What classes as harrassment?

[doompixie]

Just curious as to what behaviour classes as harrassment (person to person, no companies or anything involved) and what action can be taken against it.

 

Been reading the ebay forums and read several horror stories of buyers continuously emailing/phoning/auction wrecking etc. Including one girl who's 'friend' constantly watches all her items and looks up stuff she's bought, making her well aware of it.

This seems a bit out of order, and wondered if theres some sort of scary letter available that may help get rid of these people.

 

I am aware of the ebay report system btw, I'm curious as to what can be done outside ebay.

[barracad]

A definition of harassment would be "unwanted conduct that violates people's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment."

 

The ebay activity sounds more like stalking! There is action that can be taken, but I assume this girl just wants the 'stalking' to stop, and the simplest solution would be to register a new ebay account and use that for buying her items.

[doompixie]

I always thought stalking was harrasment!! Am I wrong?

 

She has done that, was just curious if anything can be done about nasty people such as this. I've heard many other stories of buyers from hell constantly phoning the seller's house in regards to an item.

[gyzmo]

If you took a legal view on it, there are a number of elements. Harrassment usually invovles an act that is calculated (i.e, is likely to as opposed to a deliberate act) to cause alarm or distress to a reasonable person.

 

The Administration of Justice Act (harrasment of debtors) is a good one to look at as there is quite a bit of case law as to what is considered to be harrasment.