Ebay and Me

[omgb]

Well, I thought I'd write Ebay about their new policy. My initial letter is on the bottom and their response is up top.

Dear Reece,


Thank you for writing Ebay in regard to the new Firearms policy.

We appreciate your feedback on this policy. Like the rest of the
country, Ebay was deeply saddened by the events at Virginia Tech. We
felt that it was necessary to revisit our policy on firearms and
weapons-related items.

While no items related to the incident were purchased illegally on our
site, it was important to make some changes to ensure we do everything
possible to provide a safe marketplace. After careful consideration, we
decided to restrict listing any part that is required for the firing of
a gun.

After careful consideration, we decided to expand the scope of our
existing policy to specifically restrict any part that is required for
the firing of a gun. Please understand, we are not disputing the right
to own or trade these items. We've simply decided that these types of
items are not right for our marketplace or our business. Consumers in
the US are still free to purchase these items from other businesses.

We appreciate your point regarding books. While books can be used for
evil, books were not primarily designed to take life. Again, we
appreciate your feedback; however, these two issues are very different
in our judgment.

At Ebay we take the safety of our community and our marketplace very
seriously. Our policies often go beyond the requirements of the law to
ensure that our marketplace is a safe and trusted place for buyers and
sellers to engage in trade. After careful consideration our executives
and our Trust and Safety team determined, that while legal, any item
required to fire a gun has no place on Ebay.

I understand that you may disagree with Eba's new Firearms policy. If
you would like us to consider a policy change, please submit a
suggestion to Ebay via the following link:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/newtoebay/suggest.html (http://pages.ebay.com/help/newtoebay/suggest.html)

Although you may not see a policy change as a result of your suggestion,
the appropriate personnel will be made aware of your position on this
issue.


If you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to reply to this
email and let us know.



Sincerely,
Brewster



Ebay Customer Support
______________________________


Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

From: <omgb
To: Ebay Customer Support <rswebhelp@ebay.com (rswebhelp@ebay.com)>
Subject: GS%T00030 Site issue (General issues) [ 30105T ?01 ]


User Feedback: 149
User State: ?01

Banned items

Message: I wish to lodge a protest concerning the new firearms policy
that will go into effect mid month. Banning reloading items, shell cases and bullets it foolish at best and down right useless as a violence control policy. If and when this policy goes into effect, I will be dropping my membership from both Ebay and pay-pal.

One of my major search and purchase areas has been gun parts and
reloading equipment. I am a credentialed teacher and a veteran of the Vietnam-Cold War era. I have no criminal record and neither do any of my friends. My daughter is a police officer as well. None of us can begin to fathom what it is you hope to accomplish with your new policy. True, that idiot from Virginia Tech used Ebay to further his evil and twisted plan. However, Ebay was not the cause of his actions nor did it really enable him. What he bought from Ebay could have just as easily been purchased elsewhere. It would be good to keep in mind that any product, can be used for evil. Shoot, you might as well ban books as ban guns. The ideas they contain are far more influential and are frequently far from being inert or harmless. Indeed, books carry all sorts of ideas, good, bad, violent, peaceful etc. Unlike firearms and firearms parts, books do have moral content.

I would hope you reconsider your plans. If not, we are going to have to part ways.

Sincerely,

R J Talley



R J Talley
Teacher/James Madison Fellow/NRA member/Hunter/Shooter

[Shiloh]

At least you got a response. One tailored to your specific letter to boot. Very well done sir.!!

Shiloh

[Howdy Doody]

It's OK to sell porn on Ebay though I guess. That seems to be the jist of it. One amendmant stinks and another gets full support. Seems that is what they are saying. Nice.

[nicholst55]

Boycott E-Bay, PayPal and Half.com (all part of the same corporate entity)! Tell others to do the same!

Close your accounts and tell them why; their bottom line is all they understand, and they've decided that there aren't enough of us who will stick to our guns (pun intended) to matter. Let's prove them wrong!

[Char-Gar]

I am not happy with Ebay's change of policy, as it was a good source for many items. That said, I am not plumb ratchet jawed about it.

Ebay is a very large money making business and in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, where the bad guy bought magazine on Ebay, I can understand their decision.

They have noticed the immense pressure on Congress to change the laws to make certain that mental illness problems are reported and pop up on the mandatory background check needed to purchase a firearm.

Public opinion frequently is emotion driven and doesn't make good sense when placed under the microscope of hard cold facts and logic. Congress and businesses like Ebay response to this nonsense even though it is a stupid and ineffective notion. Dare I mention all of the public hysteria over the border fence.

Ebay is dependent on public good will to stay in business and the emotional state of the nation over the shooting could hurt Ebay in a major way. Their decision was just a marketing decision pure and simple. I don't think it reflects an intrinsic anti-gun sentiment, but a response to general public emotion driven sentiment.

If you are in business to do business with the general public, you have to keep an eye on public sentiment. To do otherwise is unwise and foolhearty.

It is easy for us to be single issue folks and damn Ebay to hell for this decision, but if you are in the position of having to keep an eye on their bottom line, you might see it different.

As much as we would like to turn the clock back to another and in or opinion better times, we must live in today's world. Gun owners are free to boycott Ebay and I think they expect that to happen, but it won't change their mind. They have run the numbers and feel that is a minor hicky compared to what could happen if they don't change their policy.

[Scrounger]

Just look at the ration of caca they are getting from the small gun-loving community, threatening boycott etc. Just imagine what if the other folks there, the 97% who don't do guns, threatened to walk if they didn't drop guns etc. Now if you're running a billion dollar business, which group do you try to please? Remember, for every one of us, there are 30 to 40 people out there who aren't gun nuts. And growing....

[Merc41]

Chargar: Ebay is a very large money making business and in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, where the bad guy bought magazine on Ebay, I can understand their decision.

Frankly I don't understand a thing about their decision to do what they did, other than being politically correct and falling to the anti-gun cries.


Chargar: Gun owners are free to boycott Ebay and I think they expect that to happen, but it won't change their mind. They have run the numbers and feel that is a minor hicky compared to what could happen if they don't change their policy.

No, boycotting Ebay probably won't do a single thing to hurt their business, but I sure as hell will feel better!


Scrounger: Just look at the ration of caca they are getting from the small gun-loving community, threatening boycott etc.

Not a threat at all. I dropped my membership with ebay and will never go back on thier site again. And since when is expressing ones opinion about anti-gun liberals like those at ebay a "ration of caca"?

I guess we have lost the battle before even entering the fight. Not doing business on ebay probably won't change their minds, nor will it hurt them in the least, but at least I can say that I won't be contributing to their anti-gun attitude anymore!

[KYCaster]

Chargar and Scrounger, While I respect your oppinions and your right to express them, I have to disagree with you. I think E-bay's policy is explicitly anti-gun and not just "a good business decision".

I also disagree with Scrounger's assessment of our opposition. There appear to be pretty equal numbers of "gun nuts" and antis who are truly passionate about the issue, with the rest of the population somewhere in the middle, mostly ambivilent about guns and their lawful use. The gun-grabbers appear to be financed by a relatively few very rich and very powerful individuals, while our side has a very large number of contributors donating small ammounts to the cause. (I may be totally off base, but that's the way I see it.)

Now, the problem with E-bay's policy change is that here we have a very large, very powerful market force telling the public that there is a whole new class of consumer products that is unfit for distribution to the general public, and public perception being what it is, there will be a significant number of people who will believe it. Just ask yourself, if E-bay had not made an issue of the situation, how many people would have known (or cared) that E-bay had participated in the VTech shooting (more perception). It would have been just another sound bite on the evening news, now it's a devisive issue because of E-bays announcment and the resulting outcry from "The lunatic fringe who think everybody should be armed".

I'm not saying that you should abandon E-bay, I'm still undecided about that myself. I'm a plumber and I don't interview all my potential customers to see if they are anti-gun, democrats, under endictment for child molesting or any other issue I feel strongly about, so why should I limit the potential market for anything I want to sell online when 99% of the available buyers don't care one way or the other whether E-bay restricts gun-related products.

On the other hand, any product that I offer on E-bay results in income to an organization that uses part of the income generated from that offer to promote an anti-gun agenda. The list of businesses I boycot be cause of their anti-gun stance is fairly short....McDonalds, Levi Strauss, Tommy Hilfigger and Rosie O'donnell...I'll have to decide if E-bay is next on the list.

Jerry

[buck1]

Well for what ever good it will do I gave EBAY a LARGE pice of my mind also.