Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › VERO takedown on sold item?
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ChristineK.
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01/31/2018 at 8:50 pm #31757
This is a new one for me as I honestly can’t recall the last time I had a VERO takedown and I don’t ever recall seeing one on a sold item. The item was a used $12.32 Subaru hat. The email stated that the hat was reported as counterfeit and “The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha – Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. – Subaru, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights.” The odd thing is that the identical hat sold by “subarupartsdirect” was NOT removed. I assume that this is subaru itself or an authorized reseller but maybe I’m wrong. The person who bought my hat leaves tons and tons of negative feedbacks for people claiming items are fakes (I checked his feedback left for others today), so it’s possible he complained or something although he never left me a neg. Still though, the VERO takedown has to come from the company or an agent, so I don’t see how a buyer could affect this.
I’ve already called Ebay, and they can’t seem to offer me much beyond “the trademark holder doesn’t want you to relist the item”. Um OK, that would be pretty hard to do since it sold 2 weeks ago. Subaru wasn’t on my radar of brands to avoid, but they are now. I guess my questions are:
1) Is my account now compromised since I have a “counterfeit” strike on it that I cannot fight due to the fact that I no longer have the item? I understand that counterfeit VERO claims are the worst kind of takedown. It’s bizarre to me that a company can just make that claim and the strike stays on the account with no ability to fight back since the item is sold already.
2) Do these “counterfeit” claims typically end with the company telling you not to relist the item or will I have to deal further with whatever entity is claiming that it’s a fake? How would I even prove it wasn’t when the item is out of my possession and the listing and all pictures are taken down? My sister is a patent attorney and she said not to worry about it as this is all pretty ridiculous, but I have no idea why they would bother to single out my listing out weeks after it sold.
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This topic was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This topic was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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01/31/2018 at 9:06 pm #31763
I wouldn’t worry about it, though you want to be careful about getting multiple VERO violation within a six months period. it is all silly for our level of selling, though counterfeit goods are a real problem for some brands.
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01/31/2018 at 9:09 pm #31764
ChristineK,
An attorney and/or company rep was probably assigned to watch out for such instances. Google also has built in mechanisms that companies pay for to watch for any and all activity regarding their brand so they can take action to protect their product/business and avoid the loss of profit. Check your account to see if you notice anything different or any other messages from ebay. You can look under the Seller Hub which will have various sections of information about your account and about you as a seller. Make sure to scroll all the way down to see all offerings of information. If you have not received notice that your account is compromised and/or that your selling rights have been restricted, proceed forward doing what you do making sure not to list any of their products. Sometimes letting sleeping dogs lie is the best thing. If any further concern and/or action is taken, you will be notified. At that time, call ebay with your facts in hand. Take a facts only approach (no emotion, judgement or buts) and then move forward from there.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
AdventureE.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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01/31/2018 at 9:11 pm #31766
Oh they definitely are, and I avoid those brands. I’m pretty sure nobody out there is going to knock off a $12 Subaru hat though. It’s beyond weird to me that my closed listing was singled out though. Any ideas what’s up with that? I can’t recall the last time I had a VERO violation, but I’d guess it’s been years. I’ve never had one accusing counterfeit merchandise though. Have you guys ever had one? I guess I’m feeling pretty spooked right about now because I honestly thought I was doing everthing right to avoid trademark/Vero violations. I avoid all the brands with very active counterfeit markets, and most of what I sell are used, mostly vintage hats which would be very unlikely counterfeit targets lol.
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01/31/2018 at 9:17 pm #31768
Yeah, Monster Energy seems to be very aggressive from stories Ive herd from sellers. “velcro” is a big no-no. It all seems very arbitrary in many cases.
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01/31/2018 at 9:22 pm #31770
Oh shoot, I do have one for Velcro! Uh oh, I hope that this isn’t a problem. I forgot about that…I listed a pair of sneakers and put Velcro in the title last August and it got taken down. Yikes. It was for “unauthorized use of a trademark”. I can understand that one, and honestly I knew better than to use Velcro in the title but obviously it slipped my mind. This one saying I sold a counterfeit used, cheap hat is really blowing my mind though. I’d recommend avoiding listing Subaru anything because this is just too weird.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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01/31/2018 at 9:41 pm #31772
I have had two Subaru hats listed for a long time. Noone has said a word.. yet.
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01/31/2018 at 9:47 pm #31773
ChristineK,
It does not matter the item and/or value. Anyone selling a company’s products other than the company takes away from their sales, trademark protection, and rights as the only seller unless they contract with another vendor. While you may have one item for sale, you do not know how many others on various platforms are trying to sell their products. If a buyer buys a $12 hat from you , they have no need to buy the $20 dollar or more hat or other item from the company.
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01/31/2018 at 9:50 pm #31774
I just found a Subaru hat listed, with a Monster Logo on it… The enforcement of this stuff is so random.
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02/01/2018 at 5:54 am #31787
AdventureE, wouldn’t that essentially mean that every Ebay seller is at risk of random claims from companies because they don’t want their items resold? First Sale doctrine protects people from that thank goodness, or a whole lot of Ebay wouldn’t exist. While googling, I found someone else who had had a random counterfeit VERO claim from this same VERO member, also on a closed item. They also couldn’t figure out why theirs was singled out from the many other identical items. My sister (patent attorney) said that there is a company that other companies pay to look at Ebay monthly or so and report items. I wonder if they have to report X amount of items each month per client or something…it seems really arbitrary, like my hat was just picked at random on the last day of the month.
OK, so the seller “subarupartsdirect” that had sold 80 of this hat NWT ended his own listing overnight and his most recently sold one disappeared overnight. I think they did a takedown of solds for this particular style of hat for some reason. AdventureE may be correct in that they don’t want someone competing with them, particularly a high-volume seller selling NWT. Maybe my one used hat got lumped in with his since they had to do a takedown of 80 solds. He ended his own active listing, so the takedown didn’t apply to live items? Weird. This seller appears to sell nothing but Subaru items and lists themselves as “Subaru parts pros”. I’m going to watch and see if they are able to start selling the hats again as I assume that in their case it’s worthwhile to deal with the VERO member since they have a large stock of new hats.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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02/01/2018 at 9:30 am #31816
It’s not always the company that is coming directly at you – most of these companies hire firms to protect their trademarks, etc and those firms hire everyday people to find counterfeit goods or illegal uses of their trademarks.
I have an uncle that is retired and his part-time hobby is to find businesses using trademarks illegally and report them to the law firm he is connected to. This time of the year is his favorite as one of their customers is the NFL and he finds lots of local bars and pizza places using the term “Super Bowl” without permission.
So, it may not be necessarily the company that is coming after you, but someone who gets a cut of a fine if you get busted, or gets a small fee for finding and preventing you from selling what they deem as a counterfeit item.
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02/01/2018 at 9:58 am #31825
Yup, that’s what my sister told me…the company pays a service to look through Ebay monthly (or some do it more frequently) and do takedowns for anything they deem fake or “gray market”. What I think is that they wanted to take down the guy selling multiples of this hat NWT but my listing got a takedown also.
So a pizza place or a bar can’t advertise a Super Bowl Party without permission from the NFL??? That seems weird to me! Isn’t the point of the Super Bowl to get people to watch so advertisers are happy?
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02/01/2018 at 9:59 am #31826
I got a VERO notice overnight for 2 separate Subaru hats so it seems they haven’t started a crackdown. 1 of those hats has been listed since July last year.
VEROs are very random. There’s really no way to protect yourself with these if you intend to sell lots of used items from different brands. It would be nice to know what a legitimate Subaru hat looks like for future reference.
Funny story about Subaru hats. I sold one last week. The buyer was a little odd. I got a couple of unusual messages from him. This week I got a photo from him wearing the hat. Apparently he likes it.
My last VERO was for a hat from a gun company. When I googled the maker of the hat I found it was made by a company that produces promotional products for the gun company so the hat seemed perfectly legitimate.
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02/01/2018 at 10:06 am #31828
So Cal Joe, you may want to take the hats down. I’d err on the side of caution here.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineK.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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02/01/2018 at 11:34 am #31840
I took some key words out of the listing last night for just that reason. It’s still a cool hat on it’s own, from a local dealership.
Thanks
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02/01/2018 at 11:41 am #31841
Simon, was it the same as mine for “counterfeit”? In the future, I’m just going to avoid selling this brand period. I have zero reason to think that my hat wasn’t legit. If these VEROs happen so randomly, what are the odds of ending up with one of those sharky demand-letter law firms going after you for selling a “counterfeit”? Has that ever happened to anyone on here? I’ve read about those online, but mostly for people selling things like fake bags and fake software (like, honestly fake stuff). I haven’t heard of it for someone selling what they had every reason to believe was a legit, very used hat but who knows lol.
Too funny about the guy sending the hat picture! Good to know he liked it!
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02/01/2018 at 12:49 pm #31850
On the Super Bowl thing, only places that pay the NFL can use the term. That’s why you see generic terms like “Super Sunday”, “Big Game”, “Football Special”, “Philly vs. New England” etc. in ads that are following the rules. Brands like Papa John’s, Pepsi/Frito-Lay, Budweiser, etc. pay big bucks to use the terms and logos of the NFL on their products.
The NFL even busted a local church last year for a Super Bowl viewing party they didn’t license as they advertised it on a sign out front of the church.
I know a lot of bars get sub-licensing to use the term “Super Bowl” if they have Budweiser in the ad – such as “Bud Light Super Bowl Party at Joe’s Bar”
Anyways, just wanted to make awareness that probably in your own community are a trained group of people that are making $$$ turning in trademark infringers.
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02/01/2018 at 3:12 pm #31862
@ChristineK – yes. The subject line was “Trademark Violation – Unauthorized Item” and the body of the message included “Your listing was removed after the rights owner reported it as counterfeit. ”
There are still 1200+ listings on eBay for “Subaru hat”. 75 of those are for used hats. I wonder if we’ll see that number change much over the next few days.
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02/01/2018 at 4:18 pm #31866
I’ll bet we will. It seems like they went on a spree, reporting a bunch of hats as counterfeit. My takedown was on sold hat. I wonder if you’ll get a takedown on the one you sold last week also. It’s so odd. Do they really think there are tons of counterfeit Subaru hats out there? These aren’t high-dollar hats even NWT.
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