laughable vero claim

[tom_kelsey]

Hi all,
I thought I would share with you the following email exchange I have been having with Chanel. This should put to rest any lingering belief that vero members only cancel counterfeit items, or are responsible at all.

The only changes I have made are to snip quoted previous emails and word-wrap.

I have also been corresponding with ebay - trying to get them to investigate Chanel or ban them from the vero programme, with no luck so far.

This was the first reply I got after sending three emails to Chanel and then only after I complained to eBay about not receiving a response and cc'd Chanel:

========================================
Dear Sir,
As Chanel experts, we do not have to respond to such questions.
However, should you believe that your product is an authentic Chanel product, please present detailed pictures of the goods directly on a new ebay auction, as to enable us to determine its authenticity.
Yours sincerely,
Yann Romé
Juriste Propriété Industrielle
Lutte Anti-Contrefaçon

Intellectual Property Counsel
Anti-counterfeiting
______________________

Chanel S.A.S.
135, avenue Charles de Gaulle
92200 Neuilly sur Seine
France
Tel : 33 (0)1 46 43 53 39
Fax : 33 (0)1 46 43 53 34
Email : yann.rome@chanel-corp.com
========================================

my reply:

========================================
Dear Mr Romé,
Thank you for your response.
As you may know, it is not permitted under eBays terms of service to relist an item once it has been removed, so I am including the full text of the advert below.

There was also a photograph of the Chanel logo, however as you can see it was stated that this was not of the item for sale.

As you can see there was no description of the item or photograph other than the statement that it was a Chanel item, so I am at a loss as to how you decided it must be counterfeit.

While you have no obligation to respond, you may be liable for compensation for loss of business and damage to the sellers reputation if you falsely report auctioned items as counterfeit.
If you agree that this was a simple mistake, please inform eBay you are retracting your complaint.
regards,
Tom Kelsey
------------------------------------

Mystery box of fashion items

Suitable for women / older teen size 8-10

Contains at least one Chanel item and at least one other highly recognizable brand name item.

Contains at least three fashion items. All brand new

May contain items like a top, scarve or purse, who knows!

RRP *at least* £40 (this is a very low estimate)

This is one of the first mystery boxes I am selling so I am being generous with it to make sure you get a bargain!

Who dares wins!

Please see my other items to get a feel for what you can expect.

I am so sure you will like it, that if you don't, for any reason *including* you don't think it was worth what you paid, you can return it for a full refund.

The picture is just to illustrate the Chanel logo and is not necesarily of an item in the box
--------------------------------------
========================================
Chanels reply:
========================================
Dear Sir,
It is impossible to ascertain that the good you offer on eBay is authentic and we thus believe that any "mystery" offer presented using our logo (for which authorisation of use has not been granted to you) should be deleted.
We will thus not authorise this offer and automatically request its withdrawal.
We remain at your attorney's disposal.
Yours sincerely,

Yann Romé
Juriste Propriété Industrielle
Lutte Anti-Contrefaçon

Intellectual Property Counsel
Anti-counterfeiting
========================================

I havent answered this yet, but i was thinking of sending the following, and also as a letter to their offices:
========================================
Dear Mr Romé,
I have no obligation to require permission from you for use of the Chanel logo to designate the origin of the item, or to prove the item is authentic.
I have no interest in whether you authorise my auctions or not.
I have no interest in whether you think my auctions should be deleted for your benefit.

Nominative use of the Chanel trademark with or without your authorisation is not illegal, nor infringing your IP rights.

You have made the following statement (or equivalent) to eBay:
I have a good faith belief that the listings identified below (by item number) offer items or
contain materials that are not authorised by the IP Owner, its agent, or the law, and therefore
infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to English law; and

You have now admitted this statement was untrue, as it is impossible for you to say if the item infringes your rights or is an authorised use under English law.


The facts of the matter are:
1 I made a listing of a Chanel item for sale. It is, by your own admission, impossible for you to tell if the item infringes your IP rights or is an authorised use under English trademark law.
2 You made following statement to eBay:
I have a good faith belief that the listings identified below (by item number) offer items or
contain materials that are not authorised by the IP Owner, its agent, or the law, and therefore
infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to English law; and

3 This was an untrue statement, you were aware at the time it was untrue.

4 By your own admission, you made this statement as an attempt to punish me for using your trademark legally but without your permission, and as such it is a malicious lie.

5 This lie has clearly discredited me in my business.

As a result, my reputation was damaged with eBay and with eBay users and eBay withdrew the listing and suspended my eBay account.
This has caused financial damage to me including:
The cost of making the listing
The estimated sale price of the listing.
The potential profits of my future business on eBay.
Damage to my reputation. Note that my eBay seller identity and my email address, given to buyers, are also my name.

I insist that you:
a) withdraw your statement to eBay.
b) pay compensation to me for the defamation and loss of business detailed above
Please note that I have sent a copy of this by mail, and would prefer to receive an answer likewise.
yours,
Tom Kelsey

========================================
what do other people think?
Note that in the UK damages for defamation can be very high, larger than for loss of business.
The UK also has an equivalent to the 'nominative' fair use of trademarks, which is called 'designation of origin'.

thanks in advance for any advice
Tom

[tabberone]

In the USA, it's not under penalty of perjury although the NOCI says that. It's actually "good faith belief" and the standard for that is very low.

[Kevin S. Peterson]

I wish I could see the actual ad. I'm not 100% sure about your use of the Chanel logo, though I'm not a lawyer.

I thought it was pretty slick how they tried to effectively get you permanently suspended for relisting the item.
_________________
Kevin S. Peterson
Online Backup Reseller - Sell Online Backup.
Work 100% Online

[tabberone]

Thought you might find this interesting:
Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

We recently noticed that a private and confidential email sent from the Chanel SAS Company to tom_kelsey had been published on the forum moderated by you.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=20591&sid=7cecc69707aa5c50c7f1832dee47ca23

Could you please have all the personnal information contained in this email deleted from your archives ?

I remain at your disposal to discuss the matter.

Best regards,


Yann Romé
Juriste Propriété Industrielle
Lutte Anti-Contrefaçon

Intellectual Property Counsel
Anti-counterfeiting
______________________

Chanel S.A.S.
135, avenue Charles de Gaulle
92200 Neuilly sur Seine
France
Tel : +33 (0) 1 46 43 53 39
Fax : +33 (0) 1 46 43 53 34
Email : yann.rome@chanel-corp.com

I told them no, and that perhaps they should be more concerned about whether they are shutting down legit items rather then if their email address is out there.

[misshattie]

I just recieved word form Ebay that Chanel also requested one of my auctions to be removed. In the past, the auctions that were removed, were reinstated due to chanelusa and error.

I know the vero rules and ebay's rules. I didn't violate any of the rules.

Why is ebay or chanel doing this? My items are authentic and I show many pictures to prove authenticity. There's no way that Chanel would mistake my items for counterfiet.

I use my own pictures, very careful with my text, and I know the vero rules backward and forward, due to my listings that were pulled previously. I offer a guarantee of authenticity or money back, etc.


My ebay id is in wonderful standing and I've never recieved a negative feedback for ever selling counterfiet anything. My feedback is over 99%.
I am an honest seller.

I wasn't sure if another ebayer was turning my chanel listings in or if it was chanel. I don't really sell that much Chanel, due to my first listings being pulled, then reinstated after error was admitted.

I have contacted chanelusa now, for over 10 days and have not recieved a response. I emailed ebay, per ebay's request after ten days, that they would step in.
Now ebay is sending me emails telling me that I need to give chanelusa up to 4 weeks to respond to me.

What's going on?
Can someone please help me?

[tabberone]

The email address that is provided for Chanel is somethingn like chanel at kmwlaw dot com

That to me is a dump mailbox that no one checks.

Go to the KMW law website and get the lawyers names and email addresses and contact them directly.

Last I heard it was David Caplan who was the lawyer for Chanel.

[misshattie]

My Chanel listing was reinstated by Ebay citing an error in pulling. They always apologize and I'm allowed to relist. this is just with Chanel items.
This time, I had a Ebay rep tell me that it could take up to a year for Chanel to respond, and then on Nov. 2nd, my Chanel listing was reinstated.

Bear in mind , this is the 3rd time I've had a Chanel pulled, have appealed, just to have Ebay to apologize and reinstate.

Only this time...............Ebay reinstated on the 2nd, and I relisted it with Ebay's permission and email stating that the Chanel listing had been reinstated due to error in pulling it to begin with......................and it was up less than a day................AND EBAY PULLED THE EXACT LISTING AGAIN!!

Yes, it was the exact same listing that they had reinstated and admitted error in pulling.

Tabberone, if you understand what is going on, or how Ebay can reinstate , just to turn right around and re-pull the listing that they themselves reinstated...............please let me know.

I've saved every email and correspondence. I also made a hard copy of the listing...........which I didn't change at all , upon relisting.......as I wanted a copy of the listing while it was active on Ebay, so that I would have proof that I did not violate Chanel's vero rights in any way.

This is unbelieveable.

Karen, anything you can think of................I am trying to fight this, but at this point, it looks like I'm by myself.

I have no friends that work at Ebay, I have no connections. Only that I post on the purse board on Ebay, and posted a copy of the reinstatement email that Ebay sent me, and then also told the boardies that they turned around and pulled the reinstated auction............yet once again.

I don't know if someone is turning my listings into Ebay and Ebay, since all of this stuff with Louis Vuitton filing suit is going on, is just not knowing what the left hand is doing, while the right hand is doing something else......................or if it's actually Chanel.
a purse boardie stated that the Chanel Vero has not been active now for about 4 years.

So, if that's the case, why is my listing getting pulled citing Chanel vero requested it? Is this just a standard canned response that Ebay uses when another prominent Ebay member requests removal of an auction?

I don't know what to think or how to get to the bottom of all this.

[spiroo]

Which company has requested the withdrawal, according to ebay ? My experience : no point contacting the US company if the French of the UK did it...
the removals may also come directly from eBay which has apparently removed recently many auctions by itself or after having received "anonymous" emails...
good luck

[misshattie]

Yes, I am thinking it is indeed anonymous emails.

All I can do is try and fight it. I have forwarded Ebay's emails of reinstatement of the Chanel to both Ebay and Chanel.

I'm doing the best that I can with an injustice that apparently, I'm not the only one who has been privy to.

[tabberone]

eBay probably doesn't track the reinstatement and if the VeRO member asks that it be taken down again eBay does.

That's why I take everyone to court.

[misshattie]

I don't see how you can afford to take everyone to court. Don't you incur court costs?
Do you act as your own attorney? I think from reading your cases, that you do.
Do you ever get punitive damages?

Apparently, there's no stopping Ebay or VEROs that abuse their VERO rights, unless each individual does take them to court.

I don't see how Ebay survives with all the scamming and counterfiets. It's a funny thing to me that all these Chanel auctions are now being removed from Ebay, just at buying season time. Also a funny thing is that now, for some reason, hi-jackers have enundated Ebay around the same time that authentic auctions are being pulled.

The excuse that many are giving is that they are accidentially pulling authentic auctions too.

BALONEY!!!!

Chanel certainly knows an authentic auction when they see it.

Does anyone know what really is going on? I would love to know the great conspiracy!

Yes, I am sour grapes, as I am a very honest seller/buyer.......and I feel like a rabbit in a den of wolves on Ebay.

[tabberone]

A lot of companies don't want their stuff sold on eBay so they get them shutdown figuring 99.9% of the people will suck it up and move on.

I represent myself, I get expenses. It's hard to get punitive so I settle for my costs.

[kaydeecouture.c]

I realise that this is an old thread, but I'm bringing it back because this is the 2nd time Chanel Vero has removed an authentic listing of mine from eBay.

eBays stance on Vero Rights owners is that they have no stance. "Vero owners set their own policies and we have nothing to do with it". So, I guess it would be ok for me to buy the rights to GUCCI (since they refuse to participate in the protection of their own copyrights) and start removing authentic listings for the mere fact that they are in competition with mine... dish out $2500 and hey - I can have a free for all!!

This is just plain irritating.

[tabberone]

I don't know what you mean about buying the rights to Gucci but you can't.

And I know you're joking but in case people reading this are clueless if you shut down someone they can take you to court for non infringement and go after you as making false claims.

[kaydeecouture.c]

Hi ya tab! Yes, I was being sarcastic

The auction was reinstated 3 days later.

I recieved no apology from Chanel/vero for ending an auction that had multiple bids, no apology for the doubt they've created in the minds of the people who had the auction on their watch list and hadn't recieved an e-mail from Vero showing that "at the request of Chanel" it was reinstated because it is indeed an authentic bag... just an approval to go back and redo what I had already been done right the first time.

I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that my auction was reinstated, but I would be more grateful if the person responsible for pulling their listings were being held as responsible for dotting their i's and crossing their t's as we are.