Would you report this buyer?

[triber]

A few weeks ago I had a buyer from the UK purchase three craft books from me. She asked me three times not to leave her feedback. I didn't think much of it, it could be that her husband objecting to her buyer things or something like that.

Anyway, I decided to check her feedback to see if others were leaving it, and I find that she is selling photocopies of patterns that I know for sure are copyright. I just checked, and sure enough, the ones she purchased from me are now in her store. She has about 70 negs and neutrals complaining about the items being photocopies, and some mentioning copyright.

Although I grew up in England, I don't know the copyright rules, and I don't even know if I can report someone from another eBay site.

I know that she is selling copies of patterns that members on this board are selling the original of, including me, and it doesn't seem right. She is copying each pattern from a book and making far more on the copies that we sellers are making on the whole book.

[anguscoinshop]

I would see if there's a copyright infringement. Reporting wouldn't hurt.  Why should that seller make money on you?

[recped]

If you are not the holder of the copyright and registred with eBay's VERO program they will do NOTHING.

That's as it should be, you are reporting a "competitor" making a claim you can't back up (even if it's obvious).

You could report this to the original publisher of the patterns and see if they are interested in taking any action.

[aramatic]

Leave feedback for her, using carefully-chosen words.

[triber]

I don't think that would be a good idea. For one thing I agreed not to leave feedback before I realized what she was doing, and I wouldn't go back on my word.

Also, she hasn't left me feedback, so she could still do so, and that could be bad after I agreed not to leave her any.

[theclassof1984]

I think the negative feedback would be in order, and your word is still good - she was the one who was underhanded. Report it to Ebay, but I believe that will go no where. If Ebay is making money off of a seller, they tend not to rock the boat.

[femmefan1946]

Did she leave feedback for you? Technically, a Response to feedback is not feedback.

"Appears to be selling photocopies of this pattern." might be appropriate.

Technically.

However, dropping a note to the original publisher would be more effective. If they don't want to do anything, that would be their decision.

[triber]

No, she didn't leave me feedback. She is ONLY selling poor photocopies according to her feedbacks, nothing original. Last time I looked at her feedback she had a load of complaints. My problem is that when my computer crashed and burned last November, I lost my files, so I no longer have her ID. I tried going through my BBL, waaaaay too many to check.

She is selling individual poor copies of each individual patterns in recent Paton's books, often for the same cost that I am selling the whole book for. I tried to Google it, and found loads of complaints against UK's poor response to complaints about bootleg copies, so I guess complaining wouldn't have done much good anyway.

I would really have been interested to follow up on her.