Steve- I could not agree with you more. You hit the nail right on the head. Hopefully we can all learn from this most recent fiasco. cheers, Dave Anderson Cut Bank MT
****************************************************************************** ************************ Ebay response to false advertising is a bad joke...
They will claim neutrality about false advertising unless conclusively proven and will only take action if there are 5 or more complaints about individual auction sales from actual buyers against the ebay acct in one month OR if the OEM (in this case Cinelli) files a formal written complaint with ebay. Perhaps the third way to correct false advertising is to sue the company in court, but that is quite a cost to serve a US court summons in Singapore and win a case in court by default judgment!
I guess that ebay would rather collect their share of the money rather than resolve on-going false advertising complaints.
Another example of ebay inaction is where I complained to ebay that sellers misusing the name Campagnolo in the auction header to advertise another OEM unrelated part and to bait buyers to look. False advertising is clearly stated as a violation of the ebay buyer/seller agreement, but ebay will apparently not enforce its own rules unless prodded.
I prodded ebay about this deceptive advertising, they basically told me it up to Campagnolo to police their own trademark on ebay. When I called Richard Sterino at Campy to let him know about the abuse of the Campy name on ebay, he never returned my call left on his voice mail. I guess that Campy doesn't care unless they feel they are going to lose substantial money.
The bottom line is that false advertising runs rampant on ebay because they and OEM manufacturers let it occur. Only groups like the CR can encourage open discussion of problems like this on ebay which I believe makes the CR the best source of info on the net!
Regards, Steve Neago
Cincinnati, OH