eBay is suing Amazon for allegedly poaching its sellers

[midian182]

What just happened? eBay and Amazon are two of the biggest and oldest websites where people shop for goods, but as with so many tech giants, their rivalry can lead to court battles. It's been reported that the online auction company is suing Jeff Bezos’ firm for allegedly poaching sellers from its marketplace.

eBay’s lawsuit, which was filed yesterday in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, claims that dozens of Amazon reps from the US and around the world created eBay accounts specifically to recruit “high-value” sellers using the company’s internal messaging system.

“Over the past several years, Amazon has perpetrated a scheme to infiltrate and exploit eBay’s internal member email system,” states the suit. “Amazon did this to recruit high-value eBay sellers to Amazon. The breadth and scope of Amazon’s conduct is startling. Since 2015, dozens of Amazon sales representatives in the U.S. and overseas set up eBay member accounts to access eBay’s ‘M2M’ email system and used that system to solicit many hundreds of eBay sellers to sell on Amazon’s platform.”

More than half of Amazon’s sales come from third-party sellers. With both companies making billions of dollars from their cut of these transactions, it’s not surprising to see eBay taking legal action. The suit comes two weeks after eBay sent Amazon a cease-and-desist letter demanding it stop stealing its sellers, but the tech behemoth apparently ignored the request.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, eBay claims to have evidence "that Amazon coordinated this scheme from its headquarters." eBay says it traced the messages sent to sellers to Amazon IP addresses.

Additionally, when Amazon contacted the sellers, it broke up its emails and phone numbers by using periods and spelling out addresses. eBay says this was Amazon’s attempt to avoid detection and proof it knew it was breaking the rules.

The suit says that Amazon’s practices violated California computer crime law and its own user agreement.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/76985-ebay-suing-amazon-allegedly-poaching-sellers.html

 

[Squid Surprise]

This will be interesting to see it played out... my bet is that Amazon counter-sues for something... it drags on for years... eventually Amazon pays a "hefty" sum that will be trivial to them... and because it will be years later, it won't really tarnish Amazon in any way as they'll claim their practices are now far more ethical...

 

[Goamist]

Well, it's not like those sellers couldn't ignore the e-mails from amazon reps. I'm pretty sure that they were knowing fully well what they were doing when switching boats. And if they DID switch boats, it's because amazon offered them better terms than ebay. And better terms for sellers might also mean better prices for the end-user. Just sayin'...

 

[tipstir]

Whoever has the most funds will prevail.

 

[MaikuTech]

Whoever has the most funds will prevail.

Wrong.
Whoever has the most issues loses the battle, from a consumer and seller point of view.
Ebay will lose that fight or pay some stiff consequences when **** really begans to hit the ceiling.

 

[tipstir]

Wrong.
Whoever has the most issues loses the battle, from a consumer and seller point of view.
Ebay will lose that fight or pay some stiff consequences when **** really begans to hit the ceiling.

You didn't understand my logic there my friend. Amazon will win since it has grown from just selling books from a home garage into what it is today. ebay pretty much started the same way. Not has huge as Amazon. Like I said who has the funds will prevail the answer is Amazon. I don't take sides I do order things from Amazon in the past. But just made order from ebay last week. Wrong or right still ebay doesn't have a chance against Amazon.

 

[Uncle Al]

I have only recently been checking out more and more on ebay and I can understand why Amazon is going after them ...... their prices are more reasonable, in some cases WAY more reasonable and from what I've seen, ebay dosen't change prices hour by hour, user by user as Amazon has been caught doing .......