The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I bring this topic up because I viewed the subform here on BS that is dedicated to spotting replicas (and reporting them on ebay). At what point will ebay get sued for allowing replica watches to be sold? Where I am going with this is that if ebay does not have the resources to police products sold in their store then they are negligent. I just refuse to believe that ebay could solely rely on a Caveat Emptor defense.

On the other side of the coin it's hard to feel sorry for people who are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a watch but dont know enough about what they are buying to prevent themselves from being scammed. I mean, really??? How in an auction style setting are you going to buy a $1500+ watch from a guy in Guangzhou China who uses terms like A+++ and displays a 30 year old watch that looks brand new?

There is a decent member base here and I wondered if anyone has ever tried to take on ebay because they were scammed?
Any attorneys that would care to chime in on this?

What makes ebay a great place to sell your possessions is that it is fairly cheap and easy to list them. If ebay had to inspect every single item that was listed on it's site, it would be much more costly to list items.

Never sucessfully.

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Al

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"

There is no reason to sue them. They are not advocating people to sell fake merchandise. They are actually pretty good at removing items that are reported, and sellers who continuosly sell counterfeit merchandise. If they were being permissive, I could see a case against them.

Using this business theory I could open a store in downtown Washington DC and rent tables to replica watch sellers, replica medicine sellers, counterfeit software sellers and illegal drug sellers and be perfectly legal and fine in doing so.
or....
Would I be negligent in permitting Acme Inc. from selling ceramic frogs that have dope inside especially given the fact that I have known for years that this is the preferred method to conceal drugs yet I did nothing to attempt to prevent it. All I did was take everyone on their word and because they had so many frogs there is no way I can inspect them.

eBay knows that there are a large amount of replica watches sold in their auctions, yet, they take no steps to prevent the sales.

eBay grossed $8.7 Billion US Dollars in 2009 and yet, they could not afford to hire a 20 man team of watch fanatics who know their stuff to review all Rolex, Panerai, Breitling, Omega, IWC and Hublot watch that is listed each day prior to the auction going live. If they have questions, they require more proof from the seller.
This is not difficult, many of us do this very same thing for eBay for free each day. Why cant a company that grosses $8.7 Billion do more to prevent big ticket item scams?

Recently in the U.S. Dallas Texas hosted the Super Bowl. How is a company supposed to keep track of over 80,000 seats?
They screwed up on over 200+ seats and guess what, they are being sued because they were negligent in the way they handled the sales of their seating.



I disagree for all the reasons I stated above. Also note, I am not asking for every single item to be checked, Art Work, High End Watches, etc.. remember... .$8.7 BBBBBillion dollars revenue.

But the problem doesn't apply only to watches. There are many other fake goods such as handbags, clothes, sunglasses, jewelry, ect...the list is almost endless. They don't have to check every item, but only have to make reasonable assurance that items are genuine.

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Terry

As stated on ebay " If you can not guarantee the product you are listing is genuine do not list on ebay " simple instructions to me,therefore listing counterfeit goods makes the seller responsible why does everyone want to sue people for their own shortcomings

You dont even come close to getting it.
So, I have a shortcoming because some replica seller listed it on ebay when ebay told them not to.
It's as if you feel that ebay has done a good enough job to prevent this from happening because they stated
"If you can not guarantee the product you are listing is genuine do not list on ebay"
like a scammer will say... "oh crap, I cant scam anyone because ebay said to not list it if it is not genuine, I had better not!"

eBay wont become more active in trying to curb this problem until someone makes them.

I'm a hard core right wing Republican, and if you dont know what that means, it means that I cant stand people who want to sue everyone for their own shortcomings.... thank you.. I'm quite conservative in that area.

I'm struggling to understand this logic, and struggling even more to understand the aggressiveness in some of the posts.

If something is worth money, then someone will fake it, and then someone else will try and sell that fake on eBay. Trying to police that would be impossible without the use of member reporting, and with a few exceptions (eBay Australia, eBay Canada) eBay do respond to member reports. Sure it takes longer for high feedback sellers, but there are few occasions where we have reported fakes and eBay hasn't done anything.

I don't buy in to the theory of hiring some watch experts, where do you find them, how do you keep them employed and happy, how do you go about confirmation, etc. You can't just look at high end names - people will fake Casios and Seikos too - do they not matter? There are currently about 368,000 wristwatches on eBay, and let's assume an average listing length of one week - that's about 52,500 new listings per day. How many people do you need to check them????

And that's before we add in pocket watches (which are harder to spot fakes in), clothing, leather goods, etc, etc, etc. And how do you police fake jewellery?

But back to watches for a minute, and specifically Breitlings.

We are a Breitling community so the level of expertise is pretty high. And yet less than 10 members could confidently call a 1950s 806 real or fake. Of those, probably only 2 or 3 could also confidently call a modern Chronomat Evo real or fake - so where does eBay find these people, persuade them to work for them, and get them to be equally knowledgable on modern and vintage IWC, JLC< Zenith, Breguet, etc, etc, etc. It's just not possible.

eBay have implemented their VeRO program, and a relatively low number of luxury brands have stepped up to the plate. I am more than sure that eBay has some pretty good lawyers advising them on their policies and I really don't know what more they can do.

But that's just my 0.02 delivered in what is intended to be a calm and relaxed manner.

I'm not sure why eBay is being singled out for criticism here. I'd guess no more than 2 or 3% of Breitlings on eBay are fake whereas probably 99% are fake on iOffer. If any site deserves taking down, it's this one.

(Note to mods: please delete site name if deemed inappropriate to mention)

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For more information on identifying Breitling replicas, please visit my web site
http://f4buz.com/watches/breitling/fakes/fakes.html

My objection with Ebay is less that fakes don't get reported as fakes, but more than genuine items get reported as fake by people who make it their business to re-sell vintage/LE type items as a business rather than individuals selling things for personal re-financing.

From what I can tell here, this isn't a problem in the watch community, but the purse community is rife with it-- someone wants to sell an old bag of theirs for $x, but the resellers (who obviously have to make a profit to stay in business) are selling it for $2x. The resellers report the item and it gets removed since the reseller, being a business, has far more feedback and time on the site, whereas the man (or likely woman, in this case) on the street might have only sold a few bits and pieces before this, and thus looks suspect.

I have two (obviously genuine) high-end bags I'd love to sell, but I'm afraid to put them up on Ebay in case the listing gets removed and my account gets nuked. While it's obviously sickening to see clear fakes flying under the radar, the other side of the coin bothers me personally far more, since there's virtually nothing that can be done about it-- at least with the fakes it's a case of buyer beware (and I say that as someone who was once stung by an Ebay transaction).

Maybe Mr nitro could sue ebay and let us know the results I would be most interested in the outcome and it will save me reporting any fakes as the practise of listing them will be removed.This was an interesting thread but got a little too agressive for my liking as Im not a hard core anything just a Breitling enthusiast.

You keep saying eBay is negligent. How so? The elements of a negligence claim are complex. First, you have to show eBay has a duty to care for its customers in a way that would require them to prevent the sale of fakes. Then you would have to show they breached that duty, that the breach was both the proximate cause and the cause in fact of injury to plaintiff, and that such breach resulted in harm to the plaintiff.

You run into a few problems, here. I'm not going to take the time to explore every legal avenue, but I'll address the obvious ones that stand out to me. One, you have to establish the duty to care, which you are just assuming exists. The question is, does eBay have a duty to care for its patrons that would require them to prevent the sale of fakes on their website? I'm not sure of the case law on this, but I recall a case in England where the court ruled eBay was not liable for copyright infringement due to the selling of fakes. Granted, we're talking American tort law here, not English intellectual property law. But the ruling shows it may be harder to pin down eBay on duty to care than it seems.

Even if you can establish that they have a duty to care for their patrons that involves preventing the sale of fakes, you have to prove they breached that duty. EBay does take measures to prevent the sale of fakes. You would have to prove that those measures do not sufficiently meet their duty to care. This is not the same as saying such measures are not sufficient to prevent the sale of all fakes. The question is, is what eBay is currently doing a reasonable means of providing the level of care for their patrons which they are legally required to provide? If not, why not? How do you prove it? Just saying they could be doing more isn't the same as saying they aren't doing enough.

Causation is another tricky thing. Who's to say eBay is the cause of a customer's harm? Is the customer who bought the fake in any way responsible for his own harm? What about the seller? Granted, comparative fault is a defense for a defendant to assert, but a plaintiff still has to show that "but for" eBay's breach of their duty to care, plaintiff would not have been harmed. Singling eBay out as the culprit among other culpable parties might be tough.

None of this is to say an enterprising attorney wouldn't attempt to make a class-action suit* out of this, but it hasn't happened yet. There are probably good reasons for that.

*And, practically speaking, it would have to be a class-action suit. The economic damages suffered by any one buyer of a fake likely aren't worth bringing a suit. Class actions bring a whole other host of complications.

eBay will remove ANY item if it is reported as being misrepresented. So if you list a Rolex as being authentic when it's actually proven to be a fake, it will be removed.

Second, if the item description outlines that the watch is a replica, and eBay is an international marketplace, eBay is not "endorsing" an illegal activity if it is legal to buy a replica.

Third, if the item is a fake / replica and not reported as such in the listing, eBay/PayPal provide full refunds after reviewing the original listing when it is proven that the item is not as described.

Finally, eBay facilitates criminal investigations and has an entire fraud team. The company proactively goes after scammers - so any lawsuit would likely never make it to court because eBay terms of conditions are crystal clear about where it stands on the issue and the seller is ultimately responsible for what they are providing.

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My understanding is eBay has a strict policy against the sale of replicas, even when they're listed as such. If it's a fake, the sale is prohibited, period.