Ebay

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Ebay has been around for a fairly long period of time relative to other e-commerce sites and they have been involved in many disputes because so many different types of users are on their platform. With so many types of users, you would only expect that the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy would be longer than other companies. In fact, Ebay has 16 total policies that govern their site, all of which are incorporated by reference in the Terms of Use. The three largest policies are the terms themselves, the privacy policy, and the cookie policy, but it would be a mistake for even the casual user to think that is all that applies to them on Ebay since the other 13 polices cover things like selling standards, final value fees, rules for listing, selling practices, duplicate listings, and rules for buyers, just to name a few. 

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In the main policies you will see that Ebay limits its liability considerably, should they be found liable. The agreement has a strong indemnification provision that all sellers should be aware of and also a provision that puts limits on how you may use information you acquire or are given from Ebay. In sum, this policy is long and sometimes difficult to understand, but current case law indicates that you would be held accountable to the terms that you signed onto when you create an account, so it is probably worth your time to take a look!

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Representations, Warranties, and Limits on Liability

 

"We try to keep our Services safe, secure, and functioning properly, but we cannot guarantee the continuous operation of or access to our Services. Bid update and other notification functionality in eBay's applications may not occur in real time. Such functionality is subject to delays beyond eBay's control.

You agree that you are making use of our Services at your own risk, and that they are being provided to you on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis. Accordingly, to the extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all express or implied warranties, terms and conditions including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

In addition, to the extent permitted by applicable law, we (including our parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates, and our and their officers, directors, agents and employees) are not liable, and you agree not to hold us responsible, for any damages or losses (including, but not limited to, loss of money, goodwill or reputation, profits, other intangible losses, or any special, indirect, or consequential damages) resulting directly or indirectly from:

• the content you provide (directly or indirectly) using the Services;

• your use of or your inability to use our Services;

• pricing, shipping, format, or other guidance provided by eBay;

• delays or disruptions in our Services;

• viruses or other malicious software obtained by accessing or linking to our Services;

• glitches, bugs, errors, or inaccuracies of any kind in our Services; 

• damage to your hardware device from the use of any eBay Service;

• the content, actions, or inactions of third parties, including items listed using our Services or the destruction of allegedly fake items;

• a suspension or other action taken with respect to your account or breach of the Abusing eBay Section above;

• the duration or manner in which your listings appear in search results as set out in the Listing Conditions Section above; or 

• your need to modify practices, content, or behavior, or your loss of or inability to do business, as a result of changes to this User Agreement or our policies.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of warranties or exclusion of damages, so such disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you. 

Regardless of the previous paragraphs, if we are found to be liable, our liability to you or to any third party is limited to the greater of (a) any amounts due under the eBay Money Back Guarantee up to the price the item sold for on eBay (including any applicable sales tax) and its original shipping costs, (b) the amount of fees in dispute not to exceed the total fees, which you paid to us in the 12 months prior to the action giving rise to the liability, or (c) $100."

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"If you have a dispute with one or more users, you release us (and our affiliates and subsidiaries, and our and their respective officers, directors, employees and agents) from claims, demands and damages (actual and consequential) of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes. In entering into this release you expressly waive any protections (whether statutory or otherwise) that would otherwise limit the coverage of this release to include only those claims which you may know or suspect to exist in your favor at the time of agreeing to this release."

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Indemnification

 

"You will indemnify and hold us (including our affiliates and subsidiaries, as well as our and their respective officers, directors, employees, agents) harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your breach of this Agreement, your improper use of eBay's Services or your breach of any law or the rights of a third party."

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Key Definitions

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In the three largest polices, there are very few defined terms, but "Services" is defined as "our sites, services, applications and tools." Ebay is also pretty forthcoming about what types of information they collect and how they use it. While third-parties are not defined, this is par for the course in these agreements and you can infer who they might be from the types of situations that Ebay says may require or permit disclosure of personal information.

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Sharing Agreements

 

"We may disclose your personal information to other members of the eBay Inc. corporate family or to third parties. This disclosure may be required for us to provide and to provide you access to our Services, to comply with our legal obligations, to enforce our User Agreement, to facilitate our marketing and advertising activities, or to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities related to our Services. We minimize the amount of personal information we disclose to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose. As stated above, we do not disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your explicit consent. 

We may disclose your personal information to the following parties and for the following purposes: 

eBay Inc. corporate family members, who may use it to:

• provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions, and customer support)

• help detect and prevent potentially fraudulent and illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, and data security breaches

• provide you personalized advertising

• guide decisions about their products, sites, applications, services, tools, and marketing communications. Members of our eBay Inc. corporate family will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have consented to receive such communications from them

Service Providers and financial institutions partners

• Third party service providers who help us to provide our Services, payment processing services, assist us in providing customize advertising, to assist us with the prevention, detection, mitigation, and investigation of potentially illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, fraud and/or security breaches, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs, co-branded credit cards and other business operations

• Third party financial institution partners who may offer financial products to you, for them to provide joint content and services (such as, registration, transactions and customer support). These third party financial institution partners will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services

Law enforcement, legal proceedings, and as authorized by law

• to comply with our legal requirements, enforce our User Agreement, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property or safety.

• to law enforcement or governmental agencies, or authorized third-parties, in response to a verified request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability. We will only disclose information we deem relevant to the investigation or inquiry, such as name, city, state, postcode, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP address, fraud complaints, bidding and listing history

• to participants of the eBay VeRO Program globally under confidentiality agreement, as we in our sole discretion deem necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy, or other unlawful activity. In such events, we will disclose seller’s name, street address, city, state, postcode, country, phone number, email address and company name to the participants of the eBay VeRO Program

• to credit agencies or bureaus as authorized by applicable national laws (e.g. information on late or missed payments or other defaults on your account that may be reflected in your credit report or file)

• to third parties involved in a legal proceeding, if they provide us with a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal procedure, or we otherwise believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity

Other eBay users as authorized by you or your use of our Services.

When transacting with another user, the other user may request and we may provide him/her with information about you necessary to complete the transaction, such as your name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address, or other information from you needed to promote the reliability and security of the transaction. If a transaction is held, fails, or is later invalidated, we may also provide the other user with details of the unsuccessful transaction. The other user receiving your information is not allowed to use this information for purposes unrelated to the transaction, such as to contact you for marketing purposes, unless you have express consented to it. Contacting users with unwanted or threatening messages is a violation of our User Agreement.

Data disclosure to PayPal Inc. and its corporate family

• We may disclose your personal information to PayPal Inc. and its corporate family for the following purposes:

• to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate potentially illegal acts, fraud and/or security breaches, and to assess and manage risk, including to alert you if fraudulent activities have been detected on your eBay or PayPal accounts

• to provide customer services, including to help service your account or resolve disputes (e.g., billing or transactional disputes)

• to facilitate the processing of payment cards when you pay within our Services with a payment card and we use PayPal to process your payment 

• to facilitate shipping and related services for purchases you made using PayPal

Change of Ownership

If we were to merge with or be acquired by another company, we may share information with them in accordance with our global privacy standards. Should such an event occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this Privacy Notice with respect to your personal information. If your personal information will be collected, used, disclosed, or retained for any purposes not covered in this Privacy Notice, you will receive prior notification of the processing of your personal information for the new purposes.

Other users have access to the information you share on eBay. For example, other users can see your bids, purchases, items for sale, your collections, the sellers and collections you follow, storefronts, Feedback, ratings and associated comments. Other users can also see any information you chose to share in your profile or your collections.

Your User ID is displayed throughout eBay and is available to the public. It is connected to all of your eBay activity. Notices sent to other users about suspicious activity and notice violations on our sites refer to User IDs and specific items. So if you associate your name with your User ID, the people to whom you have revealed your name will be able to personally identify your eBay activities.

To help protect your privacy, we allow only limited access to other users' contact, shipping and financial information as necessary to facilitate your transactions and collect payments. However, when users are involved in a transaction, they have access to each other's name, User ID, email address and other contact and shipping information."

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