Everyday Warehousers LLC filed a complaint against eBay Inc. in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi Jackson Division over what it called a systemic error in eBay's system in 2007 that caused eBay to list duplicate items that resulted in over-billing. The complaint, filed on June 25, 2009, alleges that eBay failed to use reasonable care in billing and listing procedures and claims that Everyday Warehousers' Ralph Smith worked with eBay executives to identify the problem, and that Smith spoke to executives including then-CEO Meg Whitman about the problem.
The plaintiff claims that eBay overcharged its American Express account due to the duplicate listings, leading to problems that ultimately resulted in eBay suspending the Everyday Warehousers account and ending over five thousand of its auctions and placing subsequent limits on its account.
Everyday Warehousers claims it averaged approximately $44,000 per month in sales prior to the incidents outlined in the lawsuit, which occurred in 2007, and that the duplicate listings totaled in excess of $70,000 dollars. According to the complaint, "eBay only began to insist that duplicate listing problem was user error after Everyday Warehousers' account was suspended as described below."
eBay sellers recently complained about a duplicate-listing problem on the site, and eBay confirmed over the weekend that it was working to resolve a bug that caused its system to list some listings in duplicate and said it would credit sellers who were charged extra as a result of the bug.
eBay declined comment on the litigation.
