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eBay Urges Rethink On EU Plan's "Brick and Mortar" Vendor Requirement
mernil writes with this snippet from Reuters: "According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a 'brick-and-mortar' shop before they can sell online. The proposed rules would replace existing guidelines exempting companies from strict EU competition rules under certain circumstances. Those rules expire at the end of May."
Living in a EU country and while lately I've been happy with EU's decisions, this is just bullshit. Not just because of eBay, but because there are several online stores in my country too that only have a website and warehouse. This includes the online stores that sell at lower price than you can find in stores and specialized stores like funny items and hot spices, hot sauces and specialized stores that import oversears and sell here.
Some of the items you can't just on normal stores. This is bullshit.
eBay is the devil
This is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard out of a politico in a long, long time.
There is a war going on for your mind.
From the article
Brand owners - often in the high-end or luxury segment - say the provision is necessary to stop so-called free riders, competitors who benefit from promotions carried out by brand name companies, shifting stock online on the back of advertising of a brand's products and services.
Because "free riders" do not have to pay for the costs of a shop and related overheads, they can frequently offer brand-name products over the Internet at discounted prices.
"The purpose of a brick-and-mortar shop provision is to help retailers invest in luxury shops," said Antoine Winkler, a partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton who represents several brand name companies.
I'm slightly confused. Are they doing this to help the brick-and-mortar stores? Are they doing this to help the brands? I'm confused. It sounds like they are trying to take down low-overhead companies because they are too efficient. Does anyone know why this would be a good idea?
of course its anticompetitive bullshit, i guess department stores are adapting music industry tactics, complete with buying off legislators
but it would be pretty neat to have an "eBay" showroom
ebay could pick the wackiest shit: jesus on toast, my 7 year old's baby teeth, this obscene and bizarre plastic thing i bought in bangkok 3 years ago, etc., and put it on prominent display, like million dollar art work. purposefully play off a contrived vibe of reverence and awe, for really crappy mundane shit. it could be funny
then you can only buy certain stuff at say, 11 am sharp
and during checkout, if the guy behind you gives the clerk 10 cents more than your price while you are still reaching for your cash, he gets it instead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Going to the Newegg store, where it's a warehouse with a couple of cashiers in the front. The employees aren't there to help you they are there to get stuff to shipping. I'd wander around there for hours.
People have been ducking sales tax in the US by buying online because you generally have to have a physical presence in a state to be required to remit sales tax. I say people, and not businesses/web vendors, since most states have a "use tax" which applies to anything purchased out of state and used within the state, and very few people ever pay the use tax since there is no reporting.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This law will require major reworking of Weird Al's EBay song.
Goodbye Beanie Babies from Norway...snif...
1. Find a small village where rooms are cheap. No one will want to go there, but that doesn't matter; you don't actually plan to sell much there anyway.
2. Rent a small room, and pay one employee to be there and sell. The selling happens to be just that if someone goes to him to buy, he orders the product online to the shop address, and then the person ordering it can fetch it there. You will not sell much this way (maybe a few items per year), but then, it's only to comply to the law.
3. Tell the regulators about this brick-and-mortar shop.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I am living in the EU, and I think the EU should maybe start by having a real government before to be so quick on judging on other matters, it feels much like the EU is a group of country trying to chase their lost empire in the 19th century or so ...
The EU government seems to think that they are the most important in the world while neither China or the US care about them as Obama showed recently.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
When a smaller number of people can supply an equal amount of goods and services, that frees up the superfluous people to do other jobs, for example supply back massages or clean windows. In net, society is better off, even if someone painfully loses their job in the short term.
This is different from another model of employment, which we may call the "Soviet" model, where something done by few people is a social ill because it deprives the remaining people of jobs.
Seriously, sometimes it seems like our European politicians are just rediscovering everything invented during the Cold War.
The big guys would buy some relatively cheap shack, bung a couple of PCs in there for EPOS and use it as a warehouse-cum-shop, a bit like a single Argos store but smaller. Meanwhile your smaller setups who can't afford a "brick and mortar" presence are screwed. Nice one, EU!
09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0
This'll be great for webspace providers and discussion boards like Slashdot. I'd love to go to a brick and mortar store for these things. They could have them hanging like gift cards. "Yes, two websites please, a first post, three replies, and two +1 Funny moderations please. How much?"... "Yeah, paper is fine."
security guards would not allow you to leave the eBay showroom until you shout "A++++ WOULD BUY FROM AGAIN!!!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I work in eCommerce, in particular the high end AV and home electricals' market. "Premium" brands have been penalising eCommerce only ventures for a number of years now. It can be as simple as giving traditional retailers better retro (% of turn over paid back once a year) and has harsh as limited stock. The same goes on in online photography. To be clear, we're not an online only brand, we have a number of high street stores with decent turnover. Now, the manufacturers are getting even tougher. The amount of premium brands we've had to take off our website in the past 6 months to keep our decent terms for the traditional is shocking. These weren't small accounts either, they run into 7 figures of the UKs finest GBP. Why? The brands think by selling online you're selling on price (which is largely true thanks to sites like pricegrabber, pricerunner, kelkoo etc) and this devalues their brand. How they control the market is nothing short of cartel like, but it's not going to change, only get worse if this law comes into effect. FWIW, even as someone who is struggling to do online business thanks to these they do have a point. Pure, price comparison based online shopping will eventually leave us with very few trained product experts or the ability to see products in the "flesh" before buying online. A balance needs to be found.
1) Clever Sig 2) ????? 3) Profit!
Our organization doesn't need any bricks, but we would like to buy some 81mm mortars, along with HE and WP ammunition.
My uncle Osama will be arranging payment through the Royal Bank of Saudi Arabia.
Abudullal Bin Laden
Al Quaeda cell 233
Frankfurt, Germany
I like this requirement. I think they should also require that all brick-and-mortar stores have an online store that sells everything they have in the brick-and-mortar store, and always be up to date.
The regression of the human race back to the caves continues. Why do the people in power have no idea about technology or progress? ONLINE IS NOW - EMBRACE IT
Could eBay just work out a deal with FedEx (or whatever the major shipping carrier is in the EU) where they have a few in-store electronic "catalogs" (web browsers set to eBay's website)? Then you could come in, browse, choose an item you want, find out "Sorry, it's not in stock. We can order from our distributor.", then come back a few days and buy the item, or even have it delivered directly to your home. Maybe they could keep a few stupid things in stock, like shipping boxes and bricks.
Why? what the fuck? this probably is to make these brick & mortar shops be able to compete with the online ones. so is a anti-competitive measure, but since we sell online to the world, will harm our industry.
Why again?
-Woof woof woof!
1. Buy a small brick & mortar location (it can be out of the way - that's not the point).
2. 'Host' a virtual business store front in a portion of your location for a monthly fee.
3. To keep the overhead low, only be open for 1 hour a day & require that there be no products available for sale.
4. Only accept cash.
5. The money from sales made (which there shouldn't be) go to the brick & mortar business owner.
It's just like web hosting, except your' renting virtual brick & mortar space.
all an online retailer has to do is open up a small sale office at their warehouse where people can order and pay for products by ID/SKU. Voila! Instant Brick and Mortar store. Hell, setting up a lemonade stand in the warehouse parking lot would qualify as a brick and mortar store as long as you charge VAT.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Newsflash you are always selling on price, before they were using lack of information as a method of gaining profit. Profit is waste, and efficient systems that ensure equal information remove waste.
The reasons this is being pushed by the EU is this.
At the moment a TV (for example) goes from a maker in Korea to a importer in Germany, then on to a distributor, and then a retailer (either online or "bricks and mortar" ). That called a supply chain.
NOW, image a world where you order direct from the Korean factory. This is clearly a natural progression of E-commerce and technology. It is already happening with Photovoltaic cells and solar thermal panels for example. I order 25,000 USD of solar thermal last month, I saved myself about 32,000 USD by doing this !!
Well, now all the money and employment that the EU got has completely dried up because now the of busienss in the EU are able to get a cut of the supply chain.
VAT that is added on each pass and the makeup that happens as everything goes through the supply chain is now gone.
All this add on that happens as it goes through the supply chain is a huge amount of money and ultimately is what keeps the whole EU economy going in many ways.
SO this measure is an ecconomists attempt at trade protection , in order to
I think its great. I saved a fortune by getting the solar thermal panels put into a container myself
I guess you've never worked in retail, nor understand quite how retail works.
/. (they do exist)) generally want advice, the unwashed masses aren't supergeeks like we are. Bricks and Mortar stores allow customers to compare ranges of products in the flesh and speak to a real person who has likely had years of training and experience.
Do you not sell on price alone. If this were the case the world would be full of geeks running e-stores out of bedrooms which allow for the lowest overheads thus the smallest margin.
Customers (outside of
We've got to a situation now where these stores are browsed at the weekends, the customer uses the shops expertise, nice warm displays etc then the first thing they do when they get to work on a monday is buy it online. This is obviously not a sustainable model for retail, which a large percentage of our economy is based on.
Further to counter you point, even the online PRICE COMPARISON engines have been moving away from purely PRICE listings. They all have an element of customer service reviews, and now most of them recommend a "smart choice" which is the cheapest of the retailers with x% positive feedback. As you might have guessed, the retailers operating on the smallest margins are often those who don't provide the service, so this recommended retailer isn't always the cheapest.
1) Clever Sig 2) ????? 3) Profit!
... that sells air. Buyer supplies the packaging, though.
I believe that would take a single guy with a cash register to satisfy the legal requirements, no?
given the similarity to prior related reports it sounds more like dumpass journalist writing. Where is the source document, which lawmaking entity is driving it whatever it is (EC, parliament), which stage in the process is it in.
One of my favorite was FuelMaker. They were going bankrupt and they kept sending us cease and desist letters for selling to many of their products to people that lived where there was no authorized dealer and they refused to ship us products in a timely manner. And yes we paid a small fortune to become an authorized dealer. They kept going on about consumer safety but it's total bullshit because their products can easily be installed by anyone that can install a gas water heater or dryer. Now they've been in limbo for about a year. They supposedly aren't dead but we can't get any product. Not that they refunded our dealership fees.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
We sort of have this in the US for one type of business. Federal firearms license holders (except C&R that aren't dealers) are required to have a published location and hours of business. You can sell guns professionally out of your garage or kitchen, but your garage or kitchen must be regularly publicly accessible with defined opening hours. Of course you can't sell guns online across state lines anyway except to other FFL holders. But still, to even get the license you need to have a brick and mortar shop.
Thats right. They need to stop listening to fraudulent buyers' lies, never verify those lies, and then credit the fraudulent buyer his money AND THEN the kicker: they make the mistake of sending two different emails in the dispute process! The dipshits that "resolved" the dispute told the lying buyer, in an email that the seller received BY MISTAKE: "Congratulations! The dispute has been resolved in your favor. We will credit your purchase price. Please send the item back to the seller". Meanwhile, the seller, gets not only the email MEANT for the buyer, but a totally different email that says "Congratulations! The dispute has been resolved in your favor! The buyer will send back the item and will not be credited for that purchase". Meanwhile, the jackass lying buyer posts negative feedback BEFORE the so-called resolution takes place. 2 months later and the shit for brains buyer hasnt sent the item back, but got a refund AND got to keep the item (because it wasnt broken as the buyer LIED that it was).
NOT AT ANY TIME did eBay verify the lying buyer's claim of the seller writing a nasty message to the idiot buyer. After confronting eBay about speaking from both sides of the mouth AND asking them to provide proof that they verified the liar's claim, they couldnt. And they wont. The attorney, however, will.
Ebay, go fuck yourself so far up your ass that your dick comes out your nose. And, here's a warning to anyone who dares to transact business with those frauds: they FORCE you to use that piece of crap Paypal and by doing so they will ALWAYS honor the buyer. So, for those of you who wish to - the loophole is that you can BUY whatever you want and then claim whatever you want and via the Paypal resolution process (which trumps Ebay's) you will get your money back and you do not have to send that item back because eBay just doesnt give a shit.
This case will not be dropped even though ebay has tried to sweep it under the rug. The seller will continue to pursue legal action against the buyer and will do everything humanly possible to expose ebay as the frauds that they are.
Several higher end electronics companies (Panasonic for example) have stopped selling to online-only stores.
Too many people go into the B&M store, get the product demo, show the online-only store price and ask for a price match and then (when they are inevitably refused), go to the online only store and buy the product.
This law won't help the retail/online problem. The people who will be hit most by this are people flogging mobile phone cables on eBay where they already know what they want (but want to pay a fraction of their ripoff mobile company).
The likes of Amazon or Play.com will simply set up a shop in the most hostile place imaginable (Islay would work well), staff it with an incompetent, ugly, surly bastard and pass the rule while not getting a single visitor.
New Hampshire (USA) has no general sales tax. And we like it that way.
"As you might have guessed, the retailers operating on the smallest margins are often those who don't provide the service, so this recommended retailer isn't always the cheapest."
I think you just made the point you were trying to refute. Service has a value. Hence you are always selling on price.