EBay Sues Amazon, Alleging Sellers Were Illegally Poached

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From The Wall Street Journal:

EBay, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com, accusing the company of illegally poaching sellers on its marketplace via eBay’s internal messaging system.

The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County in California, accuses Amazon of having “perpetrated a scheme to infiltrate and exploit eBay’s internal member email system” over the past few years. The alleged scheme was used by dozens of Amazon sales representatives in the U.S. and abroad to recruit high-value eBay sellers to Amazon, the lawsuit said.

. . . .

“For years, and unbeknownst to eBay, Amazon has been engaged in a systematic, coordinated effort to infiltrate and exploit eBay’s proprietary M2M system on eBay’s platform to lure top eBay sellers to Amazon,” eBay alleges in the lawsuit. “The scheme is startling in breadth—involving large numbers of Amazon representatives (“Amazon reps”), targeting many hundreds of eBay sellers, and spanning several countries overseas and many states in the United States (including California).”

In the complaint, eBay cites alleged evidence “that Amazon coordinated this scheme from its headquarters,” including that many of the messages sent to its sellers followed similar patterns or were even identical. Many of the accounts used to send the messages were accessed from devices linked to Amazon internet protocol addresses, the lawsuit adds.

. . . .

EBay’s lawsuit accuses Amazon of intentional interference with contractual relations and economic relations, as well as fraud and violation of the California penal and business and professions codes.

Amazon and eBay have been competing for both sellers and consumers for years. Both companies heavily rely on independent merchants to sell items on their sites. EBay is wholly reliant on such sellers to sell on its marketplace, while Amazon uses a hybrid model as a retailer with a platform for independent sellers, too.

Still, Amazon as of late has relied more heavily on independent merchants to fuel its sales. Typically, those transactions are more profitable because Amazon takes a cut of the revenue and charges for warehousing, advertising and other fees. More than 50% of all items sold on its site are now provided by outside sellers.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal 

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8 thoughts on “EBay Sues Amazon, Alleging Sellers Were Illegally Poached”

  1. Golly! I wonder how much $$$ Bezos can afford to spend defending against this lawsuit.

    And how much $$$ Ebay can afford to press forward with it.

    Internet popcorn sales will be through the roof! Enjoy! 🙂

  2. And it couldn’t possibly be the sellers (like indie ebook writers) were just covering their bets by selling at both places – and like those selling ebooks they may have gone ‘all in’ when Amazon sales outnumbered ebay sales, nor do I recall ebay offering to do the storing/taxing/shipping for their sellers – or has that changed?

    • Just adding:

      “The activity dates back to at least 2015 and involved dozens of Amazon representatives, who each sent hundreds of emails, it says.
      EBay was alerted to the issue a few weeks ago by a seller and asked Amazon to stop.”

      So ebay wants us to believe that for the past three years Amazon has been fishing for their sellers and someone finally mentioned it to them tewo weeks ago?

      Was this the first seller to turn Amazon down – or was it one that was upset they didn’t get an invite? (Third option of course is one that went over to Amazon and got kicked off for some reason and then decided to tell ebay about it.)

      I guess they’re right, truth is stranger than fiction …

    • Everyone/anyone getting their junk from China will be feeling that one. As with the $15/hour and USPS rates change, I see this hitting Amazon less than it does a lot of other companies (like Walmart.)

      Color me a nutcase, but it seems to me each of the ‘This will hurt/bring down Amazon’ rules/laws/cases are doing much less damage to Amazon than they are to the rest of the markets.

      • Not nutty.
        One word: AWS.
        Second word: KDP.
        Prime Video, Amazon Music…

        There’s a reason Amazon has been investing so strongly in digital products and in services.

        • But even ignoring those, trying to hamstring shipping isn’t going to hurt Amazon as much as it will other companies that rely on shipping; the $15/hour will let them take their pick of warehouse workers in most places.

          Unless ebay can prove ‘interference with contractual relations’ – and not that sellers just like Amazon more – I see this as just an attempt at attracting attention on ebay’s part.

          Now though, if I had a really strong piece of ADS, I’d have to wonder how much Amazon itself is paying for all those ADS pieces that cause those in office to cast laws like Harry Potter casts spells – but like Con they’re hitting/damaging everyone but Kirk/Amazon.

          Like actors in a movie, in a fight to the death on screen, the director yells ‘cut’, and Jeff and Donald laugh it off and go bar hopping together. 😉

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