eBay execs targeted Steiners of *eCommerce Bytes* for sick harassment

News for Ecomm Sellers
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Small update, I think, published today?

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FYI The original airing of this was years ago I thought?

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I think so? It was re-aired with updates this year, looks like there is a secondary update today:

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It was aired in March 2023, and the article was originally published in March 2023.

It was updated this week with the Wenig statement, I believe:

Devin Wenig:

I am appalled at what happened, and my heart goes out to the Steiners. They did not deserve what happened to them in any way. The outrageous actions of a few former employees do not represent my values or the company I led for many years. Had I been aware of what was going on, I would have stopped it immediately.

As a reminder…

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I’ll have to read it but this sounds like some movie about a dystopian future ruled by the Umbrella Corp or Wallace or Hanka Robotics or Weyland Corp

wild

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Ebay to pay $3 million penalty over harassment of couple behind newsletter (msn.com)

I guess Ebay has real people paying attention :astonished: Too bad they are mentally juveniles.

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@papy and possibly others has posted about this case in the past.

Some people are real @sshats.

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But I don’t think there was a $ penalty announced. This would be on top of criminal charges

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Yep, Ina & David’s travails were uncovered in various SAS threads, such as our friend @primetime’s groundbreaking (for the SAS; there was also prior discussion of this sorry incident back in the OSFE days) Mar`23 offering here:

https://test.sellersasksellers.com/t/steiners-of-ecommercebytes-on-cbs-60-minutes-now-est/616

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Hi @primetime @anon72228237 @booknut7 and all, I have updated/opened this thread to merge all (public) topics together. Also updated title, category, and tags. Sorry for any chaos! Thank you all for keeping us in the loop on this twisted tale.

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An excerpt:

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Any info on a civil case for the Steiners?

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Important links:

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Yes! A bit…

In the interest of disclosure, we and Steiner Associates, LLC, the publisher of EcommerceBytes, filed a civil lawsuit against eBay and its former employees, with a trial date scheduled for March 3, 2025.

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Name them.

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I smell an out of court settlement in the near future based upon the recent “deferred prosecution” fine.

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Yup - $220+ million fines being levied will get attention every time.

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Honestly, no real good sides here.

What Ebay did was reprehensible…and they will obviously have to pay for it.

That being said, anyone who has read Auctionbytes for the last 20 years also knows how biased they became against Ebay while absolutely turning a blind eye to all the dealings going on with Amazon.

I used to really like their site but now take just about everything with a huge grain of salt because they haven’t been impartial for like 10 years at this point…honestly it has hurt online sellers in general because big issues aren’t reported on…but that’s the media these days, too.

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eCommercebytes has never been on my list of reliable sources.

I am amazed at the number of Ebay sellers who believe that they were Ebay sellers who were abused by Ebay rather than Internet press abused by Ebay.

I cannot help but wonder who, if anyone, is responsible for propagating that misinformation. There certainly are stupid Ebay sellers, and there certainly are sellers who hate Ebay, but there is always the possibility of a deliberate attempt to malign Ebay.

Ebay certainly deserves the punishment for what they did to the Steiners, but this story needs to become part of the past.

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