Jim - A lawyer to talk to, cool!

I never once have wanted to be a lawyer, but I do love a good argument, and have had some really satisfying dialogs with them. I never take anything personally, and I never mean anything personally. I aim my words at your words, and I never forget they are just words.

Unless I say otherwise in a post, I'm always speaking from the perspective of an online auctioneer. I do feel, that what is fair is fair, in either an online auction or a direct transaction between two parties. They're pretty much the same, but I do recognize that transactions with online auctioneers are much more "public" in nature.

Let's start with what we surely agree on:

1. People that make a habit of shooting angles in dealing in gambling chips, leaving behind them a wake of injured and outraged customers, should be drummed out of the business in one way or another. If their transgressions escalate to the level of criminal activity, they should be prosecuted.

2. Crooks can be either buyers or sellers. In a dispute, the buyer who cries foul is not always "right", and neither is the seller who claims he's been abused.

3. The number of sour trades is small in terms of the percentage of transactions that occur, but due to various factors, the number of total transactions is so large these days that there are a lot of unhappy campers.

4. There is no readily accessible watchdog organization that can step in and solve these problems. eBay is neither willing nor able to arbitrate each and every complaint that arises, and their general goal is to keep as low a profile as possible when an auction goes bad.

5. There is a moral imperative to look out for your neighbor. You are your brother's keeper.

Having said that, let me tell you where I think we disagree.

I think that while we do have that moral imperative, we also have a whole bunch of other obligations as human beings, and sometimes those obligations and imperatives conflict. Then we have to prioritize.

For instance. Your best friend swears you to secrecy and tells you he's been cheating on his wife. His wife is also your friend. I personally would keep my mouth shut. Your best friend swears you to secrecy and tells you he's been beating his wife. You've never met her. I personally would not keep my mouth shut.

You may disagree with my decision, but you have to recognize that all I did was weigh two conflicting moral obligations and prioritized them according to my conscience.

I personally hold my agreement to abide by the rules eBay sets out higher then my obligation to insert myself into the business of others, to protect them. I have several reasons for this.

One reason is because eBay is a large part of my livelihood, and I have an obligation to myself and to my dependents to earn a living. Perhaps the real reason I choose to "walk the straight and Narrow" is because I consider myself to be a man of my word. I try not to agree to something, then pick and choose which parts of the agreement I will honor, and which I will hold myself above. In fact, I tend to dislike that that trait in others. Nothing personal, Jim, I don't know you well enough to dislike you. I will try like hell to change the rules, and have the scars to prove it, but in general I will swallow the bitter pill and honor my commitments.

I do agree that there are lots of cases where sharing your knowledge of someone's bad reputation with others is very appropriate. If I know someone to be crooked, and feel I heard both sides of the story, and you ask me what I think, I will tell you without hesitation. If you tell me you're considering buying a chip, and I think there's even a slight chance you might do business with Mr. Wrong, I'll jump in and try to wave you off this guy.

If I suspect a person is engaging in shill bidding, email or keyword spamming, knowing misrepresentation, bid shielding, or any of a whole range of online offenses, I will try to get the guy busted. These are crimes against the community, and I do feel a moral imperative to do my part to put a stop to it. I have been accused on other boards as being a self appointed NetCop, and I'm proud of that.

However, what this thread is about is this statement by Robert - "only after a threat of E-mailing his other potential customers did I get a reply". I assumed that he did not mean he threatened to email his potential customers to praise his ethics and encourage their bids. It's a given his threat was to email the man's customers with the intent of discouraging the likelihood they would bid on his auctions, right?

This is clearly against eBay's rules. Robert could and would be terminated if he actually did it. Sure, if he had you for a lawyer he could probably get them to back down, I'll give you that. My intention in inserting myself into this thread was to point out what no one else had, that this act is a suspendible offense on eBay.

Now, why don't I think my obligation to look out for my fellow man deserves to rank higher than my duty to play within the rules? Because, unlike you, I usually cannot be certain that a CRIME is going to occur. I cannot take the chance that I may be acting on inaccurate or incomplete information. I believe there are two sides to every story, and in the case of this board in particular, there seems to be a tendency for people to take sides in a transaction gone bad without hearing both sides. Now don't slam me for that, I admit I've don't have anything like a complete view of how you all operate here, but I have followed a few threads from beginning to end and like I say, there's a tendency.

I also strongly believe that we have an obligation to protect ourselves, and in lots of the disputes I see, the "injured" party isn't exactly faultless. EBay is a "caveat emptor" environment. Buyers have an obligation to look out for their own interests before and after getting involved in a transaction. Let's talk about the case in question. Robert asks for opinions, so I'm not butting in.

It seems Robert bought a chip from a stranger on eBay. Did he check the guy's feedback before bidding, or after? Can we assume there was no photograph of the chip? Did he ask for one? Did he tell the guy that condition was very important to him, and ask the guy what his return policy was? Did he do any of this before bidding, or did he just bid, expecting that he'd be satisfied, or receive a prompt and cheerful refund in full if he was unhappy. Where's the "caveat emptor" in that?

He says "a dealer on E-bay who advertised the chip as new and had supposedly never seen table use. Upon its arrival it looked more like someone had been using it to fill a hole in the bottom of his shoe." If this is true, then it's a clear case of mail fraud, and doesn't Robert have an obligation to himself and to the community to send a scan of the chip and a copy of the description to eBay AND the postal fraud investigation unit? Why did Robert unilaterally agree to accept a refund if the guy is an obvious con artist? Maybe there's more to this than we know? If it is mail fraud, maybe the obligation to stop this guy is really Robert's, rather then ours?

Robert says the seller never responded to his offer to accept a refund. Robert then goes out and buys another chip, and mails the bad chip back to the uncommunicative seller. The seller says it never arrived. Did Robert insure the chip? No. Can he prove he mailed it out? No. It's Robert's word against the sellers. Robert doesn't even have the chip anymore! Jim, you're a prosecutor, I'm sure you've seen this scenario a thousand times and recognize it for waht it is.

If the guy has committed mail fraud, and Robert can provide proof to the proper authorities, then the guy will be punished, and there's no need for us to take on that role.

On the other hand, what if both parties are at fault. What if the seller doesn't know clay chips from shoe leather and doesn't pretend to? Do sellers misrepresent items, knowingly or unknowingly, then refuse to make things right? Of course they do, every day. Do buyers get buyer's remorse and try to return chips? Every day. Do sellers fail to mail out a purchased item, then claim it was "lost in the mail and you should have paid for insurance"? Every day. Do buyers intentionally break items and demand a refund from sellers who did not force the buyer to pay for insurance? Damn straight they do, every day.

Will Robert be more careful next time? I should hope so!

Where I live we have "Community Watch" as well. Like you, if we see someone attempting to commit a crime, we call the cops. If possible, we too also warn the intended victim. But we don't do any of this until we're damn sure that an actual crime has or is about to be committed. We don't go out and spread a man's name around every time a woman cries rape. We give the man a fair trial. We don't slander a man's name and attempt to destroy his business without knowing all the facts.

I place my obligation to follow the rules higher than my obligation to my brother for another reason as well. If I make a mistake in judgment and go after a guy with both guns blazing who I think is a crook, and it turns out I'm wrong, I'd have a very hard time living with that, especially if anything I'd done hurt his reputation and cost him money.

On the other hand, if I erred on the side of caution and simply encouraged my injured friend to pursue the matter through the appropriate channels and to also learn from his mistake, at the expense of not preventing another collector from getting burned, I could live with that.

What's that cliché about the justice system? "We would rather let 100 guilty men go free than falsely convict one innocent man". Something like that. Well, that's the same reason I would never email another man's bidders. If there's enough proof that he's a criminal, he can be shut down on the spot. If there's not enough proof, the risk of harming an innocent (or not completely guilty) man is too great for me to take that chance.

Plus, it's against the rules.

Oh, one more thing. You asked me a question.

"Just a question, Michael -- how is "warning" someone BEFORE he bids any less of a "violation" of eBay's rules? Seems to me that's still an effort to "interfere with other user's listings or auctions".

I don't know how you would know in advance who is going to bid on an auction, so eBay's rule implies that you not email current bidders, which I have seen them enforce again and again (albeit not against a well equipped "defendant" like yourself).

In other areas of eBay's policies, they have made it clear that they encourage users to communicate with each other about trading experiences. In fact, that's what the feedback forum is all about. My email address is available to anyone who looks at a seller's feedback when I've left a comment, and if I've left a negative, you are free to ask me more about it, and I'm free to answer as long as I'm truthful. If we are personal acquaintances and you ask me about a guy and I answer, eBay does not pretend to have jurisdiction over that.

Michael