Have you heard of the Shop Safe Act?

[Americasprice]

The Shop Safe Act, short for the Secure and Protect Americans’ is a proposed piece of legislation designed to safeguard consumers from counterfeit and stolen goods sold online. Introduced in response to the growing prevalence of counterfeit products on e-commerce platforms, this act seeks to hold online marketplaces accountable for ensuring the authenticity and safety of the products they sell. In other words, if you are ACCUSED of selling counterfeit items, it's 3 strikes and you are banned for life from selling on these platforms. That seems a little excessive, especially when mistakes will be made from time to time.  If you are a reseller on ebay, amazon, Mercari and such, imagine getting banned for life from these platforms.  What would you do?  

www.americasprice.com

[maxpete]

Very interesting! Is it only accused or if you are found not in compliance then you will get a strike?

[Americasprice]

That is just the thing.   You see, as online sellers on those platforms, you are actually guilty until proven innocent.  That sad part is a lot of manufacturers are flagging online sellers listing as "Counterfeit" these platforms automatically side with the manufacture and not only do they take down the listing but also suspended or in some cases close your account without giving the sellers a chance to defend themselves or prove that the item is not counterfeit. 

www.americasprice.com 

[homeprogreen]

So question. You say it’s triggered by being accused 3 times but are those accusations being made by the platforms or consumers? I could very easily see disgruntled customers making false accusations 

[Americasprice]

The manufactures themselves.   This is of course, referring to online selling platforms like, ebay, Amazon, ETSY, and such.   I'm not sure if they are using the "Vero" and "Trademark Infringement" as a way to keep resellers from selling their products.  While some might be counterfeits items being sold by unscrupulous sellers, not every single product listed is counterfeit but these platforms take the manufactures' word at face value and just start "Suspending or Closing" sellers accounts. 
 

[VanKalkerFarms]

I'm not sure these bills ever became a law.  As is they were never even voted on, but they could be absorbed by a different bill to be passed that way.  I only looked for like 5 minutes so take this as a starting point not a final report 😁.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1843/text  This is the bill introduced in the Senate but never voted on

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5374 this is the bill introduced into the House but was never voted on.

[Americasprice]

Oh yes, I know that it was still not law, but they were trying to pass it.  I hope it does not pass.  Manufactures are also using the "Trademark Infringement" as a way to get item pulled off from selling platforms.  How can we sell a product without naming the product brand or taking a photo of the product that has the manufacture's name on it?  It would be like trying to sell your used car but not being able to list in the time what type of car or showing pictures of the cars name brand. 

[alexandriak]

Part of me loves this. As a consignment shop owner I can't tell you how many offers we get from people wanting to sell us counterfeit goods from their factories in China. It's so ridiculous.

What's even more frustrating are the consignment shops who don't have great morals who don't care if they sell counterfeit and some even advertise that the item is counterfeit! It's disgusting. 


My only concern is that it seems to just be accusations, which we all know could be a disgruntled customer or a competitor wanting to remove you. So these accusations should be heavily looked into before the strike is applied. But it's a start!
 

[Americasprice]

I couldn't agree more.  Its seems that as soon as an accusation is made, they simply suspend or deactivate sellers accounts.  What happened to the "Innocent until proven guilty?"  I guess it doesn't apply to online sellers.  

[alexandriak]

I think part of the problem is that there are so many sellers doing things wrong these days. Platforms want to take a quick approach to solve the "issue" which means good sellers get caught up in the quickness of deactivation and then have to fight to get their account or content put back. I can understand this, but I don't agree with it. I think if platforms were more proactive to begin with they could close the accounts they need to much faster.