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.
Other may have said the same thing (I haven't seen any comments with it yet), but if you don't want to get burned on eBay, use escrow.
It will cost a little more and be a little more of a pain, but then your money will be safe until the product is legitimately coming your way.
Or if you don't want to pay for escrow, at least ASK the seller if they will use escrow. If they say they won't, then don't go through with it. If they do, then you can go through them and just don't use it. If they were bluffing, well, you are screwed... but you have a better shot.
That said, I never use escrow. And I have never gotten burned as in, never had the item shipped, but I have gotten things that don't work as advertised, and some other sub-par stuff. Not to mention that people will boost their own bids through the roof by setting up multiple accounts and bidding on their own stuff, if they think you want it. So I try to avoid eBay whenever possible.
Mark