Slashdot Mirror
eBay Slammed Over Levels of Fraud
Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that companies and law enforcement agencies are becoming increasing frustrated and concerned at the high amount of fraud at eBay. There are reports that it can take two months for eBay to pass details to fraud investigators, and that even for companies with a 'special relationship' with eBay it can take 5 days for fraudulent auctions to be shut down. From the article: 'With all the amount of profits that eBay makes, then there is ample scope for additional staff. Frankly, it is totally unsatisfactory.'"
With the fees eBay charges, and with little or no crack down by government, why should eBay care? Between their listing fees, closing fees, and the unprecedented fees they collect on the resulting financial transactions through Paypal, it's in their best interest to continue allowing frauds to operate. eBay doesn't care about abuse until the frauds stop paying them; only then do accounts get cancelled and investigations are launched.
I'm sure there will be a ton of stories posted here about individual instances of fraud. Personally, I have never been seriously ripped off, but I have definitely purchased from some shady sellers who have clearly misrepresented their products. I don't buy from eBay anymore, but I am a seller, and an honest seller, so I feel I'm at least doing my part.
I was just scammed out of $70 or so buying some DVDs. No big deal, really (I don't buy really expensive stuff on ebay), but it was frustrating to see eBay do absolutely nothing. This particular seller had multiple ebay accounts, multiple email addresses, and multiple paypal accounts. They switch from account to account and close accounts as they get negative feedback. Fortunately, I used PayPal. I know paypal doesn't have a good reputation around here, but they are actually getting me my money back, and took action right away, unlike ebay (paypal is owned by ebay now, but they still operate independently).
--- witty signature
My own experience is that they avoid doing anything about fraudulent sellers. They make it almost impossible for buyers to turn in complaints and their arbitration option is toothless. So is Square Trade, by the way. If you do manage to thread your way through the maze of links to actually turn in a complaint, it gets ignored or brushed aside. I love ebay for small purchases, but I never bid an amount I'm not willing to lose.
I do think it's the consumer's responsibility ultimately, but just pointing out that eBay has incentive to drag their feet.
I'd be interested to see stats on the number of auctions that close every day vs. the number of auctions that are shut down or that turn out to be fraudulent. It seems, from the news coverage at least, that it's getting worse, but they're constantly getting bigger, so perhaps it's not.
There's no reason to report a successful, legal, pleasant experience on eBay, but people love to read about how others got ripped off. And those that get ripped off complain louder than those who have not will 'advertise' their non-fraudulent experience...
-bs
That that is is not that that is not. That that is not is not that that is.
The feedback system is flawed. A friend was caught like this.
The seller opened a small store, and sold small figurines at low cost for months. His feedback was in the 90's. Then the holidays roll arround, and suddenly he is selling exclusive, hard to find, big ticket items. If you look at his feedback, he was great. Of course, this guy took all the cash and ran.
My friend lost $1500 for some one of a kind trinket. I would rather pay a few bucks, and be sure of the seller. Only small items for me from now on with Ebay.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
I had a fun time with an e-bay auction. I won an auction for a collection of hard drives. Nothing listed in the auction said anything more than "used hard drives". Turns out that earlier "winners" received IBM disposed HDs, meaning they were completely useless. A large group of people were defrauded over a period of months. All complaints to Ebay went unanswered. However, being geeks etc, this large group of people started corresponding, bringing together evidence of a systematic mail fraud in action. The parent corporation of this particular company was notified in a chance to make right before legal actions would be taken. (Seems mail fraud above a certain dollar amount gets the fed's attention, as it was across state lines:) So the parent shut down the fraudster, and made good on all purchases.
The bad part about this supposedly happy ending? The last 5-8 people were notified by this group in time to not pay. I was one of those. I got a "bad rating" from the fraudster, and this is still on my ebay account to this day.
Ebay not only does not respond to fraud, it does not care about its customers because it doesn't allow corrections of feedback (not that it really matters) under any circumstances. Well, I believe they do now, but guess what - feedback from closed accounts should be dropped. It's not.
The easy solution is to only use ebay for specific items, and make sure if the $ amount is high (more than $100-$200, get personal contact info and deal with the individual directly. CC's are also useful. Having a phone number really helps, as you can do some due diligence before completing your buy.
On the whole, this approach has worked for me post that one incident, and the people I've dealt with have been good people overall. Just remember, if it looks too good to be true, it is. Even on Ebay.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I caved in since I knew from other sellers experiences that would never get my 100% positive feedback back. Now I use registered express mail for all my auctions to avoid simular experiences in the future.
It seems that criminal scum gravitate to areas of the internet where anonimity and laxx administrative controls are in high supply.
When an ebay competitor which is significantly better comes along, sure, we'll all switch. But few others will -- they'll carry on using ebay until they get burnt, because they... dont... care. And eventually some of us will switch back to ebay because of the sheer volume of people using it.
How responsible should ebay be for fraud. Well lets see. Their main responsibility is profits. If they didicate some of ther staff to persuing fraud, that will affect their bottom line negatively. If the staff they allocate to persue fraud does a good job eliminating faud, they will lose money again because of the loss of fradulent business. Thus illustrating that if eBay effectively tackles fraud, it will be a lose/lose proposition for them. Now, considering that eBay has no moral obligation to anyone, why should eBay be compelled to do anything about this?
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/
... that it was a scam?
Surely you don't think that *nothing* is *ever* lost during transit?
It happens all the freaking time, this is why shipping insurance exists. Nearly ever hand that touches your package on route from source to destination is making a below-average salary. Wouldn't you be tempted to swipe that laptop-sized box once in awhile? After all, you *know* it is insured, so it is a victimless crime, right?
Now, maybe you do know for sure you were scammed somehow, but if you don't, I wouldn't be so quick to blame the buyer.
Paying $1500 to a stranger on the internet without at least clicking on past sold items and checking out their prices is not very smart, IMHO. You have to use your head on eBay and elsewhere, or you will get ripped off.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
First, my experience:
I've noticed the amount of emails targetting paypal and ebay to grab accounts and then to list very expensive items at a "deal" price. I was in the market for a L-series lens for my canon camera (read: expensive 1500+$) and I've noticed there was a 600mm fixed high quality lens for 900$ buy it now. Now this specific lens retails between 3000 and 5000 used, and unless it's seriously damaged, it wouldn't go down to that price. So I've sent an email to the guy, and the response left me puzzled, so I did a wide search for the serial number of the lens he posted, to find out that there were 10 listings from 5 different users with the SAME auction, using the exact same description, they've all listed their items with all the bell and whistles (gallery, bold, etc). When you see something like that, it becomes quite obvious that it's fraud. Some could argue that the listings are always copied from one to another when the item sells well, I agree, but if you get a hit on specifics like a serial number, or everyone selling the same price, or the person accepting only western union, c'mon... oh, and there's no such deal as getting a popular item at 1/5th of the price, if you see that there is no one jumping on it, you should look elsewhere. Also, for expensive items, make sure that you can reach by voice the person that you are buying from, make sure you can track him down.
For more advanced users, Save the emails, in the header you can get the originating IP. If you're buying from someone listed in USA or Canada, and you see romania in the header packets (use something like www.whois.sc/###.###.###.###), well you have your answer.
Finally, if you see a user with 40 feedback and search for "other listings from this user" and see 15 items of 1000$+ listed with all the features turned on, get suspicious, again, a mix of suspicious conditions and good judgement will make your transaction aborted or safe.
What ebay should add is a flag that signed in members with 98%+ feedback could click for suspicious listings, when ebay gets a X number of hits on a specific auction, they could review/investigate it. You can't ask ebay to look into every single auctions, this would be insane and cost-prohibitive and it's already expensive enough as is; they would pass the cost on the users for sure so you don't want that. But better cooperation with authority and a simple system like this would reduce potential frauds drastically. The ideal would be 0 frauds, but this is utopia, on such a big system, with hacked accounts of good ebayers, it makes the process much harder. What is needed now is to cut down 90% of the frauds, and they are obvious to track and shut down.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The market doesn't always pick the technically best solution.
They pick the best solution for the current situation.
MS Windows & Office is currently leading because it works well enough, and it isn't worth the trouble of switching, in the opinion of those making the decisions.
you are at a mall and have a choice between 2 stores. Store #1 has a security guard posted at the door, you look inside and see a customer service department that is fully staffed. The merchandise is clean and orderly.
Store two's front door is held open by a brick. Some dude is selling watches from the inside of his jacket at the entrance. You look inside and see a telephone with a "customer support" sign over it. Hundreds of greasy looking dudes are selling things -- their merchandise resting on recycled boxes.
Now ask yourself-- is ebay more like store number one or store number 2?
That is because the more they do, the more they "sort of" admit that they are - at least partially - responsible for the problem. Ebay would like to be very much like Kazaa and Napster in their arguments of "they're using the software we provide, but we can't be responsible for what they do with it." The more Ebay takes on fraud, the more they put themselves out as the police on the site, and they're not willing to accept that responsibility.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
There are a number of things that are particularly prone to fraud on eBay. The most common are laptops and cameras, followed closely by cellphones and cellphone accessories. Unfortunately, the particular genre I have chosen (musical instruments) is also full of fraud (and borderline ripoffs). No way I would buy a laptop on eBay, if for no other reason than most commodity items are not really suitable for the eBay auction format anyway.
BTW, there is already an eBay-killer lurking in the wings. It's Froogle. Froogle hasn't really hit it's stride yet, but the Froogle business model has some significant advantages over eBay -- and is inherently superior for about 90% of the stuff you find on eBay now. The eBay auction format is well-suited for one-of-a-kind items with high personal value-add, and little else.
In addition, eBay doesn't scale worth a damn. In order to get twice the sales, you have to work at least twice as hard (assuming you are actually an honest seller). I have recently scaled my auctions way back (from 90+ active auctions to fewer than 20), and watched my sell-through percentage more than triple, and my workload cut by 90%. For a net reduction in eBay-linked profit of about 40%. I consider that a pretty clear indicator that I really need to change my approach to de-emphasize eBay.
eBay *does* have other competition besides Froogle. One of my favorites is Blujay, which is mainly a fixed-price aggregator listing/classifieds service. Blujay.com has grown large enough to show up on the watchlist at PowerSellersUnite.com (a forum of mostly disgruntled ebay sellers). Blujay.com also leverages listings with Froogle, which has definitely helped their traffic. I sell about 1/10 as much stuff through Blujay.com as I do on eBay, and it accounts for more than 1/4 of my profits -- or it did until this month (I just made a large volume sale to a school directly, without eBay or PayPal), mainly because the cost of selling there is much lower.
Craig's List was also a viable alternative, but since they have sold out to eBay, I expect that to change.
Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a strong tendency for the market leader to completely dominate, and #2 is way down in the noise. The #1 position can change, however... If GooglePay ever becomes reality, eBay and PayPal are going to be in serious trouble.
For now, eBay is still the place to get some real bargains -- if you are careful. That's because the typical eBay seller has no clue what her/his actual costs are, and is often selling at a loss. The vast majority of eBay sellers last about 6-9 months before the clue-stick smites them in the form of running out of money. Just stay away from the really huge ripoff-potential items like laptops and consumer electronics sold at ridiculous prices by people you have never heard of. And do some research on what you are buying; in particular, don't get in a hurry and skim through the auction description, and take some time to read the negs and neutrals in the feedback log. Check out the history of the seller. Use PayPal if you can't use a credit card directly. Don't even look at auctions with private bid lists or one-day limits (the one-day auctions with private bidders and private feedback are roughly 100% fraudulent, and there is no way that eBay can be unaware of this).
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
It's called...
Being able to take recourse...
Have you tried dealing with something illegal that is outside the country. It doesn't matter what end of the stick you are on. It's a pain in the ass to deal with... end of story.
So me, I don't deal with anything outside the US and I'm a little suspicious of that island resort for new criminals called Hawaii. (I thought I would be at least a little bit comical)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Unless otherwise specified it's reasonable to assume that they are working.
However unlike Kazaa and the service formerly known as Napster, they charge money for every transaction going on under their noses, thus rather ruining their argument.
To break out the metaphors;
If i own a nightclub, and charge people for admittance, and some of those people sell drugs and stolen goods, I have the defence that i didn't know they were doing that sort of thing on my property, they were supposed just to be coming to dance.
If however I'm taking a payback on every drug deal and dodgy sale, my defence of ignorance is shot to hell!
A better question is: why do you continue to use PayPal? I've had a deep-seated distrust of them ever since the account-freezing issues. Apparently not too many other people cared about the lack of accountability and customer service.
If you like their business practices then by all means continue to use them. Personally, if PayPal (IMHO illegally) denied me a $900 payment I would never even consider using them again. But that's just me.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Comment removed based on user account deletion