From: Frank Gruendel (fg2_at_pda-soft.de)
Date: Wed Jan 28 2004 - 15:26:20 PST
Oh boy,
I never expected I'd be starting such an avalance...
Since this has been discussed quite a bit in the meantime,
I will answer all this publicly. Gary from Gem Enterprises
is cc on this mail.
Please let me start by pointing out that I firmly believe that
everyone selling Newton stuff is basically doing the Newton
community a favor. This includes Gem Enterprises, and it also
includes, to a certain degree, "The certain seller we all
know and love".
If no Newtons were sold because people who can afford it buy
them in large quantities when offered, there'd be a lot less
Newtons around, and this community would be a lot less alive.
And there are definitely easier ways to make money than by
selling anything Newton-related.
There are, however, subtle differences in how such a business
can be conducted. By this I do not mean how a transaction is
handled once it has taken place. In this aspect both Gem and
the certain seller are quite good according to their eBay
feedback.
English not being my native language, I am afraid I might not
get across what I mean in the next paragraph. But I will try.
There are differences
in how you advertise what you are planning to sell. This starts
with claiming items to be "extremely rare" although a quick eBay
search turns out they are all over the place, and it does not end
with mentioning things that are quite obviously not true or
phrase auction texts in a way that everyone will at least believe
they are meant in a particular way they aren't actually meant in.
Another thing is prices. Quite obviously it would be ridiculous to
expect that anyone can do sales and repairs at the prices I sell
or repair at. I fortunately have a job that I like that pays the
rent and feeds myself and my family. All Newton things are done
nightly around midnight. I'm doing this mostly for fun and
because it feels good to be able to do something others can't do.
And, believe it or not, I like helping people. Especially members
of this community. All I want is coverage of expenses and a marginal
profit that enables me to buy more parts.
It would be ridiculous to believe that a company that is doing this
for a living can be expected to have even remotely similar prices.
But there are limits. If I come across an auction that is so
overpriced that I gasp, I'm feeling that those sellers have crossed
the border between being useful and trying to rip people off.
Please note that I didn't write the above paragraph to accuse Gem of
doing any of this. It would be extremely unfair of me to accuse Gem of
anything since the auction we are currently talking about is pretty much
the first I've ever seen of them. I just wrote it to get across what I
feel about business ethics. Which, I'm afraid, I didn't succeed in.
Getting it across, I mean.
Just in case you aren't sufficiently bored yet, please let me comment
on parts of the previous posts.
> I'm a square guy to deal with and not a fellow who does things to
> hurt, deceive or otherwise act in a manner that is not ethical.
Gary, it was never my intention to imply any of this. I don't know
you personally, nor do I know anybody working at Gem, so it would
have been more than out of the line to accuse you of any of the
above.
> We are simply GIVING AWAY the links with the purchase as stated
> "**PLUS-AS AN ADDED BONUS**
I'm perfectly aware that I won't make many friends at Gem with this
(provided that it is still possible), but unfortunately my parents
have raised me in a way that makes me always say what I think.
This statement reminds me a bit of German sex cinemas. In Germany
it is illegal to show sex films publicly. This is why
watching sex films isn't what you pay for when you visit such a
cinema. You pay for the bottle of beer, wine or the soft drink.
Watching the film is just an added bonus and has nothing whatsoever
to do with what is sold. Sorry, couldn't resist.
As for "not copying", you might want to have a look at your own auction
text and compare it with the wording on
http://www.pda-soft.de.hardware.html
If this isn't a copy, I think my definition of a copy urgently needs to
be updated.
> and linking and or distribution of hyperlinks does not require
> royalties and you don't need a Juris Doctor to ascertain that.
Again, it might be because I'm not a native speaker, but I thought
that I sufficiently got across by now that I am not after royalties. If
I were, I wouldn't have published the info in the web in the first
place.
> I have plenty of law courses under my belt if you research my
> background
Congratulations. Myself, I wouldn't even try to understand
German law even though to my admittedly limited mind it often makes
more sense than American law.
> I would like to pass on these links to fellow Newton users to
> HELP them, and as you said yourself it could even lead to sales.
If you want to help Newton users, all you'd have had to do is add
a link to http://www.pda-soft.de/hardware.html in your auction
text. The wording on this page, as mentioned above, is identical to
your auction text. It's just the background image that is different.
And the fact that there are real links on it.
I am aware that you mentioned that adding links to auction texts is
forbidden by eBay. Frankly, this puzzles me quite a lot. All of
the more than 200 eBay auctions that I was the seller in had a link
to a picture that lived on my web site in them. I very frequently
add links to my auction texts that link to handbooks, operators
manuals, reviews, larger images etc., and so far eBay hasn't pulled
a single of these auctions. Admittedly this was mostly eBay.de,
and my last auction was some time ago. But I'm still seeing
these links all over the place no matter what eBay branch I'm
currently in. Also, in my web site's
statistics eBay has a place among the top ten every week. More
often than not they take up the place right after the usual search
engines. Mostly these links are from eBay auctions where weak or dead
Newton/eMate hardware is sold, and nearly all of them are from eBay.com.
> The auction is for a CD-ROM of information, The MONT BLANC of all
> Styli and Newton 2000, 2100 Clear Screen Protectors as stated-the
> links are free.
See above. I do think that there might be buyers who wouldn't
bid for the stylus and screen protectors and CD alone. People who think
that stylus and screen protectors and CD ALONG with my info is
a good deal, stylus and screen protectors and CD WITHOUT said info
isn't. Wouldn't you agree? These people would, to a certain degree,
pay for this "free" info. If it hadn't been promised, they wouldn't
have bid.
> If you like, I will send you a copy for free as it has a lot of
> nice utilities.
Thanks for the offer. Since I have no doubt that you mean it, I have
a better idea. Why not send the CD to Victor? For one, shipping to
Canada
is much less expensive than shipping to Germany. And it would be
certainly an excellent idea if Victor could upload any info that isn't
already at unna to his site. And since I will (hopefully) no longer pay
internet access by the minute as of tomorrow (fingers crossed), myself
and the rest of the community would have access to this CD's info soon.
> If I was taking bread off of your (Frank's) table I should be ashamed,
> but in fact I am not taking bread off anyone's table.
I never intended to imply this. Matter of fact, if this was what puts
bread on my table, my whole family would be starved since October 2000
when my site went online ;-)
Apart from that, no one in his right mind will publish info he is
planning to live on in the web.
> Frank, if you link, I will discontinue the ads when they run out
> and not link anyone to your website now or in the future, feel free
> to send a request to GEM_at_Gementerprises.Com and or cal me personally
> with a request and I will be happy to do so simply as a courtesy
> to you and certainly not under any legal obligation or
> premise whatsoever.
If it is in fact not possible to put a direct link into your auction
texts, I would like you to take this out of your ads. But, again,
I do not object per se to your using this info. If it can boost your
sales, it's fine with me. Many eBay sellers do this, I can see it
every day in my site's statistics. And there's certainly no need
for your stopping to link anyone to my site. My feeling is that you
said that you can't do this because if you did eBay would pull
your auction. If I'm mistaken, you are welcome to put as many links to
my
site as you want into any of your auction texts.
All I object to is that users will consider the info part of the deal.
My personal feeling is that it is of no importance whatsoever how you
rephrase the text, even if you rephrase it the way Victor suggested.
As long as the links aren't there for anyone to see, only the high
bidder will get the promised info, no matter how often the word
"free" appears in the auction text.
And this, in my opinion, actually makes it the very opposite of free.
Well, this post is long enough and I guess I have made enough enemies
for one day. I'd suggest we leave it at that. My opinion is not going
to change, neither is (very likely) Gem's opinion going to change, so
it'd be more or less a waste of bandwith to elaborate further on this.
Guess I will spend the rest of the day pondering if I should dare to
inquire about the total you (Gary) ask for selling your whole stock
of Newton items in a bulk which you offered me in a seperate mail
today. Since my spare parts level is getting desperately low...
;-))
All the best
Frank
-- Newton Software and Hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 29 2004 - 08:00:02 PST