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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.'"
What did ebay do? At first, nothing. They kept telling me to wait in automatically generated e-mails. I only grew more upset when I learned that I was one of the last people to try to buy a laptop. The other 48 people had already voiced concern to ebay yet ebay did nothing to stop this man's other auctions.
A month passes and I recieve a phone call from a detective in Detroit where the store was based out of. Ok, so it's a police matter. I eventually got all my money back in two payments 1/2 and 1 year after the incident.
Was I happy with how ebay responded to this problem? Absolutely not. They never spent one minute trying to resolve this. They recognized it as a serious problem and handed it right over to the police. Do the police profit from this? Hell no. Ebay profits while the general public is forced to pay for the clean up of any messes.
I now only buy things for $20 or less on ebay. One thing I bought where completely fake Oakleys. I knew they were fake but I didn't care. I got the glasses and had them in my car for a month before I got an e-mail from ebay warning me not to buy the product. The auction had been over for 40 days. That's some quick action
It's a hell of a racket they got going. I tell you what, the second Google launches their ebay knock off, I just may boycott ebay.
My work here is dung.
Yes, it's ebay's responsibility to do something about this, but if you're making a big purchase it makes sense to pay a little more and use their escrow service. You should instantly be set on alert if the seller has a low feedback and it's an expensive item, or has never bought something etc. but noone does this. There's a certain level of responsibility to fall upon the consumer. That said, ebay aren't doing enough, but it's not ALL their fault
~HTP~ Hug that tux
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
eBay, and their whore company, PayPal, are a breeding ground for Fraud, since they both care more about money, than they do about the common user. On one auction, where I was the seller, someone bought an item, paid with paypal, then turned around and left negative feedback, then had paypal give them a refund, even though I never got the item back, nor had my side of the problem heard. I cant wait til an ebay killer comes out and "does no evil".
Mod my comment up or I'll leave you with negative feedback!
I, for one, welcome our upcoming Google Auction Overlords.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Rember our friends priceritephoto.com? They are a full fledged eBay dealer. Though not as obvious as most other eBay scams, fraud companies like them are operating on eBay.
There are loads of auctions there which are obviously pirated games - you know, things like "5000 PSP games on one DVD, these games are public domain, honest". Even when these get reported to eBay they do nothing about it, because they make money off of the illegal stuff and the fraud just as much as they do on the legit stuff. And no-one really presses them on it.
Game dev and music blog
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 the fraud has a sufficient effect on profit they'll change. The reason they haven't is any fraud reduction measure will cost more than it makes.
Ebay has 2 things going for it.
The number of people in the ebay network.
They're good enough with no singificantly better competitor in their key market.
There are a number of fraudulent actions on eBay... but there are also quite a few scammers posing as buyers. A few ways to avoid them include:
* Do not be tempted to end the action early if they ask.
* Don't ship abroad - at least not to 'certain countries' in Africa.
* Don't accept moneyorders, WU, MG or the like - card is king, and PayPal (while evil) is also decent.
* Definitly don't accept a deal going like I'll send you a check on a higher amouth, you send me the item and the money left over. The check WILL be false.
* Educate yourself:
** www.scampatrol.org
** crime-online.info/blog
** www.fraudaid.com/index.htm
* Don't expect everyone online to be as honest and upright as yourself.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Serously though,
Whatever happened to consumer responsibility? I personally never buy anything unless the price is pretty low and the seller has lots of feedback. Our society has become so dependent on the government and law enforcement to take care of our problems that we have been totally ignorant of how to protect ourselves. If eBay gains enough of a reputation for fraud, people will stop shopping there and they will loose enough business that they will have to do something.
This looked incredible - that a new user should join and the very first thing they should do is to bid up the price of an automobile over the BiN price - all the moreso, since the registrant information (location) was clearly outside of the USA which would make delivery of the vehicle...costly to say the least.
I used eBay motors' instant chat and explained that I thought this was a "bum deal". Personally, I speculated someone at the delearship had done it, because they thought I would keep bidding and not 'notice' the irregularity.
I had resigned myself to keep looking when, 15 minutes later - and before the auction had completed - the "new user" was deleted and so was their bid! "Kudos to eBay" I said, and have enjoyed my Black Toyota Avalon ever since.
An interesting take on this is that, like a lot of business dealings, timing is everything and the incentive for eBay motors' to resolve a conflict prior to the auction close (and ensure their auction fees) was paramount.
Like a lot of incentive, time-based systems, I imagine it would be a challenge to get $500 back from eBay after I had purchased the vehicle and then began complaining. Kind of like asking me to take out the garbage after we have sex!
I would say that most of the 'eBay Fraud' is actually PayPal fraud.
This story caught my eye because I've literally just today been defrauded out of 250 GBP due to a PayPal chargeback. At least PayPal have a phone number (more than most internet companies do) but the employees I talked to said they're not doing anything about it - the buyer instructed his credit card agency to cancel the transaction, leaving PayPal 250 pounds out of pocket, so they deduct it from my account, which automatically charges my credit card 250 pounds.
What frustrates me is that it is so obvious what has happened and who is at fault, but PayPal are only interested in recovering their own money - they couldn't give a sh*t about which of their customers has been screwed over.
All I can say is roll on Google - there's a big gap in the market of guys like me who have been stung by eBay/PayPal and want a RELIABLE, SECURE alternative.
Regarding hijacked accounts, why don't places like Ebay implement two-factor authentication? IMO it would cut down drastically on the amount of fraudulent auctions, and it might even put a dent in the number of shill bidders.
I was conned on the 10th December 2004 by a company who had a feedback rating of several 1000. I am still in the process of trying to get my money back through Ebays Fraud protection department.
They spent the first couple of months denying that I had bought anything through Ebay, despite me supplying them with my user ID and the item number (how hard is it to look up on their system). Then I had to fax details to them of my bank account. A month later I emailed them and they said that I had not put my bank details on the fax, despite their original email saying that if I want to be paid into my PayPal account to give this and leave the bank details blank.
Then we entered the 'we have already paid you' phase, where they are stating that they have refunded my money on a specific date, but my bank statements do not show this. So far, I have been paid on 5 different dates, each one I have queried and each time they have had to go back to the Accounts Department to check (and come up with another rubbish date).
The last I heard from them was a month ago when they said that they had ordered bank statements to show the payment. The whole process has taken over a year and been like banging my head against a brick wall. I can not understand how incompetent the staff are, in particular Toni Tylor of the Fraud Protection department, who must win this years Darwin Award for being born with a genetic defect of having no brain.
You would think that by the nature of the business, Ebay would be better prepared to handle this type of thing. I have never been defrauded by the website as I don't buy anything from it for that very reason.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Buying autographs on ebay can definitely be a tricky business.. But one of the HUGE things that annoys me, and several other professional autograph collectors, is the PSA/DNA.. They are Ebay's RIGHTHAND man as far as autograph authentication is concerned.. Ebay highly promotes these guys and trust their opinion as far as buying non-fraudulent items.. The problem with this, is that all the little guys are pretty much up shit's creek since ebay figuratively says, "If its not PSA/DNA authenticated, then don't buy it!"
The PSA/DNA I agree, is good with sports autographs.. Because they do in fact have access to a huge DNA database of athletes, and can physically tell wether or not an autograph is real.. However, these guys have a shitty reputation for authenticating Hollywood memorabilia, political, and presidential.. I have a problem with this, because some customers that buy autographs from us, try to get those autographs authenticated by the PSA/DNA, just so they can have that nice sticker of authenticity, Ebay's word, and the potential to resell the item at a higher price..
When an item we sell, gets denied from the PSA/DNA, it really is bad business for us.. Because you have two groups of so-called professionals, that disagree with the authenticity of an item.. Its nothing but an opinion.. Being that they started off as a athelete authenticator, I can trust their opinion with those types of autographs, however I cannot trust them on historical items since they have a mere 3 years of experience with that genre of collections..
basically, i think its FUCKED up that this company is allowed to be the MAIN most TRUSTED authentication of Ebay, and they're also allowed to SELL items at the same time!! Talk about a freakin' monopoly.. Its bullshit.. Give us a chance you bastards..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
When the police showed up, he blamed "his nephew" but it was obviously him. Anyway, good news: I got my $$ back so he could avoid jail.
The bad:
I knew something was fishy less than 24 hours after payment. I called paypal, and asked them to cancel. They convinced me not to put in a complaint by saying "don't worry, you're covered." A day later, I was more sure of fraud, I called back.. AGAIN they said "Don't worry your covered!" I said "Are you sure? Completely covered?" and they said YES!
Two weeks later, when I file the claim, guess what? Not covered. Only $175 out of my $1000. In no way could $175 of $1000 be called "covered" I had names and numbers for each rep who told me not to stop the transaction. I asked them to look up the recorded phone calls. I spent an hour on the phone with a supervisor who promised me he'd look into in to it and help me, and to call him back at a certain day/time. When I did, he wasn't working. I haven't been able to reach him since.
When this is totally settled, I am going to launch a formal complaint at the FTC. If everyone who is mistreated by ebay/paypal complains to the FTC by writing, faxing, and calling, we can get some action. In the end, I didn't lose money, but I did lose 20-30 hours of tracking this guy down and calling the police, FBI, and even the Secret Service.
I'm lucky, I got my money back. Most aren't.
Ebay/Paypal could do A LOT but they don't, and they make hand over fist as a complicit party to fraud.
It's time to change.
It may suck to be a victim of fraud, but it's not because of the money - it's the fact that someone used a system to outsmart you, and got rewarded for it.
If you want the government to care about it and handle it for you, go shop at the mall, where you pay a sales tax for them to do so. This is why you can return things because you don't like them, and you can abuse retailers ridiculously just to have them offset what you cost them in the price of the things they sell you.
It would be nice if everyone played fair when it comes to making money, but they don't.
Strange how the BBC is prepared to carry reports on fraud at Ebay, whilst at the same time its annual charity is likely to benefit from the sale of invisible Xmas trees delivered personally by Santa Claus at: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&it em=4426980554
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/
...on eBay, which was just resolved last week.
I was shopping for a rare imported U.K. movie from the 80's which a particular vendor sold for not too expensive. I purchased the item (under 20$ for the item + shipping) immediately, paid via Paypal, and waited. The vendor emailed me a week later, asking how I'd like to pay for the item. After some 3 weeks of trying to get the very apologetic vendor to respond to me, I decided I wasn't getting anywhere, and submitted a complaint. Turns out, from the time I paid for the item, to the point that I submitted the claim, he had acquired numerous negative feedbacks. I guess I was just unlucky, as the item was not of exceptional value to anyone, nor was it high in demand. I just happened to be victim of an irresponsible vendor.
This was in October. Last week, Paypal issued a full refund for the item I bought. Maybe it was due to the negative response I gave on the feedback form I submitted, or maybe it was happenstance. But with the robotic-overlords (whom I don't welcome!) responses gotten from eBay and Paypal both, I never felt so utterly helpless in a sale transaction as in this one!
Don't ship abroad - at least not to 'certain countries' in Africa.
This is crap. If you are the seller, you have the advantage. You have every ability to ensure that the payment you recieve is genuine before you ship the item, so there is literally *nothing to lose* from shipping abroad. The only excuse you could have for not shipping abroad is laziness because you don't want to fill out the extra customs declaration.
Don't accept moneyorders, WU, MG or the like - card is king, and PayPal (while evil) is also decent.
Definitly don't accept a deal going like I'll send you a check on a higher amouth, you send me the item and the money left over. The check WILL be false.
See my above comment. There is nothing wrong with accepting money orders or cheques. Just make sure you wait until they clear at your bank before you ship the item. Anyone who sent a legitimate payment will understand this, and it only takes 3-5 days.
If the transaction goes sour, there is no problem re-listing the item for free. It has happened to me a couple of times in the past (not fraudulent payment, just no payment at all), and eBay was very easy to deal with.
There is ample reason to be suspect of *buying* overseas, but rarely is there a good reason for not *selling8 overseas. All you are doing is needlessly constricting your customer base.
Step 1. Have an easy way to report a suspect fraud auction at the top of each and every auction. As it is now you you have to spend a fair bit of time going through menu after menu just to submit a form that will be reviewed by somebody three to five days from now. That is deplorable and inexcusable. Ebay claims to be a largely customer self policed market, fine, than let the community easily report fraud when they see it.
Step 2. They have pattern analysis data that many companies can only dream of. When some lady with a high feedback selling garden trinkets suddenly develops an interest in selling high end laptops, that should sound alarm bells.
Step 3. Require an original picture for any auction. This would cost ebay nothing since customes are chargeed for pictures anyways. Give people the ability to see what they heck someone is claiming to sell! They can easily compare existing pictures against previous ones for the same checksum.
Step 4. Minimum auction time. Fraudsters take advantage of ebays failure to give a damn in any meaningfull timely manner by posting 24 or 48 hour auctions on seized accounts. They then offer a high demand bit of hit at a too good to be true price for that time period. Since it takes days before ebay even reviews a fraud claim 99% of the time the fraudster can very safely operate in that time window.
Step 5. Acknowledge that fraud occurs in some areas more than others and act quickly in those areas! Buying a highend laptop without encountering a fraud postings is very difficult. If they put the same level of vigalance on these types of auctions they used for "unlicensed software" ebay wouldn't have half the fraud problem they do now.
Step 6. Fraud auctions often post an email address in several auctions for different hijacked accounts because that is where they really want you to send the money. Simply track email addresses used by multiple accounts and flag anything that pops up.
Bottom line is that if ebay wanted to cut fraud dramatically they could do so easily and with minimal cost. The only explanation I can think of is a deep rooted sense of denial on their part that they have a problem. Why they haven't been sued in a class action lawsuit for turning a blind eye to fraud I don't know.
...to police fraud on its auctions, when they have to bear the costs of the fraud.
Those costs will come in the form of greater governmental regulation, or people not using the service.
... 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.
Date of Contact: 08/29/2005 Contact Information:
Dear Sellers, I'm writing to inquire about bidding on your G5 powermacs: I am curious though, how is it that two different sellers have identical description headers? The following description, "Only used once for mixing down an album and returned to the box. FULLY LOADED!! Tons of software (contact for details) The computer and monitor were purchased at the same time (end of March 2005), so both the computer and display are eligible to be covered under AppleCare. Both the computer and display are in new condition, and are in the retail box," seems too unique to be authored by different individuals. One Mac is in NY and the other in DC, which should decrease the probability of duplicate descriptions. Please explain. Also, I know this a strange request, but please bare with me, would you mind registering for a free gmail account at google and using that for email correspondence? I am serious about a G5 powermac purchase and I'm excited to place a bid or to buy-it-now.
Hi the buy it now price it is 2200 us dollars included all shipping taxes and insurances and if you are interesed to close a deal with me , email me back soon best regards .
Dragosi, It is a pleasure to contact you again. Is Atlanta close to Queens? I prefer to send money-orders, where should I overnight the payment to. http://cgi.ebay.com/PowerMac-Dual-G5-2-7GHz-with-2 3-Apple-Cinema- Display_W0QQitemZ5803902299QQcategoryZ51036QQrdZ1Q QcmdZViewItem http://cgi.ebay.com/PowerMac-Dual-G5-2-7GHz-with-2 3-Apple-Cinema- Display_W0QQitemZ5803952896QQcategoryZ51036QQrdZ1Q QcmdZViewItem
Hi , right now i am located in London, UK and the best way so we can close this deal is : for the payment and shipping we will must to chose the fastest way and secure way so : for the shipping : UPS express and for the payment : Western union services because it is the fastest way to send money worldwide so if you are interested to close a deal with me , please email me back with your full name and address for shipping so i can give you my payment address i will finish the shipment in the same day with the payment and in 24/48 hours after the payment will be made you will receive the package in your hand so if you are interested to close a deal with me , email me back soon with your details regards
Dragosi, I'm really excited about the new G5. I live in Ash Fork, Arizona. My street address is 704 Pine Ave and the zip is 86320. We don't have western union here. It is a small town in the desert, we do have a post office though, so I can overnight a money order. The closest place that has western union is Williams about 20 miles away. I have been saving up to get a car, but I figure with a new computer I might be able to get a real server up and running and start a small online business selling the local crafts. There are a lot of native people here and they make crafts but have no way to sell them online.
Hi Ok i am glad to close a deal with you here it is my payment adress : First name : Dragosy Last name : Allin Adress : 82 Morley Avenue City : London Country : United Kingdom Zip code : N22 6NG all you have to do now it is to find the nearst western union office and make the payment there ( to locate 1 please go at www.westernunion.com http://www.westernunion.com/> and chose the option FIND AGENT LOCATION ) after that you will have to send the payment from your name and adress to my name and adress after the payment will be made , please email me the payment details : sender name , receiver name , and MTCN and if it is posible the scaned copy from Western Union after i will verify the payment i will shipp the
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?
A lot of my friends and colleagues who know I've used ebay a lot have asked me if eBay is safe. I've had to be honest and say "no not really". You've got to be an expert user to spot some types of fraud and even after having done over 100 transactions, I still nearly fell for a scam quite recently after the seller had quite obviously gone to some lengths to fabricate a lot of feedback using many hijacked accounts.
On another day, my friend sent me the link of an auction and asked me to check it out for them. The seller had only ever been a buyer for several transactions, and then all of a sudden, the next 10 feedbacks were from sales to people with usernames ALL starting with "an". I'm not quite sure what was going on there, but I'm pretty sure the chances of that happening naturally are billions to one.
If you report these people to eBay they do NOTHING. They take days or weeks to respond, and in the meantime, you see that the auction ended in a sale to someone who obviously hasn't used eBay very much. They probably sent the money and got nothing back.
eBay is a FINANTIAL website. It should have an online-banking level of security. It should not be possible for any old script kiddie to hijack several accounts with weak passwords in one evening. It should be an SSL sign-in only site which never asks for your full password and forces you to use your mouse for part of the login process (to defy keyboard recorders and trojans). After all, a hijacked eBay account is just as good to a criminal as a hijacked bank account. The user/pass system just doesn't cut it.
eBay does not seem to CARE one bit about the level of security or fraud on their site.
I can tell you that I almost never bid on an item on eBay unless there's a way for the seller to receive the payment directly via American Express.
Two reasons here: first, the Amex merchant account is a tougher one to get. Not impossible to fool, and certainly not fraud-proof, but I've heard way too many instances of fly-by-night merchant account setups which take MC and Visa that disappear in 30 days. If the seller takes Amex directly, it's probably a legit business.
Second reason is that Amex seems to have the absolute best policy for disputing charges. Broken item? Use Amex product insurance. Never received/not as advertised/fradulent seller? Dispute the charge. Here's the thing: Amex is on the buyer's side! They want to keep the buyer as a customer, and they don't want to have to pay the seller if they don't have to!
Sadly, though, eBay is yet another case of Buyer Beware. If I were to go to a flea market or to some sidewalk sale, it'd be Buyer Beware there too. Not to excuse eBay for not doing their part to crack down on bad sellers, but as in life, your first line of defense is to be responsible for yourself.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
... that eBay does do quite a bit internally to find these things. I still don't quite get why people haven't grasped the concept that eBay is just a very fancy classifieds ad section, NOT an auction house.
If I was roaming the streets of Beijing, would I give my credit card to a street trader selling copied DVDs?
Do I really want to transfer money to an IBAN account in Yugoslavia?
I'll give you an example. Xbox 360s just came to market, although people were selling them well before the release date. You can of course do this, internally I can't tell if John Doe owns a small video game store, or has a brother who works in Microsoft. The policy is you have 30 days to come up with the goods. Beyond that, it's fraud. This policy is fair, it gives sellers the opportunity to sell and buyers the opportunity to buy. The problem is that the one guy who's doing this honestly is copied by twenty-nine who don't. The problem is this. What right to eBay have to make a prejudgment on the integrity of it's user base. I mean, apart from the fact that eBay is in a constant battle between creating true free markets, morality, and legality.
I personally worked on cleaning up the UK site from Chinese MP3 sellers. These guys owed us a lot of money; I'm talking nearly £500k. I was with the company 5 months and my actions were going to cost eBay a lot of money. What did eBay do? The created even tougher policies and implement new rules. The result? Difficult. The group of Chinese sellers got warehouses in the UK, and just walk the line again, without doubt they'll keep pushing it until we push back.
eBay's a victim of it's own success, and I'm of the firm belief that eBay takes a protective stance for an intelligent, trustworthy and capable user. Use of PayPal gives you a second layer of protection behind your credit card.
eBay's biggest error? The belief that people are basically good.
PS. No more cash, Western Union, Moneygram, Stormpay or instant cash transfers are allowed on the site, so hopefully whatever payment solution you use will give you the cover you need. My number 1 tip? eBay is not Amazon, you're dealing with another person, not a commercial entity, so if it looks dodgy, dodge it.
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).
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I believe this depends on what exactly happened.
You use a credit card to fund your paypal account. As long as this was not fraudulent, the credit card company is under no obligation to cancel anything.
You then use your paypal account to pay for something, and that turns out to be fraudulent.
In this case, why should the credit card company be responsible? They acted in good faith.
In this parent post, however, paypal told the guy he was covered, when in fact he was not. This is fraudulent behavior on their part.. that's why he should cancel the original transaction with his card company.. because paypal acted fraudulently.
I always wonder what is the reason to have sellers leave feedback on buyers. I mean as long as you get your money, your happy. You don't get the money, you don't ship the item. As simple as that. Relist it and sell it again. Feedback should only be allowed to be left by people considered a buyer.
Gorkman
I learned long ago that on eBay, your positive feedback rating is *only* worth worrying about in a general, overall sense. The more items you sell, the more "immune" you become to the jerks who leave you negative comments without a valid reason.
One of my former bosses was very concened about keeping 100% positive feedback on eBay, because his eBay seller ID was his business name, and he really wanted his feedback to reflect his business in a good light. Because of that, he got completely screwed over by several people he bought and sold things from. (EG. One guy sold him what he claimed was a 1GB stick of SDRAM memory, but after exhaustively testing it in all the motherboards we had available to us, were never able to get it to be recognized in any machines as more than 512MB. Of course, the seller insisted it was our fault because we simply "didn't have one of the systems that was able to see all of the memory". But no... After a close enough inspection and looking up the part numbers stamped on the individual chips making up the DIMM, it was obvious it really was only a 512MB stick. Upon trying to return it, my boss was threatened with "If I accept this for return, I'm leaving negative feedback for you, but if you keep it and accept that it's your problem - I'll leave you a positive.")
On my own account, I've always just "stood up" to these individuals, and gladly accepted whatever negative feedback they wish to give me. I, in turn, always reply to it with a comment that attempts to counter their arguments. And despite all this, I've always managed to keep at least a 93-97 percent positive rating. The fact is, if you use it fairly regularly, the number of good, honest people still outweighs the bad (assuming you use a little common sense when buying and selling too!), so you'll turn out ok, feedback-wise.
I recently had an issue with eBay and here is a rundown.
- Stood in line at local walmart and managed to get 2 xBox 360 platinum bundles
- Went straight home and listed the auction before I went to bet (it's like 1am now)
- Woke up and someone used buy it now on my auction for $1500 for 1 of them (I kept the other and never listed it). Payment was made immediately.
- I called paypal to verify that large transactions had come out of this guys account as it seemed too good to be true. This wasthe norm for him.
- Shipped xbox overnight before lunch
- Got back from lunch and my account had been suspended...no emails from ebay or anything like that
- Fired off an email to several ebay email addrsses
- Winning buyer gets his 360
- Got a generic reply about 2 days later saying my account was suspected of fraudulent activities dirctly related to the selling of the xbox and asked me to fax/send some information (receipt for xbox, front back of licence, ebay billing CC statment showing first & last 4 digits of CC, and signature that I acknowledged the ebay TOS). Yes, that is alot of BS to go through
- I could just open a new account but I like my feedback so I really want this one back and besides....I did nothing wrong.
- Fax all that BS to ebay
- About 3 days later I get a form email saying something could not be read.
- Called their 800 number and pressed the option for an operator thinking I would talk to a human. I did and they promptly transferred me to a recording.
- Guessing it's my licence I blow it up really big and refax evreything
- About 3 days later I get a form email saying something could not be read.
- You can see where this is going...repeat sevreal times lasting about 3 weeks
- During this time eBay promply charges my CC for the $100 it cost me to sell the xBox through their site...while my account is cancelled.
- Eventually got motivated and called their 800 number, pressed option 1 (enter extension), then I started typing random 5 digit extensions. HAHAHAH...first try I get a human...wrong dept but a human none the less who I can now annoy until I'm fixed
- Puts me on hold, calls safeharbor, then transferrs me to them.
- Lady says she'll look into this and call me back in 2 hours.
- Hour later I get a call back saying the receipt was completely legible and that was all that should have been necessary since that is the reason for the suspension.
At about 3pm on 14 Dec 2005 my account is reactivated.
Eat more bacon!
Just important to note that eBay is not a law enforcement agency, so allegations of fraud require certain factors to be there. Also, to broadcast any investigation information or to alledge a person is committing fraud to the general public would be a highly risky move for a company to take, and possibly incurring legal liability in the case where a mistake got made. PSUs are what we call previously suspended users. Without getting into too much detail, these are linked via phone numbers, credit card accounts, PayPal accounts, names, addresses, post code, images, servers, links, phrases and cookie crumbs. I can tell you around 4000 new members are suspended before they even get a listing on the UK site. Another 800 users are suspended hourly although it may take a few hours, and sometimes people have already bid and possibly paid for listings.
And they are very careful *not* to do much about fraud.
Their position is that they are *just* a middleman that connects buyers to sellers. The rest is up to you. If you are defrauded, they want you to go to law enforcement, *not* to eBay.
They actively *do not* work to shut down fraudulent sellers or auctions, because to do so would be to assume liability, which is precisely what they don't want to do. So they are careful always to say "eBay is just a forum, we take no responsibility for what is posted here, that is up to you..." and to make clear to users that they are not liable for anything -- the veracity of any buyer or seller or deal is up to those that *use* eBay to research.
I think this position is a little weaker now that they also own PayPal, but back in the day they would claim to be just like classified ads or like cut-rate real-world auction and liquidations houses: buyer and seller beware, they're just the cheap man in the middle who holds no responsibility for either party.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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You're absolutely correct. I only get positive feedback from about half the sellers unless I give them positive feedback. The whole feedback system is so flawed because ebay does nothing about the content of posts. Once I bought a item from a 0 seller (I know, bad idea but it was relatively cheap). The seller had about 10 items listed, I paid for mine, other buyers paid for theirs. It turns out that the seller goes on vacation without sending my item. 2 weeks I try emailing, telephoning, etc. It turns out that there are 2 women running the same ebay name, and they dont communicate with each other.
I was very disappointed by their poor service and unprofessional conduct, so I gave them bad feedback. What do I get in response? "user left wrong feedback" in my profile. It's explicitly against the rules to give vendetta feedback, but ebay just dropped my case without any notification from me that everything was ok.
In the end the problem is that to find a sellers bad side you have to dig through hundreds of butt-kissing positive comments (gotta get that + in return). In short nobody really does that. I can't look through hundreds of auctions and count tens of pages to determine if a particular auction is legit. I end up just looking for one I like and checking the top few feedbacks to make sure nobody has reported the seller as fraudulent in the past few days. Of course with ebay's lame dead sloth method of dealing with fraud, it could be 2 months before a negative feedback shows on a sellers account.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
he found a better deal the next day, or
it was a dummy account for a competitor, who was trying to tie up everyone elses 360 auctions, so they could sell their own, with less competition
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
Shouldn't Ebay have to warn their customers when they have an indication that one of their merchants may be a higher risk than others? An email on the subject to Ebay Customer Support was returned with the standard canned, non-sequitar reply. A subsequent complaint elicited two paragraphs of disclaimers and disavowals of all responsibility.
They make it abundantly clear that Ebay's only real concern is their own bottom line. I won't deal with them again.
NR
I think eBay - just as several governments are now doing to banks - should be held liable anyway. WHY? Because they're responsible for the pathetically weak authentication system which allow for password theft and consumers are nearly powerless to do anything about it.
You can't "Phish" the password from someone who has to use 2-factor authentication systems to gain access to an account (e.g. smart card). Smart card readers are about $15 these days and the cards are pretty cheap. It would cost much to allow sellers and even buyers opt to get a more highly secured authentication scheme for their account making them virtually immune to phisphing and spyware attacks that lift passwords. eBay could give those sellers & buyers an icon so that parties could know who their dealing with and that's not a scam (at least if it is a scam they KNOW who's responsible for it.)
The idea behind pressuring the banks (and eBay) for this sort of thing is that they alone can make or break the fraud. They claim it isn't their fault and they should be liable, but unless THEY are willing to make stronger authentication an option, law enforcement and victims will never really be able to make a substantial dent in this sort of thing.
So I log into eBay and I'm trying to collect hockey cards. I just happen to luck out and find a local seller who has what I want. Well his auctions run for 7 days and I bid on them, because, frankly, he started his bidding at 99 cents and its a steal! It's getting closer to the end of auction and I phone him up, just to find out if there's any other cards I might need that he can sell, and he mentions that he got his son to log in and bid up the price of all the auctions I had bid on, since in his own words "Those cards are worth more - I just made the mistake of putting them in the wrong category!" the big red flag was seeing some other person with zero feedback all of a sudden win every single auction I had bid on. I quickly look up the shill bidding page and fire off an e-mail to their support team, and I kid you not - 15 minutes later, all his auctions are pulled and his account completely toasted - 700 feedback and most of it good - all gone.
As a seller myself who is honest about what I sell, and communicate with buyers on the status of their items, seeing this quick of a reponse was surprising - I refreshed my eBay and saw the items dissappear from it one by one with each refresh - it was kinda creepy actually.
Just my opinion, which isn't the status quo, because I think they are sincerly trying to change their image, because im just as skeptical as everyone else.
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