Little chuckle bout Ebay

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TB2K spinoff uncensored : One Thread

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Internet "trading community" eBay Inc. (EBAY.O) said on Wednesday that it had asked a federal judge to bar a Chicago man from its Web site for using foul language and flouting its own attempts to ban him.

A spokesman for the popular company, which 12 million people use to offer and bid on items ranging from fine art to concert tickets, said many users had complained about insulting language used by Braxton Anderson under his various electronic aliases.

An attorney for Anderson, 33, won a delay until Monday for the judge's consideration of eBay's petition to have him barred from the site for life, according to Kevin Pursglove, a spokesman for the company, which is based in San Jose, California.

"He's disrupting the normal course of conduct (of eBay transactions). ... We've had numerous complaints from other users that he uses profane, abusive language," Pursglove said.

Although the company has "terminated 40 to 45 of his accounts in the last three months alone," Anderson has circumvented the company's moves by re-registering under other identities, Pursglove said.

EBay has terminated customers before, but this was the first time that it had resorted to court intervention, he said.

Anderson could not be reached for comment. He told the Chicago Sun-Times that he was being singled out by a group of eBay customers and that he had already said he would not return to the Web site.

End

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), July 12, 2000


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