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EBay Letting Fraud Slide?
joebagodonuts writes "MSNBC has an article charging that EBay's tough talk on fraud is just that. Talk." To a certain extent, I can understand the problem of having hundreds of thousands of auctions, and not being able to adequately police them - but ignoring fraud, when you have a policy stating otherwise is a Bad Thing.
You have his address -- solve this the old-fashioned way: go kick his fucking ass and cut off his balls.
Maybe that's a little overkill.
How did your friend feel when she found out that there were escrow services she could have used for big ticket auctions and that you didn't recommend them to her?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
But how will that help the guy get his money back? I mean, is there much of a market for balls?
You could always sell one to Tom Green.
I've purchased many, many items on ebay. I have also sold several items on ebay. I've had one bad experience with each side.
:-(
Buying - I ordered some of those 'breast enlargement pills' for my girlfriend. It's not something I wanted for her, but she was planning to buy some of the more expensive ones from a TV advertisement and I told her we could save money by using ebay. I ordered four bottles (to get the free shipping offered) and was told I would have them within 3 business days. Two weeks later, still no pills. I wrote several times and called and left phone messages. I eventually got an e-mail stating that they had been shipped to the wrong address and a new shipment was being sent out and that I would be receiving 6 bottles instead of the 4 I had paid for. One and a half weeks later they still hadn't arrived, and I left negative feedback for that seller. In less than 2 hours after posting the feedback, the seller used PayPal to refund my money. I then turned around and ordered the same pills from a different vendor, my girlfriend used them for a couple of weeks and said that they were making her fat and so she threw them out.
Selling - I had an old Sega Genesis system and about 20 games for it that I never used any more. Posted it for sale, one guy kept bidding and rebidding and drove the price up high, won the auction and then never sent any money and never responded to e-mail. Within one week, his feedback dropped from around +10 to -5, so it was obvious that someone was abusing that account, no way of knowing if it was the true owner or not. I notified ebay and was allowed to re-run the auction a second time for no additional cost and ended up selling it to a legitimate buyer for about $20 less than what the first auction closed for.
Since I first started using ebay, I have purchased 3 computers (all the same), 3 digital cameras (all different), a digital camcorder, jewelry, perfume, children's toys, software, hardware, flashlights, those glow-chemical bracelets, lockpicks, magic tricks, universal remote controls, more stuff than I can even remember, and those are the only two incidents I've ever had.
I don't think using ebay is any more unsafe than most other forms of shopping, I'd worry more about buying/selling stuff through a newspaper classified ad, because you never know what's going to happen when you get to the other person's house, or worse yet, when they come to your home.
As a side note, my two greatest ebay deals involved Bob & Tom albums. I had a fairly complete set of their CD's, a total of 17 discs, one autographed, and one autographed poster. I sold the entire collection for $420 cash to someone living in the same town. A year later in the back of my closet I found a copy of Bob and Tom, A Day At the Race, a very limited edition cassette (only 500 copies made) that I listed and sold for $450... not bad considering I'd only paid $10 for it when it was new, which wasn't all that long ago...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Oh, that's a great measure of how much something sucks. Let's see...hmm, "Linux sucks" has over 208,000 hits. Geez, it must really suck major to get that many hits.
Instant Research:
Windows Sucks: 225000 hits
Linux Sucks: 178000 hits
Conclusion: Linux sucks only 79% as much as Windows.
Further Research:
Windows sucks: 225000
Windows suxs: 534
Windows sux: 24300
Linux Sucks: 178000
Linux suxs: 287
Linux sux: 20800
BSD Sucks: 24900
BSD suxs: 59
BSD sux: 4680
Conclusions: BSD sucks 11% as much as Windows, and 14% as much as Linux. BSD suxs 11% as much as Windows, and 20% as much as Linux. BSD sucks the least. BSD sux 19% as much as Windows, and 23% as much as Linux.
BSD's market comparisions should be based on how much is sucks. Microsoft, however, should focus more on how much it sux, since it sux only 17% more than Linux, while it sucks 26% more.