Comments on: eBay to unveil fair-trade marketplace

Robert Chatwani, eBay's general manager of WorldofGood.com, talks about how the online auctioneer plans to cater to the "social conscious" consumer.

[somomomo]

Just for reference, the World of Good, Inc. website is not linked in this article: http://www.worldofgoodinc.com and also their retail division Original Good: http://www.originalgood.com

[somomomo]

Just for reference, the World of Good, Inc. website is not linked in this article: www.worldofgoodinc.com and also their retail division Original Good: www.originalgood.com

[as901]

This is a step in the right direction!

Mark Heinemann

[defibber]

The whole 'fair trade' angle is often just a lot of hype especially when dealing with gift and accessory items. This is the selling of 'fair trade' for the profit of one company whose standards are not the highest. It is marketing on the backs of the poor. If you check out their site you will see no facts about how much they actually pay workers or their locations, making all their claims ripe for abuse. What they pay is still very very low. It is not 'fair trade'. It is poor people working for cheap. In several cases they basically find poor people to copy someone else's product, thus taking advantage of the poor and the people who have developed this product and stifling development in the process - then you buy this airy concept of 'fair trade' for a premium. If you want to support 'fair trade' don't go through brokers like this. Find a good company you can trust and know. A collection of independants with verifiable information would make for much more interesting shopping.

[SherryLeader]

I checked this site out. It appears to be just a new skin for the same ebay database with a "Trustology" twist. All of the same fees apply. These "fair trade" artisans also have to become a business or premier member of paypal. My brother sells on Ebay. This setup means that these underprivileged workers will still pay over 12% fees on their work including insertion fees. So, how much food could a person in the third world buy if Ebay didn't pick their pocket?