Power Sellers Unite

elliemay · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 1255

So I'm looking around at auctions and see my picture. But it's not my auction! I email the seller and say I noticed they borrowed my picture. I said it was probably and honest mistake so just remove it and we will call it good. She emails me back and says she didn't take my picture!! Wow! I have all kinds of proof it's mine including other items with the same background. I have reported it to customer service but that will take forever for them to do anything. I thought BV sellers were above this. It's such a small community how does someone think they can get away with stealing pictures.

:x

sciencefare

Sorry to hear about the stolen image.

Perhaps you could begin marking all your images, maybe like this:

Additionally, if you were to host your images somewhere other than at bidville, you could make a change like this (or something similar), when you discover your image has been used without permission:

The first one might discourage borrowing.
The second one would work if the "borrower" was linking to your image.

-sciencefare

purple_reading_giraffe · Joined: 04 Feb 2008 Posts: 5485 Location: Indiana, USA

Grrrr. Any [very slim] chance she owns the same background and it's actually a coincidence? Any chance someone else *borrowed* it first and she got it from them? Any chance you can get her to tell you where she *did* get it from?

elliemay · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 1255

The picture she took was not a stock photo. It was a photo taken by me with my camera in my house. So no matter what or where she got it...she stole it and she knows it. Even if someone else took it and she took it from them it still adds up to picture theft. I'm just totally blown away that she denies it's a stolen photo since it is obviously a personal photo taken at home. I guess I will have to start putting my name on all my pictures like you suggested.

sciencefare

elliemay wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")I guess I will have to start putting my name on all my pictures like you suggested.

It's one of your best bets to prevent this from happening in the future. Another technique that some use is to place a blank transparent image over your product image... that way when an image is "borrowed", the "borrower" gets the blank. Good luck!

-sciencefare

elliemay · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 1255

I just checked on it again and she did the right thing and removed the picture. So maybe she is reading over here. If so, I want to say thank you for correcting it.

:mrgreen:

sciencefare

elliemay wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")I just checked on it again and she did the right thing and removed the picture.

:mrgreen:

Great! Glad to hear that it worked out.

-sciencefare

Texas-treasure · Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 511

Some people just don't have any ethics. Take this example..I had a seller buy an item from me, and ask me to mail it to a customer with his (seller's) name on the return address. No problem. Not until I discovered that he was listing MY stock as HIS, on another auction site, marked up about 3x my price! So essentially, he is using other sellers to do the hunting, cleaning, photographing, and listing-then he sells it as his.
Now-I did get paid what I asked, true. But this still seems sooo unethical. the next time he 'sells' one of my items, I'm going to add a HUGE handling fee to it, to mail it the way he wants.
I don't know any way to stop folks like this, even the watermarks you add to photos can be removed and your photo stolen. I guess it's like Nigerian scammers, just something we have to learn to watch for.

pjrcoffee · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 634

TT,
His only error is reusing your photos. Mark them as yours with a watermark.

Seems like you gave him permission to use you as a drop-shipper. No disgrace there.

You could do one of three things.

1.You could refuse to ship to HIS customers. Tell him you will ship items to HIM and HE can mail them out to his customers.

2.You could also sell on the same venue as he does. Bidville has few lookers and no way to get them to the site. So change venues. He will soon stop buying from you but you will receive a better price for your products.

3. Raise your prices on Bidville to reflect true value.

I think, frankly, the choice number 2 is best.

Ethics has nothing to do with it. If he can resell them for more somewhere else, more power to him.

Go and do thou likewise.

SealandImports · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 231

I don't see a problem with someone selling my items if they are buying from me a sale is a sale... A big percentage of my customers resell my products they can even use my pictures as long as they are buying from me.
Just my opinion :D

mojavelyn · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:39 pm Post subject:

Some time ago.. a lamp seller who was posting here had someone at ebay steal their pictures. The pictures were hosted on their website... so they noticed the extra bandwidth use and were able to track it down. They were able to replace the pic on their website with a jpeg that said the image that the at fault seller was using was stolen from another user with their website name.

Oh, and ebay didn't do anything about the stolen image seller, till that notice jpeg appeared.

purple_reading_giraffe · Joined: 04 Feb 2008 Posts: 5485 Location: Indiana, USA

I saw a post on the ebay forums about a seller whose picture was stolen, but the thief linked to the picture's original location. The owner replaced the picture at the source with something mildly obscene and humorous, and the thief put all these apologies in the listing. It was quite funny.

CuFF

..I had a seller buy an item from me, and ask me to mail it to a customer with his (seller's) name on the return address.

For this Seller to take your items and sell them as his own without your permission is a violation of good ethics in my opinion. Asking you to place his Seller ID on the package as though he mailed it himself is deceptive. Do his Buyers know he is selling items he's never actually had his hands on?

He'd probably stop doing it if you were to contact his Buyers before shipment and undercut his price. They could do a PP chargeback on him and send the money to you instead. You could reject his payment, and cut him out of the deal completely.

Daikon · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 949

This happened to me also last month.
Instead of wasting my time contacting the seller I went ahead and got in touch with eBay directly, explaining that my photograph was being copied.

Big waste of time as it turns out.

I got a canned response from eBay stating that they looked at the listing and didn't see anything in common.

I replied to them, saying that it was not the whole listing I was complaining about, but the fact that one of my photo's was being copied in the listing.

I then got the same canned response from eBay stating that they looked at the listing and didn't see anything in common.

*sighs*

Oh and at the moment a Hong Kong seller is stealing an image from my server which shows all the payment methods I'm accepting.
I'm phasing out my own use to this image and once I'm sure it's no longer being used in my listings I'm going to replace the file with Goatse.
Can't wait to see how quickly eBay will ban this bandwidth thief then ;)

viewit · Joined: 26 Jun 2005 Posts: 252

My images kind of explode if copied :roll: they give out a red internal splatter.
No I can not tell you how or examples. :arrow: :butt: :wink: