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eBay, Etsy and other marketplaces on brink of having to disclose seller details
- WarOnPrivacy 4y agoActual Title: eBay, Etsy and Other Marketplaces on Brink of Having to Disclose Seller Details with INFORM Act ‘Hidden’ in 4,000+ Pages Federal Spending Bill Before Congress The bill passed since publication and I changed "on Brink of Having to" to "Now Have to" (and trimmed the end to fit).
- ryandrake 4y agoWhenever I see that rare consumer-protection or worker-protection law get passed in the US, I'm always amazed at how timid and gentle on corporations the law ends up being. I know I shouldn't be amazed but I still am. I read the bullet point list in the article and think "Wait, don't companies already have to do these sensible things?" When it comes to protecting the investor class, you get giant sledgehammers like SOX. When it comes to protecting the little people, they put on the kid gloves legislation and give the company a popsicle if they at least try to follow the law.
- ghayes 4y agoI think the sad fact, addressed in the article, is that the bill wasn’t going to pass without industry support. Oftentimes this means either a) limited recourse for failing to comply, and/or b) new barriers to entry to smaller organizations. While this bill is meek, it does seem to be purely a net gain, since the burden on businesses is low and it gives consumers an easier recourse in cases of fraud (since the collected information will now available directly or by a subpoena).
- Spooky23 4y agoSOC was in response from Enron which impacted a lot of regular people. Enron bought up utilities that were often “widow and orphan”, boring stocks that were held for a long time by retirees. I knew a few people whose parent or grandparents lost everything when their ancient electric company stock turned into Enron, then rode to zero. Minus a big story, people aren’t in favor of consumer law.
- aksss 4y agoTBF, Sox is also protecting the little guy and it has the effect (for better AND worse) of increasing the cost of doing business (properly/legally). When regulating small businesses it’s important to be mindful of the overhead inflicted such that significant barriers aren’t being raised to business creation. Similarly, Amazon doesn’t advocate for $15 minimum wage out of altruism, no matter what your thought on the issue - they can afford to pay it whereas more local businesses would struggle and go under. Anti-competitive regulatory advocacy is a thing, so light touches in the SMB arena represent caution as often or more than regulatory capture.
- googlryas 4y agoWill Amazon 3P sellers be subjected to this? It will be interesting to see how many of the made up brands like HORDUSY and ASCALFT are backed by the same parties.
- hooverd 4y agoIf you can bear the shipping times, the same crap is a lot cheaper on AliExpress.
- jorvi 4y agoBut without the regulatory shield. If an AliExpress-ordered charger burns your house down, good luck getting any money from the seller based in Asia. If a dropshipped charger burns your house down, the European ‘entity’ (usually just some dude in Europe making a buck) is on the hook, and either his legally required liability insurance makes you whole, or you can garnish his income for decades.
- hyperhopper 4y agoIn America, we really don't get the shield upside, though
- dragonwriter 4y agoIn America, we tend to have strict liability for product defects across the chain of commerce. At least in California, that is established to include Amazon for Marketplace products, at least those that are FBA. Bolger v. Amazon, 53 Cal. App. 5th 431 (2020). EDIT: Actually, that also applies to non-FBA, as well; Loomis v. Amazon, 63 Cal.App. 5th 466 (2021).
- hooverd 4y agoHaha, I try not to buy things that could burn my house down from there. Unless it's 3D printer parts ironically, but those sellers have somewhat of a reputation to maintain.
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- Animats 4y agoWell, yeah. That should have been required years ago. In general, you're not allowed to run an anonymous business. Arguably, it already was in the EU, under the European Electronic Commerce Act. If Amazon doesn't like this, they can be the seller themselves, and take responsibility for product liability. They've fought that in court. They lost in Pennsylvania, appealed, and then paid off the plaintiff to avoid an adverse decision on the record.[1] [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/product-liability-and-toxics-law/amazon-seller-liability-issue-dropped-at-pennsylvania-high-court https://news.bloomberglaw.com/product-liability-and-toxics-l...
- ChuckMcM 4y agoThis was what I was thinking as well, the whole freight forwarded "fulfilled by amazon" thing where a "company" is none existent so that liability is not a problem (if anyone gets serious in their complaints the company goes "poof" and a new version shows up).
- crote 4y agoHow could the company be nonexistent? Does Amazon not check that the company you claim to be actually exists?
- Animats 4y agoNo, they don't. In the Pennsylvania case, Amazon claimed they were unable to find the seller. That's why they couldn't pass the buck to the seller.
- ChuckMcM 4y agoAnimats is correct, ask yourself the other question "Do I need to be an 'official' company to do business as one on Amazon?" The answer is no, very little data has traditionally been required to be presented as a business on Amazon and that practice has been copied to Walmart, Newegg, and elsewhere. All Amazon needed was for you to ship product to their warehouses, and a place for them to send payments. In the US there is something called a "DBA" which are initials for "Doing Business As" and you can register it with the county and then use that name to create a bank account. There were a number of tutorials out there about how to create a "company" where you wired money to some factory in China that would then drop ship your "product" to Amazon, set up a DBA and a checking account, and then create a bunch of ads for AdWords/Twitter/Facebook etc to sell your gizmo for 5 - 10x what you paid for it. Amazon handled all the logistics, you collected cash, and when your stock ran low you wired some more cash to the factory to send more product. Instant side hustle that brought in revenue. There are literally thousands of these companies out there. Because Amazon wasn't required legally to validate you were officially a business, they don't. This tries to plug some of that loophole with the trick that when you buy your product they have to tell you to whom the money is going. With that, a private investigator, and $10K you can often get to the individual involved. Now whether you can recover any money from them? That isn't really answered. It just ups the risk for the "fly by night" vendors.
- trentnix 4y agoNot only will this give consumers a measure of recourse when they are ripped off by sellers, it will give vendors and manufacturers a clearer idea of which of their distributors and retailers are violating their vendor agreement. Those that wish to better enforce MAP and other terms of their agreement will have the information to do so. Unfortunately, I'm guessing we'll find out many vendors prefer to be ignorant (and theoretically powerless) as long as they move units.
- samtho 4y agoIt remains to be seen with how much enforcement this will receive. If the remedy is that Amazon deplatforms the seller and just gets random, trivial fines now and again, this could be totally useless.
- from 4y agoStrict enforcement of MSRP is bad for consumers so I’m not sure why you’d celebrate that.
- DangitBobby 4y agoReally? In my experience violation of MSRP is over, not under.
- from 4y agoMAP is minimum advertised price. For instance in the old days lots of Herman Miller distributors sold online for a lot lower than what Herman Miller wanted them to so Herman Miller banned them from distributing their products. In the context of “brand integrity” the debate is usually about undercutting.
- trentnix 4y agoMAP enforcement is essential if brick and mortar retailers are going to stay in business. And MAP enforcement is essential for companies seeking to maintain brand value and integrity. I believe both of those things are good for consumers.
- crote 4y agoSeller details of high-volume business sellers, mind you. With additional provisions to protect the privacy of individuals. I generally agree with the law. Marketplaces like this have long been used as a front for scamming, and with the anonymity provided there are basically zero repercussions. If i am doing business with someone I want to know who I am doing business with, so that there is at least the possibility of taking legal actions. Now let's hope we'll soon see similar regulations for Amazon sellers, ideally with some way to prevent commingling inventory. The only thing which stands out to me is the relatively low monetary threshold: $5000 might be a lot in revenue if you are selling something like second-hand clothing, but something like a single car or camera can easily put you over that limit already. The bill refers to "high-volume sellers", and defines that as a) 200 orders, or b) $5000. It does make sense to protect high-value sales too, especially considering that the information only needs to be disclosed to the marketplace at that point - providing the information to the buyer only needs to happen at $20.000 and at that point you are definitely a business - but it is interesting that they do not seem to explicitly state so.
- fgsgfsdgfdg 4y ago[flagged]
- matthewmacleod 4y agoNobody said that – in fact, they explicitly stated concerns around this issue – and this is a bad-faith comment.
- fgsgfsdgfdg 4y agoWhy is it bad faith? "In addition, marketplaces would have to disclose a business seller’s full name, address, phone number, and email address, only allowing for some limited protections for home-based businesses."
- jakear 4y agoThis doesn't apply to Craigslist, it only applies to marketplaces (where the platform is in charge of collecting and distributing fees). Regardless, for personal sellers the only required disclosure is country and state of operation.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago(OP) I'm reading conflicting articles on how available seller details will be. Going by this quote from eBay, it seems that seller info will be very available: "And if you reach an annual total revenue of $20,000, we’re required to include your name (or company name) and full physical address in purchase confirmation emails and order details, but there are some exceptions." ref: https://www.valueaddedresource.net/what-sellers-need-to-know-about-inform-act/ https://www.valueaddedresource.net/what-sellers-need-to-know... Meanwhile Etsy was warning it's sellers that they would be at some risk. Etsy users on Reddit were wondering if Etsy was overblowing the issue. ref: https://old.reddit.com/r/EtsySellers/comments/nilj9n/the_inform_act/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EtsySellers/comments/nilj9n/the_inf... Lastly: A June analysis of IA considered how the bill's language will aid small minded autocrats seeking to unearth people they don't like. ref:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743375
- Scoundreller 4y agoArticle says that if it’s your home address, only your state/country would be published. Boohoo. And it doesn’t have to be in the listing, it could just be on your order confirmation.
- mgliwka 4y agoThe DAC7 directive mandates a similar thing in the EU starting next year: https://home.kpmg/mt/en/home/insights/2021/04/dac7-new-reporting-obligations-for-digital-platforms.html https://home.kpmg/mt/en/home/insights/2021/04/dac7-new-repor...
- jacquesm 4y agoIt's pretty weird how they were able to not do this so far. Think about it: company presents shop front, sells you goods, handles the payment and instructs some nebulous third party to ship goods (or sometimes they ship them from their central warehouse). Goods arrive, or not, and quite frequently are either broken or in some other way deficient, not the article advertised or they don't arrive at all. And then ... poof legal magic ... the company that presented the shop front and sold you the goods, handled the payment and probably instructed the nebulous third party says they have nothing to do with the whole matter and the nebulous third party - assuming they exist in the first place - disappears only to reappear a day or so later under a different name. Either the company (Amazon, Ebay, Etsy and many others) should accept responsibility for any merchandise where they handle the transaction or they should get out of the loop and allow you to transact with the third party directly, so Amazon would only serve as the means of discovery.
- pishpash 4y agoMeans of discovery like Google Shopping? They are getting more into the intermediation also, where do you draw the line?
- squeaky-clean 4y agoIf I use Google Shopping to search for something, all it does is redirect me to the actual retailer, there's no way to purchase from Google themselves. Retailers might pay for priority placement in the search listing, but that's the extent of Google's financial involvement in the transaction. It's not like I pay Google and they hide the details of the seller from me.
- pishpash 4y agoThis is not true. I've encountered Google Shopping offering to checkout right on Google Shopping, where underneath they wrap the third-party transaction for you. They had some questionable sellers on there, were selling used goods, and they were even promoting it with discounts. It was probably a minor feature being trialed but the point is the line is not so clear.
- csande17 4y agoI wonder if this creates an opportunity for "seller privacy" services to establish the minimum viable LLC, PO box, etc on behalf of sellers. Like domain privacy, but with more paperwork.
- kube-system 4y agoThese services have existed for a very long time already.
- tlogan 4y agoThese services already exist and they a good way to have some privacy. However setting up LLC and then running the scam might not the smarterst idea in the world.
- WaitWaitWha 4y agoI am just concerned about the privacy implications we do not see yet. I am also super confused by the definition of "high-volume"... > any continuous 12-month period during the previous 24 months, has entered into 200 or more discrete sales or transactions of new or unused consumer products and an aggregate total of $5,000 or more in gross revenues.
- aksss 4y agoWhat’s confusing about that? * you sell new or unused products, AND * you have more than 200 transactions in any prior 12 month period within last two years, AND * you have gross sales GTE $5000.
- lstodd 4y agoAnyone saying that 20K year revenue is a "high-volume business seller" is out of his mind (this might be sponsored though).
- tptacek 4y agoPresumably the distinction is between people who use eBay like a virtual garage sale (selling only sporadically) and people who use eBay as an ongoing source of income.
- lstodd 4y agoEtsy isn't a garage sale. When we with my ex started selling handmade stuff there, we had revenue above 20k in the first year knowing almost nothing about anything. Mind you, handmade isn't IT, margins are thin. Yes, we had that as an ongoing source of income. Why is this a reason for doxxing us?
- squeaky-clean 4y agoEtsy can be a garage sale. It may be dominated by dropshippers at the moment, but the average person selling real DIY things on Etsy is not making anywhere near 20k/yr. You two must be very skilled at your craft to be able to do that within your first year, even if revenue != profit. Either that or you're selling a couple things that cost 10k+ to make (Which actually wouldn't count as high volume because you also need 200 sales)
- lstodd 4y ago20K rev divided by 200 sales is $100/sale. We dıd about $200-$300 on an margin of about 2%, we got like $1K profit, which considering how much went into "capital" as in buying tools and learning how to use them becomes very negative value. In fact we went into black on our third year. And now this. Okay, fuck Congress. Maybe I'll buy it and fire everyone just like Musk did with Twitter. :=/
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- etchalon 4y agoThe high-volume requirements sort of kill the intent of the bill, since scammers will just jump to new profiles once they've hit certain thresholds. I assume 3P "mule" accounts will become a thing too, with individuals recruited, or their PII stolen and used, to act as the seller.
- ValueAddedRS 4y ago3P mule accounts have been a thing on eBay for years and eBay has been very much aware of it since at least 2015 when Brian Krebs wrote about it. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/how-carders-can-use-ebay-as-a-virtual-atm/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/how-carders-can-use-ebay... See also Confessions of a Nespresso Money Mule by Nina Kollars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT2oAzTcvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT2oAzTcvU In 2020, I personally reported 150+ hijacked eBay accounts used to commit $160k+ in triangulation fraud against a company I worked for at the time - eBay did very little to help. In February 2022, I collected about 80 reports from people who received 1099-Ks from eBay even though they had never knowingly created an account on the site - their PII (names, addresses, and in some cases even correct SSNs) were used to create fraudulent accounts that sold tens of thousands of dollars each with no vetting or verification of any kind by eBay. And all of that is a tiny drop in the bucket. I place a lot of the blame for where we are, and why this legislation ever came to be, squarely on the marketplaces. They've known about rampant fraud and scams for years, could have put in stricter vetting and verification procedures, invested more in highly trained human powered Trust & Safety to deal with counterfeits and fraud etc. but for the most part they have done the minimum required to cover their own "assets" and nothing more...which still left room for a lot of consumer harm to be done. While I don't think this will curb all of the fraud, like you said they will likely just jump to new accounts, having to produce actual documents to match the stolen PII may at least slow them down a bit.
- charlieyu1 4y agoI am a long term MTG player. Sometimes I sell on eBay, about once per two or three years, because I get too many lowballs in other groups. Last year eBay asked me to verify my identity because I was selling for $260. It was cringe, I had much larger buys or sales in 2000s but apparently their database don't even have the record anymore
- squeaky-clean 4y agoProbably because the income thresholds for such things were heavily lowered in 2021. Previously you didn't need to include the sales on a 1099K until sales exceeded $20,000. It was changed to $600.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoDisclosing seller details is a great idea, but "disclosing buyer details" would be, too. If you put an item up for sale on craigslist, you're fairly likely to have someone say "Your price is acceptable. My agent will pick it up tomorrow and give you a cashier's check." There's a time window of a few days in which the bank seems to have accepted the cashier's check, but then they discover it's fraudulent, and by then you've already given away the item. If you fell for it.
- IncRnd 4y agoAnd, then there are another 3999 pages in the bill. There aren't enough hours in the day to read all of these 4k-10k page bills to learn what they really say.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago[dead]
- tmpburning 4y agoI thought that they already were...
- naizarak 4y agoThere's a hundred ways to mask your selling identity, this law won't change anything except, as usual, placing more bureaucratic baggage on honest sellers.
- neilv 4y agoI wonder how this will work for all the sellers based in China. Sellers in China are indispensable for things like repair parts for 15 year-old laptops. Occasionally an obviously shoddy quality, and presumably using branding without license. But usually a genuine pull, genuine new-old-stock, or a sufficient-quality knockoff/aftermarket part that's worthwhile. (Though I'll never buy any kind of flash media on eBay, ever again, and I'd love to have those counterfeit sellers shut down.) There's also the occasional curiosity, like what looks like multiple seller accounts for the same entity, or claims that an item ships from HK but ends up shipping from Shenzen. I wonder how they'll get valid seller identity info from the sketchier sellers outside of the US, where that might be harder to verify.
- user3939382 4y agoI have experience with these schemes. Usually ends up as “we were required to ask and document the answer, not to conduct thorough investigations of veracity.”
- neilv 4y agoOh, I could see that. In the US, for domestic sellers, I could see it having some positive impact. (For work, occasionally I had to look into some sellers of diverted goods on various online marketplaces. The info from business names and addresses was helpful. And if it were fabricated/false info, there's a good chance that could be figured out, and the fact that false info was given would also be helpful.)
- technick 4y agoWhich one of our corrupt politicians introduced this fine law?
- subradios 4y agoNo travel, trade or transaction made without a retinal scan its banned.
- davelondon 4y agoEarlier this year I took Etsy to the UK small claims court when a seller refused to accept a return (it wasn't a customised item, so returns are mandatory under UK law). I wanted to take the seller to court but Etsy refused to give me the seller's details. Etsy argued two things in court: 1) I can't sue Etsy because my contract was with the seller. 2) I can't sue Etsy in a UK court because their terms and conditions say I must sue them in Ireland. The judge agreed with me that it was ludicrous that they could refuse to give me the seller's details, while simultaneously arguing that I should be suing the seller. The judge thought that #1 was such a serious violation that he disregarded #2. I won the case.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _carbyau_ 4y agoIs this going to affect scalping? GPU scalping hits the $$$ required pretty quickly.