to increase it’s commission rates ever higher.

3.) Ebay has gone to extraordinary lenghts to shut down other competitors like yahoo auctions and amazon auctions, and are now engaged in buying up any online auction and classified listings left over.

Recently, they bought up 27% of Craigslist (a rival) and are currently being sued by Craigslist for using that stock share to undermine Craigslist. Once any remaining competition is done away with, expect to see ebay’s commissions rise even higher. This is the definition of monopolistic anti-competitive tactics.

4.) When paypal first opened to provide people a cheap easy way to pay for online auctions and other purchases, ebay proceeded to buy out the company, and later increased it’s commission rates. Whereas ebay used to allow sellers to enable buyers to pay for items with cashier’s checks, and money orders even just a few months ago, ebay recently changed this policy. Now the only payment method that can be used on ebay is paypal.

Any sellers that tell their buyers they can pay via money order or check if they don’t have a paypal account, get their auction closed by ebay, without a refund of the listing commission fees. This ensures that ebay gets a cut of the price twice, first for the auction’s ending price itself, and then a percentage of the paypal payment as well. Most sellers including I’ve had auctions that ebay ended prematurely, without warning , and without refunding the listing fees because they mentioned that they will accept payment via either paypal or money order from buyers that don’t have a paypal account.

5.) In addition to the continual increases in the commission fees, ebay has taken away sellers right to leave nonpaying buyers and buyers who abuse the auction site bad feedback. Sellers no longer can leave negative feedback to bad buyers. This policy along with the higher commission rates led to many sellers boycotting ebay as well.

Seriously, does ebay’s management not see the direct correlation between the higher commission rates it started charging 2 years ago, with the loss of sellers (and thus buyers) from it’s site?

Yet, in an effort to squeeze every drop of money out of us, ebay has continuously increased the commission fees more and more and each year. And as a result, it has become less and less profitable for all of us. Many ebay stores have had to close. Ebay’s repeated milking of your sellers with higher and higher commissions and more restrictions is only going to continue your sites trend of losing business, and it’s stock’s decline. And as this petition goes to show, we, the previous buyers and sellers on your site, are well aware of what you have been doing to squeeze every drop of profit out of us.

We strongly urge to google or some other competitor to launch an auction site to compete with ebay that is FREE and completely supported by ad revenue to provide relief to the many sellers that have had to close up shop on ebay due to the commissions going up from 6% to 8.75% in just two years. And we urge them to do so before ebay completes it’s current buyout of craigslist.

If anyone you know has been the victim of ebay’s releasing their account information to the police or any other agency or individual, without a court-ordered subpoena, PLEASE fire me an email at: legman1947@yahoo.com.

I have good reason to believe that Ebay released my account info to a state police agency, WITHOUT A SUBPOENA.

I want to hear from anyone who has been the victim of Ebay’s releasing their account information to police authorities, or any other individual,without a court-ordered subpoena.

I also want information regarding any lawsuit that has been filed against ebay for the unauthorized release of a member’s account information.

FYI - For those of you who seem to think that just because you “agree” to ebay’s user agreement it’s doesn’t make it “legal” just because ebay says so! If they said that “by agreeing to these terms we have the right to cut off your left leg” do you REALLY think they have the legal right to do it?

It seems that eBay should have to reimburse for that time/money/emotional distress, etc.

Its sad that such bad things happen to good people and such a good organization that has given so much to so many by providing the free community websites