Scott Steinberg · Consultant, Analyst and Business Strategist
Online sales disputes run on evidence most retail cases never have: every price shown, every listing version, every abandoned cart and every delivery promise is recorded somewhere. A consultant to 3000+ brands across areas like online marketplaces, app stores and digital retail, Scott Steinberg reads that record and explains what standard practice looked like.
Expert reports, declarations, deposition and trial testimony on checkout and pricing presentation, product listings and content, fulfillment and delivery promises, returns handling, app stores, Internet marketplace selling, payments and fraud, subscriptions and more.
From marketing and advertising to pricing and online selling. Contracts, platform policy, trade secrets, IP and more.
Disputes examine when each cost component appeared, how shipping and taxes were surfaced, what was preselected at checkout, and whether the total resembled the price that drew the buyer in.
Testimony documents the checkout sequence as it existed and compares it against category convention for that period.
Listings communicate through images, specifications, comparison tables, variant selection and content that may originate from the brand, the seller or the platform.
Testimony addresses listing convention, who controlled which elements, and where the presentation departed from what the product delivered.
Delivery date promises, stock availability displays, shipping speed claims and backorder handling set expectations that fulfillment either meets or does not.
Testimony addresses what the seller's own data supported about those promises at the time they were displayed.
Returns disputes examine policy presentation, restocking and return shipping costs, refund timing and how claims were adjudicated across similarly situated customers.
Testimony addresses returns practice convention and what the transaction record shows about consistency.
Selling through marketplaces raises questions about listing control, buy-box and placement dynamics, counterfeit and unauthorized seller activity, and brand control across resellers.
Testimony addresses marketplace selling practice and what the seller could actually control about how products appeared.
Payment disputes involve authorization and capture timing, chargeback handling, fraud screening that declines legitimate buyers, and stored payment credential practice.
Testimony addresses ecommerce payment convention and what the transaction record shows about how orders were treated.
Replenishment programs, subscribe-and-save arrangements and membership tiers create recurring charges whose enrollment and cancellation mechanics are frequently uneven.
Testimony addresses recurring commerce convention and how the implementation compared for the customer population concerned.
Analytics, order records, session data and funnel metrics reconstruct what buyers actually encountered and where they stopped, across a population rather than one complaint.
Testimony addresses what that data supports and where an inference about buyer intent exceeds what the record will bear.
Storefront versions, pricing history and listing content change constantly and are seldom archived by the seller, so establishing what a buyer saw is the first task. Any party may instruct.
Written opinions on storefront presentation, listing accuracy, fulfillment representation, industry practice, etc.
Testimony translating storefront, order and analytics records into what buyers actually experienced.
Responsive analysis of conversion claims, lost sales models and characterizations of standard practice.
Non-testifying storefront reconstruction, order data review and discovery scoping across commerce systems.
Scott Steinberg is an analyst, consultant and business trends expert with over 25 years of experience providing management and strategic consulting services to more than 3,000 businesses and brands ranging from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
He has testified in sample areas including intellectual property — copyrights, trademarks and patents — patent infringement, marketing, branding, video games, mobile applications, consumer product development, and the growth and monetization of online distribution platforms.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles addressing areas including but not limited to marketing, technology, leadership, innovation, advertising, digital transformation, data privacy and social networks. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, and has led seminars and training programs for organizations including Wells Fargo, the PGA Tour, Century 21, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble.
His consulting work has been broadly recognized. He has served as a thought leader for the American Bar Association and Corporate Counsel magazine, and has received honors from the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune, and the 21st Century Icon Awards, among others.
Myriad areas like mechanics of online selling: how prices and costs were presented through checkout, what listings claimed and who controlled them, whether delivery promises were supportable, how returns and payments were handled, and what the order and analytics record shows about buyer experience across a population.
Yes. Retail work addresses trade relationships between brands and retailers including vendor terms, chargebacks and assortment. Platforms addresses the commercial relationship between a platform and the businesses on it. We also look at the selling operation itself: storefront, listings, fulfillment, returns and payments.
Everything is recorded. Price and listing versions, session behavior, cart abandonment points, order and fulfillment timestamps, and refund histories all exist as data. The limitation is retention rather than existence, which makes preservation scoping the difference between a provable claim and an argued one.
Frequently yes, within stated limits. Storefront reconstruction draws on web archives, platform listing histories, internal content management records, promotional configuration and marketing material. Where the record is incomplete, testimony should say so rather than filling the gap with assumption.
Both. Direct storefront matters concentrate on checkout, pricing and fulfillment representation. Marketplace matters add listing control, placement dynamics, unauthorized sellers and counterfeit activity, where the seller's actual control over presentation is frequently the central question.
Initial conversations about scope, timing and conflicts are without charge. Helpful detail includes the storefront or marketplace, the practice at issue and the period involved, plus any expert disclosure deadline already set.
A conflicts check is run before any substantive discussion. An initial note listing the party names and a one-line description of the dispute is enough to start; please hold privileged or confidential material until the check clears.