Another eBay seller caught selling misappropriated goods. The scam was being run by Thong Quoc Tran, 30 of Placentia, CA and involved his having allegedly filing more than 1,000 phony warranty claims on Cisco routers. According to the affidavit, Tran would obtain the serial numbers of routers legally purchased from Cisco by companies around the country. Tran would then buy warranties on those routers, claim they were broken, get Cisco to send him replacement parts to repair them and then resell the replacement parts sent by Cisco at a discount on eBay.

The strange auction, which had a current bid of Euro 10 Million (about $13 Million USD) before being ended, was listed by one disgruntled Belgian in protest of his country’s political crisis, which reached a 100-day landmark on Tuesday with no end in sight to the squabbling between Flemish and Walloon politicians.

As everyone has undoubtedly noticed (including the media), eBay has revamped its site and continue to focus on ways to make the site easier to use for buyers. According to eBay, this is all that is needed is a few tweaks and the site will hum with the magic and glory it once did. Of course, I’d disagree. Buyers are seller’s customers and sellers are eBay’s customers. eBay needs to start taking care of its sellers, instead of pulling their usual crap.

eBay is one of the worst companies with regard to sending you twenty e-mails when just one would do. Every little thing with eBay seems to require an e-mail, some of them they wont let you turn off in your communication preferences. For someone who signed into My eBay on a daily basis, an e-mail informing me that an item was sold is unneeded.

But they specifically disallow you from turning these off, for what reason I have no clue. I was reminded of this portion of my experience when I ran across the eBay Hell website, which chronicles one user’s attempt to get eBay to stop sending him “product surveys” to measure his satisfaction with the company.

A lawsuit seeking class action status was recently filed in The United States District Court for the Northern District of California against eBay, Inc. for allegedly engaging in anti-competitive business practices. The suit was filed on July 25, 2007 by Jeffery Enebely, an eBay seller since 2000 and residing in Oakland, California, according to the Complaint.

Specifically, the allegations center around eBay’s monopolistic behavior in the marketplace and its use of that position to force sellers and buyers to use PayPal. Also at issue is the exclusion of Google Checkout from eBay, which the suit contends is unjust and unfair.

Additional information about the lawsuit, including a copy of the actual court filings, can be accessed on our Other Lawsuits page. The docket number is 5:07-CV-03803-PVT.