One of the most fascinating pieces of testimony to surface at the New Hampshire House Executive Departments and Administration committee hearing on HB 544 on February 22, 2007, which I wrote about last week, was delivered by the Chairman of the NH Board of Auctioneers, the licensing authority. Charles Clougherty had just returned from Arizona after attending a seminar on February 12 sponsored by the National Auctioneers Association.

One of the speakers, Clougherty said, was an attorney representing eBay. Clougherty told the ED & A committee: "According to this attorney, eBay is in the process of changing their agreements with all of their 212,000,000 registered users. eBay will no longer advertise themselves as an auction or auction company and will discontinue the use of the word "auction" from their online and paper advertising.

"One of the major changes to their selling agreements that will occur in 2007 is a requirement by eBay that anyone accepting consignments for auction who holds themselves out to be an auctioneer, who participates in auctioneering or who advertises that they sell at auction for a fee must comply with relevant state statutes, especially licensing."

Another licensed NH auctioneer who spoke against HB 544, Janet Saunders, who sells heavily on eBay as a trading assistant with 500 items online at any one time, said she was already aware of the changes that are about to take place at eBay and thought it was a step in the right direction.

When contacted for comment, eBay spokesperson Catherine England confirmed that eBay had had some folks at the NAA meeting, but that eBay had nothing to announce right now. "We are in conversation with the NAA on a variety of things. We've always taken the position that eBay is not a traditional auctioneering site. eBay and most sellers for the most part are not traditional auctioneers. We are looking into some of the language." England said eBay wants to help ensure that folks who are auctioneers are complying with regulations that apply to them.

Ina Steiner contributed to this article.

Related Article:
"New Hampshire May Exempt eBay Consignment Sellers from Regulation"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m02/i28/s01
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Kathy Greer, a former investigative reporter, for the past fifteen years has been the Senior Editor of "UnRavel the Gavel" (http://www.thegavel.net), a newspaper covering the New England auction scene.