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.

Comments

I'll vouch for that

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I got nailed by a fraud auction (guy was selling items he didn't have in stock. Promised next day delivery...that was 3 months ago.)

Neither my CC company, nor PayPal (now owned by eBay) or eBay were overly interested in dealing with this. Yeah, they suspended his account, but because he didn't pay eBay, not because he ripped me (and hundreds of others as well) off.

I'm still in contact with the jerk, and I will have justice done, either by the proper authorities or.....

Re:I'll vouch for that

[Medevo]

It seems that this is the likly trend with a lot of ebay fraud. That person most likly already has another ebay account and is defrauding more people.

My idea of a way to fix the system is that we should have the money and item go through ebay. Sure this will add overhead and costs, but it protects both the buyers and the sellers. If either person backs out of the deal, the other person gets there money back.

There is another kind of fraud on ebay too, false advertising, where someone says they are selling x and give you y. This is a little harder to control even if the stuff goes throught ebay, as quality is subjective with much of the stuff being sold.

Medevo

Re:I'll vouch for that

[cscx]

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.

Re:I'll vouch for that

[paul.dunne]

But how will that help the guy get his money back? I mean, is there much of a market for balls?

Re:I'll vouch for that

[Ctrl-Z]

Virtual items wouldn't really be a problem. All you need is a flag that says "this item will be shipped via $COURIER, and eBay will interface with the tracking system once shipment has been interfaced".

Buyers will immediately know which items either (a) are not being shipped [actually, they would know that anyway], and (b) which sellers don't want to use this system. If buyers want reliable tracking of their eBay shipments, they will opt out if (b) is the case.

Of course, some people will not realize what is going on, no matter how many informational messages they receive via the eBay interface, but that's life.

Re:I'll vouch for that

[JonWan]

You could always sell one to Tom Green.

Re:I'll vouch for that

[swb]

It'd be nice if Ebay would run an escrow service, but that would be expensive.

An intermediate solution would be Ebay sellers being required to submit a credit card and a charge authorization equal to their auction's estimated price. Buyers who claimed fraud would get the money the seller put up to Ebay up front. This would be the equivilent of a surity bond.

Another option would be for Ebay to certify escrow houses and modify their terms of service so that any buyer, may, at their discretion, demand the payment and goods be delivered via certified escrow service. Seller pays all shipping to the escrow service, buyer pays all other costs.

Re:I'll vouch for that

[Sylver Dragon]

Having been an infrequent buyer on ebay and Yahoo auctions, I would say that even with the seller ratings its a case of cavet imptor or buyer beware. Nearly all of the purchases I have made have gone smoothly. Pay them with paypal (BTW, I have not and will not register a bank account with them, they have one of my credit card numbers to charge, and that is more than enough) and in a while receive the item. The only real problem I had was with a speaker system I bought in an auction. When I received it, it was DOA, no power (and they clamied it was tested on the auction info). I contacted the seller and they agreed to replace it, and even pay for ground shipping. Being somewhat impatient I asked if I could pay for 2-day delivery (it was cross-country about a week and a half each way), and they refused. In the end I said the hell with it, cracked open the power supply and replaced the blown fuse. In the end, everything work out ok, but receiving a DOA unit left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
The point of all this? Online auctions are ok, but be careful. Always pay with a credit card (not a check card) that way, in the case of fraud, you have one more layer of protection between the criminal and your money. And of course, always make up your mind what something is worth to you before you start bidding. Unless its unique or so rare that it may never be seen again, it will be in an auction again eventually. I've had several items that I really wanted to buy, but they were above the price I was willing to pay for them, so I didn't. Later I was able to pick it up for less than my max, when a similar item went up for auction.

Re:I'll vouch for that

[Princeofcups]

I have had 182+ auctions on eBay, most of them purchases, and I have not had a single instance of fraud. Am I just lucky? Statistics say no.

I think what we are seeing is "small town" syndrome, that is, out of towners being taken in by obvious scams that any "big city" person would smell a mile away. I can pull up eBay right now and find a dozen suspicious auctions.

If it's too good to be true, then, yes, it is too good to be true. If it's a hardship case, then it will be your hardship. If you think you are smarter than the seller and ripping him off, then you are the one who will get ripped off.

In no way do I blame eBay for fraud. As a buyer I know that if I do not like the results of my purchase, then I leave negative feedback and move on.

If an auction is for a high cost item, then always insist on escrow. If the seller refuses, then refuse to do business. It's your responsibility as a buyer to protect your own ass.

jfs

Been there...

[Allaria]

Awhile ago (probably about 2 years), I was helping a friend buy a computer on ebay. Checked out the ratings and such, and everything was fine, so I went ahead with paying for it (she gave me the $ for it). The company apparently 'went out of business'. Right. Within a few weeks there were over 200 negative responses. And at about $500 a pop, that's a pretty good amount of cash that went to who-knows-where. And ebay did *nothing* about it. Absolutely *nothing*. I'm willing to bet that whoever was selling just changed their name and did it all over again. That's why I stopped using ebay. And I felt really bad about telling my friend that her money disappeared into a bottomless pit.

Maybe they'll actually get a nice swift kick. Or maybe they'll just turn the other way again. And aren't they in kahoots with paypal. Yeah, that should explain *everything*.

Re:Been there...

[LordNimon]

eBay could provide legal resources to pursue him in court. If Yahoo Auctions did that, they would crush eBay in less than a month.

Re:Been there...

[hondo77]

...I felt really bad about telling my friend that her money disappeared into a bottomless pit.

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?

Re:Been there...

[garcia]

explain to me what you were thinking when you didn't do this w/escrow? I will not pay for anything over $100 w/o escrow. It's worth the charges.

I purchased some Nakamichi cassette decks. Both were over $100 IIRC (the BX-300 especially). They went smoothly and I got the decks just fine.
What happened after I received them is another story...

Re:Been there...

[VivianC]

Please list three substantitive things that could have been done to get your (friends) money back

1. Release full information of the seller including address, phone and full name of person on the credit card (with billing address) who opened the account.

2. Put a hold on the credit card and turn information over to a collection agency who can perform a skip-trace.

3. Notify local and federal authorities of the possibilty of a case of Felony Fraud. Also provide information to bidders on who to contact specifically to follow up on the case.

None of these will get the money back right away (or maybe at all), but it will put the crook is some serious hot water.

Should eBay eat that and give you money they never had?

Umm, yes? Don't they (claim) to have an insurance policy that covers things like this? Sure, there is a $250 limit, but it is something. You also need to submit the claim in writing within 90 days.

Re:Been there...

[sphealey]

The company apparently 'went out of business'. Right. Within a few weeks there were over 200 negative responses. And at about $500 a pop, that's a pretty good amount of cash that went to who-knows-where. And ebay did *nothing* about it. Absolutely *nothing*. I'm willing to bet that whoever was selling just changed their name and did it all over again. That's why I stopped using ebay. And I felt really bad about telling my friend that her money disappeared into a bottomless pit.

I am always a bit dumbfounded when I read stories like this. The laws that apply the the rest of the US economy do not stop at the eBay web site. Did you pay with a postal money order? Then did you file a complaint of mail fraud with the postmaster? File a complaint with your state's attorney general? With the US District Attorney? Did you write a letter to eBay's corporate secretay stating that you expected eBay to pursue this matter to a satisfactory conclusion?

More importantly, did you contact the 200 other people and ask them to send copies of their letters of complaint to one postmaster and one US district attorney? 200 * 500 = 100,000, which is way way into grand theft and RICO territory IMHO (non-lawyer's opinion).

No? You didn't? Why not?

sPh

Ebay has no power to Police

[arakon]

Ebay is a vendor, just like any other store they have no power to police, the only power they do have is over your account with them; Everything else product recovery/monetary reimbersement, has to go through the proper law enforcement channels. This gets even hairier when you consider different auctions in different countries quite possibly have a different set of laws that pertain to them. You complain to Ebay, they complain to the government; the government simply doesn't have the resources to pursue the mass counts of Minor fraud that ebay creates.

Remember when dealing with people; they lie, cheat and steal to get what they want, so anything that requires you to trust an unknown party is at your discretion. Work retail once and you will understand the lengths to which people go to steal that 2 dollar pack of baseball cards and the power you don't have to stop them.

Fraud?

[Mabidex]

Fraud? what... from Paypal.. I mean eBay?

I think they'll be pushing paypal and fight fraud through paypal's current policies, of course they will guarrantee if your transaction is ONLY through paypal.

It only makes sense to do it this way since Paypal has really got a good rep with folks.

I have personally vouch for the fraud dept at paypal, I was a charged $200 fraudulently, and paypal reimbused me for the charge on the debit card 5 days later.

Ebay on the other hand has a terrible reputation for following up on fraud.

I just hope they don't make Paypal have a rep as crappy as eBays by changing the policy at paypal.

Mabidex

Re:Fraud?

[mosch]

I will personally vouch against using paypal, at all. They froze my account due to 'suspected fraud' (There was none, in any direction). Their action left me unable to send money that I had been sent back to the originator, OR to withdraw that money. They just stole it, and provided no reasonable way for me to unlock my account.

Then, after one or two comments asking for help with the matter, they disabled my ability to use their 'so you have a problem' web form.

They don't have a phone number on their site either, so you can't call.

I advise you strongly, do not use paypal if you don't feel like having your money stolen. Use c2it instead. The most common transactions have no fees associated with them at all, and it's run by citibank, as a real bank.

The fact that you had one good experience doesn't mean that the countless people who've had their money stolen by paypal aren't worth consideration.

Re:Fraud?

[JWhitlock]

That'd be why a search for "paypal sucks [google.com]" on Google turns up 25,000 results, right?

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.

Surprised?

[Adambomb]

This is hardly a surprise, one would think it obvious that the resources it would cost Ebay as a company to have to keep track of, let alone take action upon, the constant fraud cases would be immense. As long as a high enough percentage of trades are legitimate and involve satisfied customers, no legal organization is going to bother holding Ebay responsible.

I would have thought that reporting fraudulent users and such would be more the responsibility of the end users anyways, since its not much different than having people make purchases from someone at a flea market or something like that. You dont hold the owner of the building responsible if the "antique" you bought turned out to be a cheap knockoff.

Or do you? I'm not entirely sure of all american small courts laws.

Caveat Emptor

[Qrlx]

I kinda thought ebay's whole attitude was Use An Escrow Agent If You Don't Want To Get Ripped Off. Now, if the escrow people are defrauding you, then that's a different story.

I have a bunch of stuff I'd like to sell, like a guitar and a mountain bike and a computer, but I'm not going to bother putting it on ebay because my rating is a big fat zero, and I doubt anyone will want to buy from an unknown quantity such as myself.

Ebay has a profit motive to have as many auctions as possible. They also make more money when the price gets higher. They don't make money when they have to investigate fraud claims, and kick power sellers off the system.

Let's put it another way: Let's say you're a power seller, and you sell a $1000 item. You give ebay their cut ($150 I think) and pocket $850. Ebay is happy, you're happy, the only one unhappy is the "little guy."

Where is ebay's motivation to change the system? Libertarians and free market economic darwinists, start flaming now.

Re:Caveat Emptor

[Zordak]

Use An Escrow Agent If You Don't Want To Get Ripped Off

Tsk, tsk. You didn't read the article, did you?

An escrow agent would have done absolutely nothing to stop the four cases of fraud cited in the article. Three of the cases were "phantom" bidding, where the seller used an alter-ego to drive the prices up (one even admitted to it, saying how ashamed he was, and how he only did it to avoid taking a huge loss on the item). In those cases, the buyers knowingly offered a certain price for some goods, and got the goods they expected. The problem was that they spent $200 - $500 more than they had to because the phantom bids drove the price up. These transactions would have occurred with or without an escrow service (in fact, since some of the items were worth thousands of dollars, it is quite likely an escrow service actually was employed). The fourth case was a stamp collection ring that was buying stamps on e-bay, altering them to make them appear to be in a better condition or appear to be different, more valuable stamps, and then selling them for a huge profit (with something approximating a 10:1 return). The buyers all thought they were getting what they paid for, so, again, an escrow service would not have helped any. An stamp collectors' organization called SCADS discovered the fraud and notified E-bay, which did not so much as suspend the ring leaders' accounts. When SCADS saw the abuse continue, they flooded the E-bay stamp collection message board with warnings against these auctions. In response, e-bay closed the message board. They then started sending e-mails of warning to those who were bidding on the stamps. In response, E-bay suspended their (i.e., the SCADS members') accounts, citing auction interference. The implication was that E-bay was protecting the stamp fraud ring because it was a profit-generating Power Seller, while lashing out against those who tried to warn potential suspects. To support this claim, MSNBC interviewed "Ron," who claims to have worked for the E-bay fraud department. He says he discovered a Power Seller who was phantom bidding and shut down his response. He got a call from higher up telling him not to do that again.

The apparent conclusion is that if you don't want to get ripped off, an escrow agent is insufficient. If you don't want to get ripped off, just don't use E-bay.

Buying on eBay is Folly

[bstadil]

It is fairly dumb to buy anything tech oriented at eBay. The marketplace is too effective and you will never get a good deal. Often the lack of knowledge of the current pricing for will cause the final prices on eBay to be higher than you can get them at say NewEgg or Thompson. Often the refurbished dept. at reputable shops like Newegg is a much better deal and 100% safe.

These guys have a superb rating on ResellerRating , so why deal with some amateur / potential crook at Ebay?

Re:Buying on eBay is Folly

[GiMP]

Try buying an SGI or HP 9000-series without going on ebay, see the premiums you would pay.. even if you buy 2 of the same item on ebay and get frauded on one, it is still a better deal than most non-ebay dealers will give you.

Re:Buying on eBay is Folly

[sien]

No way. There are heaps of tiny resellers on ebay who use ebay as a marketplace. I bought a digital camera at 2/3 of retail price and a laptop at 1/2 retail. The sites you link to seem good, but their range is nothing compared to Ebay.

Re:Buying on eBay is Folly

[Slak]

Shameless plug: I work for the largest B2C auction site on the Net. We warehouse most products and everything has a tracking number.

http://www.ubid.com

Cheers,
Slak

Multi-part story

[splume]

This article is actually part of a series on online auctions. Here they are:

Part 1- The above linked story
Part 2- Cautionary tales of two auctions
Part 3- Auction fraud on the rise, some say
Part 4- Confessions of a scam artist
Part 5- Auction scam hits plasma TV buyers
Part 6- Auction fraud victims fight back
Part 7- eBay vs. the fraud police
Part 8- 'Deadbeat bidders' dog eBay sellers
Part 9- Fake escrow sites lure auction users

I lose $1000 per month because of ebay fraud.

[Anonymous Coward]

I lose about $1000.00 per month on ebay due to copied software. I produce Video tutorials on CD, nerdmaker.com, and have to compete against $5.00 per CD copied software. After working with ebay for over 16 months, no changes have occured. Why would ebay want to change? They are, by a very wide margin, the number 1 auction site. Ebay makes money on a transaction weather its legal or not. The only motivation for change would be competition, and I don't see that happening soon.

Re:I lose $1000 per month because of ebay fraud.

[cscx]

Strangely, Microsoft gets their software taken down from illegal eBay auctions. Maybe you need to find yourself a good lawyer.

But do people really, really care?

[bunyip]

Yes, the title is provocative.

How many people will read this article, or the posts on Slashdot byt the people that were ripped off, then go and buy something from eBay? Clearly, eBay knows that the majority of you will.

Your credit card provider doesn't help you, the small losses they get are covered by fees and interest rates. If it were a major problem, then Visa or Mastercard would close eBay's accounts.

Stores can prevent shoplifting by strip searching you all at the exit, but you won't go back. So, they tolerate a certain amount of "inventory shrinkage".

The fraud on eBay is tolerable to eBay, they're making tons of money......

You vote with your feet^H^H^H^Hmouse !

No big shock: look at how they handle spam

[wowbagger]

I've received dozens of the "U 2 KIN MAKE $$$$ ON EBAY" spams.

I've forwarded them on to eBay, saying "I know you didn't send this, but it is trading on your trademarked name, and damaging your credibility. You REALLY should serve this guy with a cease-and-desist order".

Every time, eBay has sent me the auto-ack message, and most of the time, a follow up saying <voice type="Goofy">"Duhhh-up Dis didn't come from us, No Sir, it didn't. Cain't do a thing about it, nope."</voice>

eBay likes spam like that, because it encourages people to buy and sell stuff on eBay, making eBay money. As long as they have plausible deniability, and will therefor suffer no ill effects from the fraud themselves, they will tacitly allow it to continue.

Hello PayPal

[lsd4all]

As if things are bad enough under the surface, eBay just finished its business absorption of PayPal. PayPal has it's own fraudulent problems, especially with credit card fraud. Check out PayPal warning. The stories on this website scare me because I use PayPal regularly but now I tend to withdraw all but $1.35 from my account just to be safe.

Amazon does it, so can ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

The posts you read about ebay being unable to police their auctions are totally incorrect. Amazon polices their auctions very well. If Amazon can do it, ebay can as well.

Unanswered fraud is unacceptable

[swordgeek]

To a certain extent, I can understand the problem of having hundreds of thousands of auctions...

This is a reasonable statement, and quite easy to agree with. (and yes, I know that Hemos went on to negate this phrase)

Don't.

It is unquestionably a massive and difficult undertaking to deal with fraud when you're operating on an eBay-like scale. It is also a primary purpose of their existence. eBay MUST deal with fraud at whatever cost (create a whole infrastructure for it if necessary--remember that only a few short years ago there existed no online auctions at all!), or they're simply not doing their job.

Not intended as a rant or finger-pointing here. I just don't want to see them get away with sliding if they're trying to.

Re:No recourse for fraud

[hondo77]

Did you even read the articles? The main thrust is that eBay is not doing what they can do (like disabling accounts) even when there is strong evidence of fraud. eBay controls the cash flow to themselves from power sellers--again, read the articles.

Escrow

[Geeyzus]

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

Yes and no

[dnoyeb]

Im surprised that story is by MSNBC considering everything M$ is instantly pulled from ebay for some reason they dig up. I have had so many legitimate M$ product auctions shut down.

THey just shut down my 2 celeron auctions because I said the bidder would have to pay the paypal CC costs if they used a CC.

They are uptight. But yes, they shut me down at the last section so I couldnt make the changes. THey must be too busy taking money to check the auctions...

In any event, yahoo auctions is the underground auction with nothing BUT fraud. I have NEVER had a fradulent auction on ebay. All 2 of my tries (to purchase) on yahoo were fradulent.

Putting this in perspective

[gpinzone]

Let's put this into perspective... There are thousands of power sellers yet only a few are mentioned in the article where the evidence strongly suggests...not conclusively finds fraud occurring. EBay is no different than the For Sale section in the newspaper. If I get ripped off by some guy selling his car in the newspaper, who am I gonna sue? The guy or the Daily News?

The only liability I see is the whole Power Seller rating system. This kind of implies that EBay deems this person a good seller and thus is promoting the seller above others.

Why isn't this looked upon the same way as an ISP and someone trafficking illegal material over the Internet?

eBay DOES have the power to Prosecute

[hondo77]

Read the articles. eBay does have the power to do something about bad sellers when evidence is presented to them. They are allegedly not always doing what they should when those bad sellers are also power sellers. You did read the articles, didn't you?

Re:No recourse for fraud

[sphealey]

The truth is, ebay has limited recourse against fraud. So they can disable an account or block certain users, or blast their karma.

Well, being an accessory to fraud (aiding and abettting) is itself a crime.

sPh

Small correction...

[Gruneun]

Ebay is a vendor, just like any other store...

No, they're a service company and they make it quite clear that the sales are not under their control. They simply put interested buyers in communication with corresponding sellers. Unfortunately, because eBay makes money from the sellers there is no real incentive for them to protect buyers. However, the vast majority of scams are pulled on greedy people who are trying to get something for nothing. As long as those people exist (and they're willing to accept the business model) eBay will have no incentive to change.

Their rating system isn't perfect, but it's decent. I've sold some stuff on Ebay and bought a couple things. I got screwed once by a seller, but I've been screwed by brick-and-mortar places, too. Such is life.

What's the big deal about shill bidding

[ScooterBill]

I've always understood that you bid exactly what you are willing to pay for an item. With the Ebay system, the winning bid is only enough to beat the next lower bid, not your maximum bid. Unfortunately, I see people constantly upping their bids as they watch the price go higher. If a shill bidder wins, then the seller is either forced to pay Ebay's commission(I doubt they would) or contact the next lower (non-shill) bidder and try to make a deal. If this happens to you, your last bid is non-binding and you can negotiate whatever you like. It's all a psychological game and it sounds like people are crying over spilt milk. I personally figure out what I'm going to pay and then use a sniping service. This cuts down on the bidding wars.

So, how do you fix the problem?

[liamk]

Part of Ebay's fraud problem would be curtailed (IMHO) if Ebay would either require members to maintain a credit card or checking account with a verified address, or require users to participate in their ID Check program. Also, Ebay needs to look at bidding patterns to determine fraud. Here's why:

Every so often, we put up some auctions for networking equipment. Lately there has been a trend of people bidding on Cisco auctions (see this article) and never paying.

One Ebay user bid a Cisco 3640 router I was selling up to $2550. This same user created his account two days prior, and was the high or winning bidder on over 80 auctions. Here's this user's Ebay winning bid history. Now, I'm not a mathematician, but this A-hole ruined over $64k of auctions. Sure, you can relist and file fraud reports, but what's to prevent someone else from doing this again and again? There's no accountability.

If they would require some type of user verification to buy and sell, wouldn't you think twice about fraud? Furthermore, why can't Ebay red-flag suspicious bidding patterns? I think everyone agrees that a new user probably will not bid on over 80 auctions worth over $64k in a couple of days.

Just my 2.47 yen.

in-depth journalism or guerrilla marketing?

[spoonyfork]

Irregardless of eBay's fraud issues, I take exception at the sincerity of this article.

Let's see.. an article on MSNBC.com (read Microsoft) about fraud horrors on eBay with no comparative analysis on how eBay stands up to the other major online houses with regards to fraud.

The "Advertising" gadget on the article's page has a link to MSN's (read Microsoft) auction partner uBid.

Sounds like FUD with a splash of advertising to me.

Hi, my name is Oliver, and I'm an Ebayaholic...

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

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...

Ebay is based on a Fraud promoting culture

[psplay]

But isnt every Ebay'er eventually doing it?

Fraud is part of Ebay's culture, just some people take it to extremes more than others.

Anyone who uses ebay for more than 3 months knows about sniping, then they sign up to auctionstealer or other sniping site to join the fun. Then they snipe on the newbies and give them a start on the bitterness ladder. Okay it's not Fraud but it starts people thinking of ways to 'beat the system'. Anger leads to hate, etc...

Others start selling becuase their co-workers are selling. Before you know it, they are shill-biding on each others auctions once they see someone biding passionately and wildly. Its common practice.

Then there are other sellers that take poetic license and describe goods using vague but attractive terminology, 'virtually new', or 'must be seen' to be believed. They know that some gullible people are afraid to leave negative feedback, because a evil seller will retort with the same. (Oh, the shame of having a minus on your record!)

Most people who use Ebay for long enough, learn the tricks of the trade. It polices itself, which implies Fraud must be committed before it can be reported.

You can only prevent fraud by controlling auctions tightly, then the whole 'neighbourhood policing' aspect of the software goes away, which is worth more to Ebay in goodwill than losing a few customers over fraud.

Gee, that doesn't sound suprising...

[Mysticalfruit]

It's normal that a company will be nice to the users who give them the most ammount of money while screwing everybody else.

Personally, I've never been defrauded on ebay and this is how I do it.

Firstly, If its a big purchase (like 500 bucks or more) I tell the seller to send it to me COD but to only specify bank checks, not personal checks. This keeps everybody honest. In all cases, I offer to pay the added expense and have the seller just tack it onto the total cost.

If I'm selling something and the person wants to do it COD, the only way I do it is bank check. I've had people call me up and complain loudly how the person came to the door but wouldn't give them the package because they had a personal check. It's that old saying "Locks keep honest people honest"

Now for smaller things, I'm confortable with paypal, provided that the person is "verified."

How to avoid Ebay ripoffs -- my tips

[Reziac]

Some tips I wrote up for someone else who got ripped off on ebay -- this applies mainly to computer hardware, but the principles can be adapted to any type of merchandise.

I've spent a LOT of time digging around for hardware (and other stuff) on Ebay, following various auctions and dealers, and have read a lot in and asked around in many of the user forums there, and have reached several conclusions
about sellers:

ALWAYS read ALL of a seller's NEGATIVE feedback before bidding. (If you use ebay a lot, you may want to subscribe to http://www.vrane.com's feedback checker service.) Good vendors won't have more than 0.15% negative feedback. More than 0.3% negative feedback is a redflag; more than 1.0% is usually a bad dealer or a con artist.

Positive feedback numbers and content CAN be rigged via the "penny auctions" loophole, so positive feedback in itself is fairly useless.

ALWAYS read ALL of the "NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LEFT FOR OTHERS" *by* any seller you intend to deal with. How they respond to their own bad deals is a *VERY* good indicator of how they'll be to work with in the event that what they send you is defective or is not as represented.

Sellers who use *L00K* and/or bogus phrases in their item titles (just WTF is "emulator friendly" anyway??!) are the ebay equivalent of spammers. I no longer even view items with such titles.

ALWAYS check regular online vendor outlets, Pricewatch, etc, first. Typically, used computer hardware sold on Ebay winds up going for 150% of the new retail price, just because most people have no clue what components really sell for. (I've seen used HDs go for 300% of retail, and used memory going for TEN TIMES the local new price!!)

Sellers who start every auction with "$1.00" or "$0.01" prices are more likely to be cons than those who start with something realistic. People who sell hardware *regularly* on ebay are MORE likely to be cons than are people who only sell hardware here occasionally.

ALWAYS email the seller prior to bidding, and ask some question about the item, even if you already know the answer. The tone of the response you get can tell you plenty about how they'll be to deal with. If you get NO response, "go look it up yourself", or a CANNED response, or if they dodge any of your questions, DON'T BID.

If they take ONLY cash or money orders for computer hardware, DON'T BID.

When in doubt for ANY reason, DON'T BID.

BTW for categories other than hardware, the above all apply except that there are good sellers of other stuff who do it all the time.

(This material is public domain. It's already been posted in the ebay discussion forums, where several of the GOOD hardware dealers came out of the woodwork, and applauded the concepts.)