History of Chatboard Questions regarding eBay-APS relationship

Let me apologize to all of you for my failure to follow up with APS to assure that we did not misunderstand the intent of APS with regard to the questions of the scope of coverage of the APS-eBay arrangement.  As a part of the mea culpa let me repeat the history of what happened last fall when it was announced that APS and eBay were involved in establishing a process for review of philatelic material on eBay.

The first reaction of some among us was dismay that the APS had not attempted to involve us in the process as we thought our understanding of eBay would have been useful.  As the outline of the activity was revealed, it was apparent that a number of questions needed answers which were not immediately available.  In order to make some positive progress on the questions, I offered, as APS Representative of the eUSC, to put together a list of questions to be submitted to the APS to better understand the process which was intended.  The result was Questions for APS regarding its support of eBay stamp offerings.  The questions were divided into Questions of Process, Questions of Regulations, Questions of Scope, and General Questions.  I sent an e-mail to Bob Lamb which he generously answered.

The answers which I received were posted on  Update of Information on eBay-APS Arrangements: November 2, 2003.  This update occurred in two steps as the first answers left the questions of scope a bit unclear.  The posted pages were all made available to and read, I believe, by Bob Lamb.  My followup yielded the information that a forum was planned for sometime in the future to be held on one of the boards provided by eBay for this purpose.  Again, a series of questions was prepared in hopes that we could make the forum more productive:  Summary of inputs for questions for eBay workshop on APS - eBay activities.  These questions were forwarded to the APS along with the suggestion that they be answered beforehand so that any remaining uncertainties could be dealt with in the live forum.

The forum was held on December 1 and remains on the eBay site.  Answers to our questions were not posted beforehand so I posted the link to the questions (see item #9). I was told to ask one question at a time, so I did.  You can make your own judgement as to whether the answers were adequate or not.

I subsequently updated the page of the questions to provide the answers we received.  At that time it was clear that there were no answers to many of the questions and that, in particular, the questions of scope were not understood by either eBay or APS.  At no time was there any answer which suggested that only US philatelic material was under consideration.  There was no implication that the skills of the SCW were limited to US philatelic material or that they were only forwarding questions regarding US material to the APS.  We were left believing that APS was covering world-wide ebay.com philatelic material relying on the eight members of the SCW.

The subtle distinctions between lots appearing on ebay.com listings which were from the Australian, Canadian, and UK sites was lost because we were apparently talking past each other.  It may very well be that Neary and Lamb both knew that they were only looking at United States material.  It was certainly not clear to those of us who had participated in preparing the questions although, in all honesty there was some suspicion that this might be the case.  This concern was what led to the careful pursuit of the scope questions.

The only reference I have found that aluded to any limitations were some comments in the August 6, 2003, APS board meeting. (Note: these minutes were not posted until late in the process.  I am not sure whether they were available before December 1 or not.)  Here are some excerpts relative to the questions of scope:

"Lamb: The APS will say it does not have sufficient evidence from the scan to indicate that an item should be removed from sale. One problem so far is that the Committee is very focused on U.S., no one looking at foreign material right now, and Lamb thinks it should be broadened to worldwide material."

"Lamb: Not now. There are two things that need to be done fairly quickly in the eBay relationship. One is to broaden the watch committee so that it's looking at foreign stamps and not just U.S. The other is to develop a mechanism so a collector who spots something that's troublesome can bring it to the watch committee's attention."

"Lamb: APS will look at anything the watch committee refers."

"Klug: What about stuff that gets through the system? Are those people who buy bad stamps and covers going to blame the APS? Is the APS going to be held liable for that?
Lamb: No, because APS isn't saying everything on eBay is good. The APS is simply saying that something has been referred to it and there's a high probability it is bad or there is not enough probability to take it down.
Klug: But the perception already is that APS is policing all eBay's philatelic items.
Prill: Agrees that is the perception.
Lamb: That's not true and APS must take steps to get a more accurate perception. "

"Straight: Not concerned in the legal sense, but in the court of public opinion, that APS does not give the perception that is going to or is even able to police all of eBay.
Klug: The perception is already there.
Straight: Perception can do more harm for the Society than anything else. APS is doing something positive for the hobby, but must do it in such a way that it doesn't give the public the misperception that it's bitten off more than it can chew. "

On could conclude that since Lamb knew this history, he assumed that we did as well and that we knew that the scope was already limited to US material only

In any event, I gave up trying to get an answer to the question because I was getting nowhere and my abilities to communicate the question regarding scope had failed.  I should have kept at it.  I was remiss and do sincerely apologize for that failure.

Meanwhile, the question has been raised recurringly by David Benson. While I believe it is clear from the anecdotal data that no one was doing anything about anything other than US material, no one ever provided a definitive answer and I didn't pursue one.