eBay and Windsor Auctions: The Road to Perdition

Can a little company like Windsor Auctions, Inc. take on a Fortune 500 company? As reported a few weeks ago, eBay (EBAY) had informed Windsor Auctions that their eBay user names would be suspended on April 6th.

April 6th came and went and Windsor was still in business. However, on April 8th, just before Windsor was to begin their 6:00 P.M. sale, eBay pulled the plug on their auctions, eBay stores and suspended all of their eBay user names.

One has to wonder why Windsor Auctions is perceived as a threat to an organization as large as eBay?

I contacted Windsor Auctions located in the United Kingdom and was informed by the owner of that eBay account that their Windsor Auctions, U.K. eBay user name had been suspended without notice nor cause. Ms. Allan, President of the company stated that her company has long-term agreements in place with both Live Auctioneers, LLC (eBay's partner) and eBay Live Auctions.

The notice posted by eBay on Windsor's accounts proclaims that WindsorAuctions-USA and JewelryAuctions are no longer registered users.

This brings up the question as to why were three user names (one of which belonging to a Ms. Allan located in the United Kingdom) suspended? Did they have terrible feedback? Did they not ship customers their packages in a timely manner? Were they the worst possible sellers in all of eBay history?

One look at their feedback reveals positive ratings. Comments left by buyers praise these companies for providing excellent customer, quality products and fast shipping. This leaves the all important question as to why would eBay (who featured Windsor Auctions in their own eBay Entrepreneur Magazine in 2007) suspend a seller with a stellar reputation?

One may need to look no further than the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, for the answer. Windsor Auctions filed a lawsuit against eBay in December 2007 which alleges that eBay violated Federal Antitrust and Unfair Competition laws.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out these suspensions may be directly related to the filing of the lawsuit.

As I reported in a recent article, I brought up the question of who owns an eBay users name. Does eBay own the user name, the reputation and the links flowing in from the search engines into that users eBay store or, is that user name the rightful property of the original owner?

Can a seller (newly registered or established) request an eBay user name, which is no longer being used by its original owner? The answer would be "yes". eBay can release a user name. In fact, if an eBay seller is fortunate enough to have an eBay account representative, that representative may even send out a reminder notice that the user name will be available (and up for grabs) on a specific date.

In searching for Windsor's link popularity in Google and Yahoo, I was presented with tens of thousands of links. I found links into their eBay store, eBay guides, product listings and eBay blog. No doubt, once the search engines crawl these links (and find no pages to crawl), the links will either disappear from the search engines and/or be re-directed to other eBay pages, as the majority of these pages are tagged with eBay address extensions.

What's puzzling is that Windsor (who was suspended) is the plaintiff and eBay is the defendant in this case (and a case it is). The broad strokes of Windsor's lawsuit brings into question potential claims from regular eBay users, those utilizing the eBay Live Auctions platform, those selling through the eBay Live Auction platform, those who consign their goods to global auction houses and third party partner providers of eBay Live.

A newly amended case against eBay (and sellers utilizing the eBay Live Auction platform) was filed on or about April 4th and totals a staggering ninety-four pages. The contents of that lawsuit will published online within the next few days.

Disclosure: None