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What Can You Do When Defrauded on eBay?
"Most of us followed the proper procedures. You wait 30 days to file a fraud claim on ebay. Then you have the option of getting $175 at most from eBay's insurance. It softens the blow, but for many it's not anywhere close to what they lost. Contacting local authorities hasn't accomplished anything nor has filing with the FBI. Many people who paid via PayPal did get a refund, but others paid via checks.
eBay has been one of the bright spots of the internet. As a NYSE listed company, you'd expect more to be done about helping customers. I hope this question comes as a warning to be more cautious on eBay or not to bid for items on ebay over $400 without escrow protection. I've learned my lesson not to do business with anyone who doesn't use paypal or billpoint. But regardless of what we learned, most of us feel helpless because eBay has not done more to get our money back. Any suggestions?"
If its more than the insurance limit, escrow all transactions.
Yeah, but what better way to prevent this sort of crap than to have a few high profile cases where the person commiting the fraud gets nailed hard with thousands of dollars in fines and a jail sentance?
The problem with reputation is that it's just so easy to buy! Lets say I go place 20 bids on random crap and my $1 bid wins. Hey, I just got 20 points of reputation for $20! Then I can sell the crap back for maybe $.50 and I have 20 more points worth of reptuation! For literally $10 (and some free time), you can get 40 reputation points from ebay. The whole reputation system is flawed because untrustworthy people are allowed to give out good feedback. Who says that just because someone was honest with a $1 transaction that you can claim they are a "Good trader, very prompt"? What do you know about whether that person is really honest? Yet people give all the feedback to others because they want good feedback in turn.
Listing how much money was spent as part of the feedback doesn't really help either. Just set up a ring of ebay accounts, bid on each other's stuff, and have it sell for higher values. Sure, ebay gets a small cut, but all you're really doing is buy reputation from ebay which you use to screw other people. Suppose I forge $5000 of transactions on ebay and they take 3%. I just bought an enormous amount of reputation (trustworthy for $5000 in transactions) for $167. It shouldn't be that hard for an unethical person to go make $500/scam off of 20+ people.
Lets face it... Reputation doesn't mean anything.
-Ted
If eBay set up a decent, reliable, and affordably priced system and made it inherent in the auction process, the masses would follow.
That may be true, but vigorous enforcement can have a deterrent effect. Part of the reason that people try these things is that they think that they can get away with it. If they start reading about people who have been fined thousands of dollars and/or sent to jail for a few years for trying to defraud people on E-bay, they may have some second thoughts about doing so themselves. It's certainly not an ideal solution, but since there are already people out there to use as examples it makes sense to prosecute to the full extent of the law.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The scope we're talking about here is such that you can't expect local and federal authorities to burn lots of man-hours bringing you justice. You've done the right thing by reporting the incident, and perhaps something will come of it.
As others have said, the number one best idea for buying big-ticket items over eBay is to use credit, because of those great limited liability clauses. If someone doesn't take credit (or PayPal), you've got to ask yourself how much you'll be hurting if your money wings off through the mail and the item never comes.
Good luck.
Spare me your rationalizations. All I know is, stem-cell research kills a quasi-living four-day-old blob.
I'll sell you and each of your friends a bridge that they can call their own for the meer sum of $25 each.
After I've defrauded you on this, you won't feel the need to pursue it personally, because after all it's only $25. This is great, because I can now go and defraud the next guy, and eventually become a millionaire.
The point is, "these losses weren't too important" just don't cut it. You have some sort of responsibility to ensure that these people don't f**k over other people too. If everyone just rolls over because it's too much hassle, they'll never stop because it's profitable.
Please, for OUR sake, do NOT forget about these types of things, and pursue them as hard as possible, no matter how trivial $25 or whatever seems to you.
Thanks,
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I had a bad experience on a $150 item (cell phone).
The seller answered email immediately until I verified that I sent payment (he insisted on a money order). After that, he wouldn't answer email and his Ebay account was cancelled.
I didn't take it laying down. I started by running a reverse lookup on his mailing address to get his phone number. Sure enough, that was disconnected. His email didn't bounce so I emailed him and informed him that I was contacting the local police department. I contacted the local police department and it turned out they'd had two complaints against the guy.
All of a sudden he appeared back and said that the "shipment must have been delayed". 5 days later the phone arrived postmarked the day after I notified the Police.
Auction fraud is fraud. Report it and hound them into the ground.
Seriously, this isn't a product plug and I know Capital One isn't the best credit card company to ever exist, but I have been defrauded a few times on eBay, and each time I have used my Capital One credit card through PayPal. Capital One has an online protection program and all you have to do is call them up and explain the situation. They sometimes ask you to fax or e-mail documents and then they stop the charge by doing a charge-back.
The process is completly transparent, and Capital One fraud investigators then automatically take over if, neccessary. They know you don't HAVE to pay the bill, and most people won't if they have been the victim of a fraud.
The key is to do it quick, e.g. if you suspect you are dealing with a fraud, (e.g. "I just shipped it."), stop the charge. The worse that could happen is there will be a delay. Another option would be to stop the posting of the charge, but keep the charge. In this way, the seller is still guaranteed the funds because they are set aside for them, but they don't actually have them in their hands.
This has worked good, and is why you should NEVER transfer money from your checking or bank account, because it's much EASIER to get credit back than your *real* money. PayPal says a bank transfer is the prefered method, and with good reason because they don't end up eating the cost when one their accounts commits fraud. You do.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I agree with you that there is a problem, but I don't see freezing assets as a solution. eBay, like it or not, is not seen as being as "legitimate" as say, an auction house. It's more like the internet classifieds. Doing business on eBay implies a certain risk, though I do think eBay should have some sort of protection for the seller (as in not charging them a fee) if the buyer bails. There's a certain culture to eBay (look at the wording on the feedback ratings, you'll know what I mean) that just oozes "take with a grain of salt." eBay is "buyer beware" more than anything else.
As part of the ongoing Internet law enforcement initiative, the FTC has trained more than 700 law enforcement and consumer protection officials from 20 different countries, including 17 federal agencies, 25 state governments and 14 Canadian consumer protection offices in online investigation and law enforcement techniques in locations ranging from Anchorage, Alaska to Paris, France.
Sounds like these are the boys (and girls) in blue to talk to. This is where to find them to file a complaint.
I have used PayPal many times, but don't be fooled into thinking there is any protection! I bought an item for $89. (An ATI Radeon Video card) This was ~$20 cheaper than I get get it locally, so paying $9 for shipping didn't seem bad. The problem, they shipped me a card that did not match their description at all. (Not the ATI Radeon, didn't look like the photo, didn't have the features mentioned in the auction, etc.)
After a month of sending emails and phone calls, of which none were returned, I filed tried to use SquareTrade, this at least got a response but still no fix. I then filed a complaint with PayPal. PayPal looked into it, and a few weeks later sent me a nice email, explaining that yes I had been defrauded, they found 100% in my favor, the refund. $0!! My guess, the seller had disappeared off of PayPal, so no money could be recovered. This was 6 months ago, and I have given up hope in getting anything back. (I was contacted by the District Attorney for Washington state, apparently the seller had started taking money for products and not sending them soon after my problem)
Unfortunately, this is the truth. I was a culprit of this a year ago. The FTC would do nothing, there was nothing for me to do. The actuall positive remarks on the seller were from freinds that were doing the same thing. They would just make stuff up about one another. The postive remarks were from freinds they "sold" items too, which the items actually did not exist. Then they would pull one big scam on the public and get out quick. This is just a tricky market to purchase goods in, at least as far as I can tell. If you get screwed, there really is no one to help you.
People are thinking this needs to be E-bay's problem to solve. It just ain't so. That's typical of today's society... 'someone solve my problems for me'.
Look how many valid transactions are on ebay. How many dollars worth of commerce. What percentage of those are fraudulent? Anyone? I'm willing to bet it's extremely small.
I just fail to see how anyone can expect ebay to take care of it. It's very, very clear that ebay is merely factilitating the auction, for a fee from the seller. Everything else, including payment and product delivery, is between buyer and seller directly, unless they chose otherwise. There are plenty of escrow services available for a fee already. Ebay does not need ot make it 'mandatory'.
You are a moron for thinking that buying a video card online, from somebody who you do not know, who you can't visit to get a replacement in case the card is faulty, that you have to wait for to arrive in the mail (which increases the risk that it gets broken in transport), saves you $25.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
Back a Long Time Ago (1997? 98?) someone on eBay was selling non-existant Japanese swords, offering to repair people's swords, taking them and then selling them or simply disappearing, etc. A bunch of us from the sword mailing list and eBay bidders got together and worked to track him down.
I identified an auction under a new name that was obvious fraud (the image was a link to someone's random web page). He also sent me email claiming to have not know anything about blades using his new email address - but signed it with his real first name, and used technical terms no layperson would know.
We arranged for the deputy(!) he ripped off to be the winner on the bid and got a snail-mail address from him for the postal order. (We'd tracked him down, but he'd moved to another state, and we needed his new address.) When he tried to pick up his check at the PO box, he was arrested. About a dozen blades were recovered, and he was convicted.
Banding together made us FAR more able to get action; this was probably one of the earliest arrests of an eBay seller. Of course, things have changed since then I imagine. Back then I bought a $2500 sword via eBay by personal check (and he mailed it before he received payment - the catch is that he knew who I was from the sword community).
To a certain degree some people on eBay are like people driving around in a van saying "psst: want to get a great deal on some speakers" or "hey, genuine rolex, only $100". Why shuld you trust them? Photos are hardly evidence the item ever existed.