Posted on 11/16/2003 9:18:27 AM PST by PeteFromMontana
Plains woman wants $860 refunded that she spent online for counterfeit Beanie Babies; Florida man she bought them from says he did nothing wrong
PLAINS - What would you do with "thedrunkensailor"?
Beanie Baby collector Pat O'Buck of Plains would like him prosecuted, convicted and thrown in jail for felony trademark infringement and fraud.
Short of that, she said she'd be satisfied if he'd just sober up and refund the $860 she paid him for what she now knows are five counterfeit Beanie Babies.
The 77-year-old retiree bought the supposedly collectible toy animals in a high-profile eBay auction that took as many bizarre twists and turns as a "Matrix" movie.
On the other hand, thedrunkensailor, whose real name is Steve Kaye, 32, an aviation sales consultant from Coral Beach, Fla., insisted he's done nothing wrong.
He told the Missoulian this week he made full disclosure on the eBay Internet auction site listing, including a forcefully worded disclaimer that he knew nothing about the merchandise's authenticity.
The feud between O'Buck and Kaye has become in just a few weeks a cyberspace battle of galactic proportions. Spreading like an algae bloom across the world via phone lines, modem cables and satellite links, it has generated more than 1.2 million "hits" on eBay alone as of this writing - apparently a record for interest in a single listing.
It all started in mid-September when Kaye listed "Collection of 26 Beanie Babies from Ex-Wife," on eBay with the following statement:
"I DO NOT KNOW crap about these things. This belonged to my ex-wife who had about a 1,000 of these Beanie Babies and when she moved, this one box of these got left behind, and now I am selling the goofy little things. Whatever money I make from them will be spent at the local Home Depot on tools and other cool stuff ... I am starting the auction at $10.00 and at that price I figure you all can take a chance. ... I can only say, that 99 percent of these goofy toys were bought with my money, from either the local Hallmark Store, or one of the dozen or so Southern Craft/collectibles stores ... I know nothing about these stuffed Beanie Babies. I offer no proof of anything. It is a stuffed animal, get over it! I don't think my ex-wife was in the Black Market Beanie Trade ... .but then again, I didn't know she was having an affair either!"
The ad caused quite a stir on eBay and prompted O'Buck to e-mail some words of caution to Kaye, using her eBay user name "Taisha." She was particularly concerned that some of Kaye's Beanie Babies appeared to be rare and valuable, if authentic.
"I alerted him to the fact that it was unlikely that the five hard-to-find Beanies would turn out to be genuine and suggesting that he should pull the auction, relist the common ones, and send the others for authentication," O'Buck recalled.
Instead of responding, Kaye posted her entire message on his listing, and added this response:
"WELL TAISHA! I don't CARE! I told everyone in the beginning everything I know and don't know about these STUPID animals! I have an idea for all people that are so worried about this.....DON'T BID! I don't care! I am so upset that this clown of a woman figured out my SUPER PLAN TO SCAM MILLIONS FROM THE UNKNOWING BEANIE WORLD! I FIGURED I WOULD RETIRE FROM THIS RUSE! What a dolt she is! I have blocked her from my bidder list, that way she can cry about it. Some people are UNREAL! GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Far from discouraging O'Buck, the rather uncharitable response seemed only to heighten her interest in the auction.
Since Kaye was refusing to accept bids from O'Buck under her user name "Taisha," she used another eBay user name to bid on the Beanie Babies. And on Sept. 26 - $860, plus shipping, later - she had outbid about 40 other bidders.
Despite her initial skepticism, O'Buck said four or five of the Beanies in the auction might have real value, if they were not knock-offs. She was especially interested in a rare elephant Beanie called the Royal Blue Peanut, pictured in the listing and described in the copy as "Peanut Elephant (comes in a plastic see-thru box)."
A quick check showed that thedrunkensailor had 100 percent positive feedback on 500 past eBay transactions. And O'Buck thought his story about his ex-wife leaving him, and leaving behind part of her Beanie collection was plausible enough.
She'd seen authenticated Royal Blues advertised at $3,000 or more in the past, and even though Beanie prices were down considerably from a few years ago, a real Royal Blue Peanut might still be worth far more than $1,000 to collectors.
Still, O'Buck had doubts about Kaye's Beanie Babies as she paid by PayPal, an eBay service that takes credit card payments from bidders and credits the credit cards of sellers. Meanwhile, she also paid some $46 extra for insurance, which was supposed to cover fraud.
Still suspicious, she had the clerk at the Plains Post Office on hand as a witness when she opened the box after it arrived.
Sure enough, she said, her worst fears were realized. She could tell at a glance at the "tush" of the collectible beanies (where a label is affixed) that they were foreign knock-offs. For proof positive, she sent them to an expert for authentication (another $44 charge) and they were confirmed as fake.
Far from being the end of the Beanie Baby story, it was yet another beginning. For starters, using a "stealth" name to bid on eBay is a no-no for which the auction service promptly suspended O'Buck's trading privileges for two weeks.
It has taken no such action against Kaye, despite O'Buck's complaints that he violated eBay's rules regarding auction listings for trademarked merchandise. (Her complaint is still under eBay review.)
After realizing her Beanie Babies were fake, O'Buck contacted Kaye via e-mail and demanded her money back.
"I would have been willing to settle for $870 (Beanies and postal insurance) and eaten the $92.35 for other insurance and authentication, but he told me if I wrote him again, he would consider it harassment," she said in her written complaint to the FBI Web site.
She contacted a third-party service, called traderlist.com, a watchdog group that keeps track of Internet fraud complaints. A traderlist official fired off an e-mail to Kaye warning him he was flirting with consumer fraud and possible criminal prosecution.
In his thedrunkensailor persona, Kaye fired back: "Feel free to call the police, FBI, Postal Inspector and the Freaking Wildlife Organization that governs Blue Stuffed Elephants. You must be insane if you think I'm going to take it seriously ... If you want to play hard ball, then go get your bat and let's play. I demand that you NO LONGER EMAIL ME for any reason, unless to apologize."
By that time, Internet interest in taisha vs. thedrunkensailor had reached a fever pitch. People from all over the world were in chat rooms and other Internet venues opining about the transaction.
Soon enough, the legitimate press started taking notice, and Kaye geared up his Web site to exploit the interest.
Meanwhile, O'Buck kept pressing for a refund. She filed a postal complaint, asked for help from PayPal (none was forthcoming), posted her complaint on the FBI Internet Fraud watch list, contacted the bank that handled her credit card account - all, so far, to no avail.
Then last week, she listed the items herself on eBay: "26 Beanies formerly owned by sailor's ex-wife" was the heading.
"Up for sale with an opening minimum bid of $9.99 are 26 beanie babies formerly owned by a sailor's ex-wife. ... I'm keeping Beanies Royal Blue Peanut, Humphrey, Web, Steg, and Britannia 'cause they don't look too pretty with big black-marker 'F's' (FOR 'FAKE') on their derrieres," O'Buck wrote in the listing, adding that the auction would be called off if the thedrunkensailor saw fit to refund her $860.
But Kaye wasn't about to offer a refund.
"I don't know her. I'm sure she's a wonderful human being, with a great sense of humor. I respect her. But business is business," he said Wednesday.
In O'Buck's auction, which opened at $9.99, bidders quickly pushed the price over $100 - much to O'Buck's surprise.
She told the Missoulian that even the authentic Beanie Babies in the auction were common ones, hardly worth much more than $1 each, even to collectors.
The auction ended Wednesday night, with a bidder named "seemystore" winning with a high bid of $182.50, plus shipping.
The Missoulian, through eBay, contacted seemystore, asking why he had bid so high for a bunch of virtually worthless stuffed toys.
"We think any item, viewed over 1.28 million times on its way to 2 million-plus, has the chance of having some infamous value," responded seemystore's Mike Allison.
O'Buck is a gray-haired, grandmotherly retiree who lives near Plains. She agrees she is "eccentric" in regard to her Beanie Baby collection. She owns some 1,500 of the collectible toys - they are mostly stored in plastic containers stacked in almost every room of her house, plus an outbuilding on the property.
She said she has spent as much as $300 a month on eBay and elsewhere buying the items. She started collecting Beanies after buying one as a present for a grandchild a few years ago.
She doesn't often sell them. Some she donates to charities like the Mission Valley Animal Shelter in Polson and Clark Fork Valley Memorial Hospital in Plains, or other worthy causes.
Kaye, in addition to being an aviation-industry worker, does some Internet marketing as a sideline.
But in the online world and beyond, they now have earned nothing short of celebrity status.
Since the sale of the dolls, there have been write-ups of the feud in the Wall Street Journal Internet edition, in general-interest newspapers from coast to coast, on radio talk shows most everywhere, and innumerable screeds, missives and "flames" (nasty e-mail notes) promulgated on uncountable numbers of "blogs" (Internet personal diaries), chat rooms and humorous and "joke of the day" Web sites.
The chat mail opinion is running heavily against O'Buck, and so is the e-mail to her personal e-mail address, much of which has been abusive. On Thursday, she blocked that e-mail address.
"I've received 250 e-mails on thedrunkensailor (transaction), almost all negative," she said. Folks have barraged her with epithets more appropriate to a barroom brawl or gutter fight, calling her dolt, idiot and worse.
A tamer sample from a recent chat room posting:
"She should have to eat this one just to teach her a lesson. What an idiot!"
Meanwhile, Kaye is selling stuff like hot cakes related to the transaction on his Web site and on eBay.
Alertly jumping to take advantage of all the unexpected publicity, Kaye and a friend have started their own Web page, thedrunkensailorandmuggstein.com, offering for sale a beer mug, a desk calendar (coming soon), and thedrunkensailor "thongs" (not the kind you wear on your feet) and torso-hugging shirts adorned with thedrunkensailor logo. And until recently, "buy me a beer" certificates.
Kaye said Wednesday that he has received Internet payment now for some 700 thedrunkensailor beer certificates, in which the buyer pays Kaye $1.60 or so for a certificate stating he has bought a beer with the money - or tools.
While insisting his Beanie Babies auction was clearly listed buyer-beware, Kaye does acknowledge there were some misstatements.
For example, he told the Missoulian he was, and remains, happily married. (A columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel first unearthed that information. Yet he apparently told the Oregonian newspaper that he was divorced, but his ex wasn't having an affair. The divorce was a mutual decision, he said.)
The story about his "ex-wife" running out on him was a "little white lie," he told the Missoulian. It was a marketing ploy to give some zip and zing to the listing's copy block. (His Web sites continue to state the same "white lie.")
O'Buck said she's through with eBay, and her Beanie collection isn't giving her the pleasure it used to, either.
"To dramatize this unfairness, and much blame can be on eBay itself, I am thinking about a 'burn the Beanies' party and would be willing to put all 1,500 in a heap and have a fireman set the torch," she said.
Kaye, however, continues to exploit the notoriety of his feud with O'Buck.
"As many of you know this all started due to the Original eBay auction of crap left behind by the ex-wife on her departure from a little chapter in her life called 'me.' As (she) ... pranced out the door, she left behind a box that would change my life. For due to this magical box and that silly auction, I know now that beanies are friends of man! For beanies can be used to buy beer!" the unrepentant sailor proclaimed on his Web site Thursday afternoon.
Late Thursday, O'Buck was notified by eBay that it had finally reviewed Kaye's original auction listing, and "it has been ended early by eBay for violating one or more of our listing guidelines."
"A little bit late for me, I'm afraid," O'Buck replied to eBay on Thursday night. "The auction ended on Sept. 26, I paid, five beanies are counterfeits, and the seller is refusing to refund my money."
Said O'Buck to the Missoulian: "If they had done this when I'd asked when I first spotted the auction, we wouldn't have been in this mess. This is six weeks too late."
It just goes to show that -- even in the nanny state -- people with enough determination and cunning will be able to hurt themselves if they work at it long and hard.
If you want to collect, collect something real; guns, quilts, thimbles, fine silver, classic cars, estate jewelry, gold bullion ...... but never collector plates, 'comemorative' anythings, or other pyramid scheme trash.
So9
"Caveat emptor". It's not just a good idea - it's the law.
IIRC, there are two general exceptions, neither of which apply here. One, there is a tort for fraud, where the buyer knowingly misrepresents some aspect of the merchandise. That didn't happen, as he deliberately avoided claiming that any of the stupid things were "authentic" or "valuable" or somehow other than something they were not - he specifically disclaimed any knowledge of their authenticity, as a matter of fact. Or, two, there is the doctrine of error in substantialibus - an error of substance, where the merchandise delivered is substantially different from the merchandise that was agreed upon. But that didn't happen either - he said he had a blue beanie elephant, and she got a blue beanie elephant, or whatever.
The bottom line is, she gambled, and she lost. The guy was, by all accounts, very careful not to make any claims as to authenticity or value - instead, he spun a little tale, and let the buyer's imagination do the work for him. And while I don't doubt for a minute that he knew exactly what he was doing, there's no way you can hold him responsible for what someone else imagined, unless that imagining is a reasonable expectation based on what the seller says.
sw
As long as you understand that they are decorations, not investments.
So9
sw
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