I have only recently started having to deal with eBay/Paypal and have been horrified at their cavalier attitude to linking personal and company data as they see fit based on IP's cookies and god knows what else. The amount of false hits/linkages this must generate is huge (Sharing PC's, Company Networks with single NAT'd IP for thousands) etc.

So it also occurred to me that if they are blocking, suspending and banning accounts based on this kind of treatment of data, they are knowingly committing injustices based on statistical probabilities rather than hard fact.

All well and good you might say, you sign away all your rights when you agree to their terms and conditions, or do you??

What about a scenerio where Person 'P1' starts a business account on eBay/Paypal for Companies 'C1' and 'C2' of which he is a director (and therefore entitled to start the accounts), at this point these companies are irrevocably linked in eBay/Paypal's eyes. Time moves on, the company directors change. Should a transgression of eBay/Paypals rules be even alleged by their statistical robots it seems to me that two then legally and factually unrelated businesses would still be linked and therefore punished together.

This kind of random linkage/punishment MUST breach some Free Trade laws? (I'm certain in UK they are breaching Data Protection laws by not exercising due dilligence to ensure all data is correct) I'm also pretty sure if I was stockholder of company 'C2' and watched it go out of business because a new director of now unrelated company 'C1' shared his computer with his daughter, I would be wondering who to take to court and how!

Or an even simpler question would be to ask is it legal to punish a company for the actions of a director outside of his company duties? (Like a director who has a personal eBay account and breaches (or is alleged to breach, same thing in eBay) eBay policies, which subsequently causes suspension (and therefore damages) a legitimate company?

On a similar note, eBays VERO tradeemark rights program is so open to abuse by trademark holders in UK it's a joke. The USA implemented a law to force eBay to accept counter claims on Vero notices, but in the UK there is no counter claim/appeal, no process, if a VERO trademark owner points a finger at a listing and says 'guilty' ebay accepts it 100% and does not allow the listing owner any kind of defense/appeal other than to apply directly to the trademark owner (who of course never respond), this can easily lead to complete suspension of genuine businesses trading legally in wholesale trademarked goods.

It creates a great mechanism for Trademark owners to prevent wholesale priced goods ending up on eBay, and thus protecting their retailers margins.

eBay businesses are becoming a serious fraction of the economy, to operate these businesses safely we need rules based on law not on eBay's self serving policies or cozy agreements between eBay and Trademark owners.

Any legal eagles got a view on the legalities of what eBay is doing?

As you can probably guess, i've recently suffered some of these inequities, and would seriously like to see eBay brought to justice, or at the very least reigned in.