From the article, The problem, described by the company as a "software bug," could be exploited by criminals to create an actual eBay link that redirects customers to a malicious site,
HELLO??!! This HAS ALWAYS BEEN KNOWN ON THE SOAPBOX FORUM ON EBAY EVER SINCE NOVEMBER OF 2004. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS EBAY HASN'T BROADCAST/ACKNOWLEDEGED IT PUBLICLY UNTIL NOW.
ebay does everything in its power to increase $'s. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. They'll say "just bid your max." Then when everyone does that and they don't have many buyers but they want more $'s, they start emailing people to "increase your max" and they don't care if they confuse people as long as they can sucker you into giving up more $.
Actually, I'm surpised with the huge number of other cruel, monopolistic things ebay does such that those things are ignored, but ebay gets sued over such a trivial manner as bidding increments.
This is like the time BEFORE they were going to increase fees this year, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, they CALL UP to SWEET-TALK EBAY MEMBERS (probably one of the first time in history many members get a call) to start up a store, increase their listings, etc. KNOWING THE MEMBERS' FEES WILL SHOOT THROUGH THE ROOF GIVING EBAY MORE $'s.
Or when they coax brand name designer companies to join their special VERO club and promise to be an enforcer for the designer companies to shut down sellers selling counterfeits. Well, people STILL sell counterfeits and ebay still gets their $'s. ebay deserves the Tiffany lawsuit.
There are SOOOOO many examples of this it isn't funny anymore.
It is funny how they're making a big deal of this. Good customer service is just Marketing 101 -- check any marketing textbook.
Contrast eBay with Google, whose customer service has always been exemplary. Whenever I have an AdSense question, I just shoot them an email. I get back an automated response saying they've gotten my email and then later -- a couple of days at most -- I get back a response from a human. If I'm not satisfied I just mail back to the person who sent my response... haven't had any problems I couldn't deal with that way. That's the way it should be.
ebay is one of the biggest companies that does NOT spend even a reasonable percentage on customer service, let alone fraud. All those "expenses"=stockholder profits.
ebay was never known for their customer service. They foist all those duties on their free "discussion forum seller volunteers" so again, their expenses are 0 to nil. ebay couldn't care less about good customer service unless it makes them $$$. the only reason ebay's saying anything about it is because lots of the sellers complain that there's no 1-800 number for their problems and meanwhile, their fees are getting raised every year and they're getting double, triple, quadruple billed "accidentally" by ebay. what do i think of what ebay says? it's a load of BS. once the public relation steam clears, they'll make semi-valid excuses that "too many people are taking advantage and calling for no good reason and they can't handle the calls" and THEREFORE, they'll go back to their old deliberately negligent ways of "we're just a venue. if you have problems, just email us and we'll send you back an automated message."
The reason in this case the bank is refusing to help the guy is because it wasn't ACH, it was a wire transfer. Wire transfers are very different. A wire transfer would be what you do at Western Union: You pay a company to make funds immediatly available to another party of your designation. They company then worries about actually shuffiling funds later, your designee can get the money immediatly. With large ones, it can be done directly bank-bank.
There are a few banks which have had to go thru the "outside the US wire transfer" headaches with their clients and have already set up A SEPARATE BANK DEPARMENT FOR WIRE TRANSFERS. So that if your account has a request for a wire transfer to ANYWHERE for ANY AMOUNT, the bank won't allow it unless you talk to them and clear all the guidelines (and they'll hang up on you and walk away from you if you don't have even one of the many access codes or securities they assigned to you when you signed up with them) with them first proving you're you and that you're allowing this. Yeah, it's a headache with clients because they get frustrated with all the fences they have to climb, but in the end, the banks that take this type of policy rarely if ever lose $$$.
This is what i'm saying about banks/businesses with great security. Those banks or other businesses with great security will continue to gain clients and those without will lose clients or get sued. It's difficult to be a cheapskate with security and it's difficult to do business with cheapskate businesses with bad security.
Yeah, it's the client's butt on the line because he didn't treat his computer like the computer was his bank, but on the other hand, it's pretty obvious the bank dropped this one. I sure wouldn't want to hold any of my $$$ with his bank.
More than likely, this bank like all the other remaining banks will have to develop fast SECUREpolicies regarding wire transfers also.
I'm willing to admit up-front that being the victim of a security breach or some kind of fraud is distressing to the customer, but given the fact most banks (and certainly any bank I would do business with) have zero liability fraud policies nowadays, the only party for whom such a device would be saving money is the bank.
First, the consumer pays for every needed cost by a business. That's a fact just like we all pay when a scammer steals someone's credit card or someone gets into an auto accident and all our fees(credit card or insurance) get raised a little. Do you think when you get reimbursed that it's free, that the business has FREE MONEY out there??!! That's crazy. If your bank is NOT losing money because of scammers because of increased security, they save money having to reimburse their customer and they save money not having to man customer support with irate calls from customers who are crying about an account hijack.
Therefore, why are customers expected to pay $10 for these? Certainly, banks will recoup the costs somehow (through higher fees in general), but isn't the net effect of this type of technology supposed to be a savings?
The bank can "bury" the fees & pretend to you that it's free, but you (I hope) and me know that's a load of BS. The customer pays no matter what. Any bank who says it's free is lying. We all pay one way or another.
Isn't it the bank's responsibility (and liability) to make sure their customers' accounts are secure (assuming a reasonable amount of due diligence by said customers)?
True, but the bank doesn't have direct control over every computer in the world who can easily keylog any of their customers and stick their password and username into their bank website. They give warnings, but when the THIRD WORLD has EASY ACCESS to every first world nation customer's account & law enforcement in those countries are corrupt, you expect the bank to still provide security in said countries??!! The bank's response would be: Don't do anymore banking online. Go directly to your bank where they can put a camera on you and talk to you and see your bank account pass book.
Isn't the savings in reduced fraud and security breaches supposed to outweigh the cost of the security devices? If not, why does the technology exist?
In the long run, the costs go down.
It sounds great and all, but unless offered as a free service, I'll sit this one out.
I don't mind if you sit it out and my cousin who works in the bank doesn't mind if you leave for another bank because you pay no matter what. Also, those BANKS with the BEST SECURITY REPUTATIONS WILL CONTINUE TO GAIN THE CUSTOMERS, especially the ones who understand there is a big problem with keeping 3rd world scammers & anonymous computer user scammers away from their accounts and WHO just want to BE COMFORTABLE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE.
Re:Who will "fix" the internet and how?
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Gone Phishing?
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· Score: 1
As of now, the only safety net is paranoia. Sad, but true.
I've told everyone I know never to use the internet for financial transactions or commerce transactions (to not even to buy on Amazon.com or other reliable commerce site unless they have a debit card with an account with a VERY SMALL amount of $$ that they can afford to lose.) and to not put their financial information on their computers anywhere. The only way it will be safe is if there are definite ways to track the scammers/phishers and definite enforcement where the scammers are punished. As long as the scammers can go their merry way phishing their way from one user to another, even if you educate the users, the scammers just evolve and develop more advanced sophisticated tactics. You can tell the user to just type the URL into the URL window, but as you can see with the articles, the scammers just change the host file so that the user believes he's at the correct site. You can tell the user never to click on any emails, but there are already viruses that phishers/hackers use where no clicking is needed as long as it's sent to the user's email.
People here need to stop being so elitist, and denigrating people just because they know less about computers than some arbitrarily determined minimum level below which the person must be "dumb".
I gotta agree here 100%. I would go into offices with lawyers and very few of them knew how to do a simple search for a particular file in their computer but they all knew what a certiorari was. Do any genius software engineers without law experience here on slashdot know what it is without looking at a dictionary online or offline?? So who's stupid?? People go for what's "safe" in experience to them because Microsoft has a near MONOPOLY on default web browsers in all the businesses and home computers. The way to break it is to educate everyone you know and the people THEY know about Firefox.
I have to say, Firefox is MUCH MORE than hype with the simple java/javascript disabling, fast surfing, tabbed browsing, nice management of bookmarks, plugins like Foxytunes, etc. I've already deleted the IE icon off our house's desktops and replaced them with Firefox 1.0. I get along with this browser like A HOUSE ON FIRE(fox)!! hehehe
Obviously the answer here is not to be a jerk who buys tons of clothes and then returns them. Why not, ya know, TRY THE FUCKING THINGS ON before buying? Or is it more fun just to spend $2000 at Express and then see what fits and what makes you look like an idiot?
i don't believe her story. What kind of woman doesn't know she ALREADY has those clothes?? My sisters can't leave a clothing store without trying something on and shopping for MORE clothes for hours on end. That's like saying Santa doesn't know which reindeers he has!! My sisters buy LOTS of clothes and barely return anything, only a few clothes that don't fit exactly, BUT THEY NEVER RETURN A BOATLOAD BACK. Probably she buys them for a while to find out what the competition has to copy the outfit patterns and styles before returning them or else she actually is "RENTING" the outfits for an occasion. If it's a case of competition spying, the store has more to fear than a scam buyer.
I'm all for ANY system that routs out the scammers, whether they be sellers or buyers.
Why should I drive and shop for hours to find something unique? Why should I have to deal with traffic, parking, intrusive store security, lack of real selection, and indifferent sales drones? Why should I shop in stores that play music at levels that would make a '70's rock group put in ear plugs? I used to love shopping for music and books; the problem now is that with a precious few exceptions, music stores and book stores (which are now frequently the same store) are as impersonal as online stores. At least with online stores one does not have to deal with rude clerks.
You got that right. Except for indie shops, it's the mall store Sam Goodys and boxstore Walmarts of the world who sell music now. So I have to spend money back & forth (spending gas & maintenance on my car to drive to overcrowded parking lots to enter malls[with noisy kids & loud crying babies]) to enter stores like Sam Goody's where their very limited selection of music is stuck where the disco cd's and M$donna's a$$ are. Then, yeah, put on the ear plugs 'cause they'll bang your ear with foul loud rock or rap music from a band you hate. Then you go to ask the clerk some questions about your favorite musician you found online and he says "What?? Who??" obviously not listening to what you're saying while his ears are filled with a headset attached to an mp3 player. Then he says, "oh don't know. I only listen to M$donna music." Then you go to pay for your CD and have to pay their OVER INFLATED PRICES of $25 or more for the privilege of taking it home. Then you open it at home and only find 1 or 2 good songs for something you paid $25 for!!
Thank you p2p and musicians (Shareaza, EmilieAutumn.com, CDBaby.com) who put their music online for me to sample and buy. Bye Bye CD Carriers Sam Goodys of the world!!
There sure is... download FireFox (www.mozilla.org) and *stop* using IE.
The *point* IS that even if everyone switched to FireFox, the spyware companies and hackers will still write their codes. Without ANY type of legislation, it continues to be an arms race or a cleaning race and most people (who are like my friend) can get phished or keylogged and their $$$ stolen in 1 second before the next patch comes out and the criminal or spyware company is able to get away with it and keep doing it to other people under the laws we have presently.
I wonder if people who say "oh use adaware, spybot, etc." would say this if the nice authors had NOT made these free softwares AVAILABLE?? what would be the answer be? "oh, go ahead and just reformat your hard drive!!"" (/sarcasm).
Even those anti-spywares are not enough to keep my computer 100% clean. I NEED and so use other anti-spywares on my computer besides those 3. And no, i don't feel like revealing what they are just to educate the scummy spyware purveyors.
My friend (who is basically computer-illiterate and that's the NICEST thing i could say about her computer skills) uses the computer but rarely surfs anywhere except on hotmail to check her email. Guess what? Every time i clean her computer of spyware, Avenue spyware or adware comes up and found out this comes from Microsoft's OWN SITE! Even ebay has adware or spyware on their site with doubleclick. I'm glad she's so computer-illiterate AND doesn't have a credit card AND doesn't deal with Ebay, Paypal, or any of her banks online 'cause she could be in even worse trouble.
Face it, if we don't even have basic laws on spyware, these crap spyware companies along with their $$$ Company Sponsors will keep writing them and they just get worse the better your anti-spyware becomes. It's just an spyware vs. anti-spyware ARMS RACE.
The only time politicians act is when their own families get hurt. I'm GLAD that congressman's daughter was victimized by the phishing scam, otherwise we STILL wouldn't have ANY Congress anti-spyware bills.
And who would pay for all the marketing of the music? I know this is not a popular thing to bring up on Slashdot, but it takes a lot of money to market music. It's one of the reason bands want to sign a record deal, it's not just for the distribution, it's because the record company will promote the music. That doesn't come cheap in todays market.
It takes a lot of money to market GOOD music. It takes very little money to market crappy music like Pink, Beyonce, Britney Queers, M$donna. And if you really knew how much more better music is out there than these kind of bands who are supported to the hilt with $$ by the labels, then you'd know that a lot of the better musicians finance their own projects with the help of their loyal fan base one way or another. You think it's better to just throw $$$ at a band fast and easy rather than have them work their way up slowly developing their fan base & able to control their own destiny??? then you are living in a fantasy world 'cause the only bands that work that way are one-hit wonders with band members living in poverty sooner or later being USED by the labels or trashy music like M$donna!!!
When a band gets an album cover on the front page of iTunes, do you think that's because it's good? No, it's because the record company paid for "placement", just like they do with the big posters in the windows of Tower Records. That stuff doesn't happen for free.
Yeah, M$donna's labels pay for "placement", too. Does that mean her music is better than Fugazi, Modest Mouse, Anne di franco?? Yeah right! (/sarcasm)
We can all wish for some utopia world where the best music sells the most, but it doesn't work that way. If it did, Linux would be #1, not Windows.
As you said, it's because of marketing. If people would pay less attention to marketing and more attention to the QUALITY of merchandise (or music), it would be a more perfect world. With all the viruses/trojans/keyloggers/spyware coming out, i'm actually thinking of purchasing an Apple computer or a computer with Linux. How's them apples??
What is royally fucked is the fact that artists could command much higher percentages if the music industry wasn't dominated by a cartel
And the labels took a big chunk of any money customers paid for a record.
It was a deal with the devil.
The major record labels were just a bank to finance the artists' distribution & marketing, a specialized bank for artists and musicians but just a bank nonetheless. The artists might as well go to a Credit Union--they've got much lower rates I hear. hehehehe No, better yet, let's view the NEWER business models.
I'm just going to name 2 ways artists are making money now which I listened to on npr.org this week.
Now, you don't need these companies to do biz as an artist or "independent creater", but just look at the way the business model CAN BE now without the RIAA.
Artistshare
Maria Schneider, a well-known and highly regarded jazz arranger/band leader now uses artistShare which uses the power & money of the artist's fans and she now makes a little money compared with losing money the past 3 years without her fans' help.
With artistshare, you can buy into various "plans" and get otherwise unavailable CDs, unreleased clips, Schneider's own annotations. At the very top are "Gold Participants" who, for $1,000, get their names listed on her next CD as an underwriter.
Bitpass
Fans make micropayments for specific songs. A comics artist was sick of giving his works away and not receiving any sort of compensation. With bitpass, his fans come back for more while making micropayments and both sides are happy.
As a software developer, I admit this is a deal is fantastic, there's basically no downside, just an upside. As a customer, I much prefer the service oriented approach of the commercial open-source establishment - get the software free, and pay for training and support.
Vertical companies' clients are still going to need to service those clients even if the clients choose to rent so companies will get paid rent fees + service fees. For the customers, it would be more expensive, but they can afford to just buy "to own" the software for full price.
For people who buy off-the-shelf software, this is great. There isn't that many softwares that i can't live without except my browser. The first time, i may pick a software that has the newest features like Microsoft Office but later on after a few months discover other software out there that's better like Open Office, so it actually sounds better for me to RENT in the beginning with MS Word.
Open free softwares will still be out there, so they're not affected. There are still a lot of amateur programmers or programmers who want to try something out and put it out there free for people to try.
Let's face it, people will only rent or pay to "own" only if the software is any good.
Increase of Mozilla/Firefox use for web designers is indeed very good news
Don't get me wrong. I advocate switching to another browser on my webpages because of IE's vulnerabilities and continued "patch update" nonsense wasting my time. My only problem with Mozilla gaining in usage %age is that the virus/trojan/spyware makers will aim their slime at Mozilla browsers now. I don't use Firefox or Opera or Safari, but i'm not going to advocate everybody run to the browser I use---Why would i want the scumbags to aim their slime at my browser????:-)
And I guess I've surprised even myself with this. I'm an ad-blocker. I'm sorry to anyone's web page I visit that's paid for with advertising-sponsored links,....
My firewall and my AV both have scriptblocking so i NEVER have to worry about the usual ad pests as well as the fact i carry spywareblaster and use an alternate browser as my default. If some sites block me because i won't add their ad spyware scum on my computer, that's fine with me. Hasta la vista, baby!! They said goodbye to a customer. What do i care if a few sites block me when I can surf smooth and easy now and get the same info somewhere else that doesn't block me. hehehe For those sites that let me in, i feel guilty, but they should realize if they want me to see their ad, they better put it in SIMPLE TEXT on the side somewhere of the article. I'll pay more attention and respect to that kind of ad than i would to a PUNCH THE MONKEY ad.
As far as videogames, i don't think i mind if they have ads or adtracking as long as it's fast and not a drain on playing the game. you could always press the mute button which is what i do now with overly loud and garish tv ads. if there's an ad every 3 seconds like what was happening a few years ago with the Mountain of ads in the Olympics on tv, i'm not buying the game no matter how good it is.
This doesn't mean i don't see a whole page of advertisements. i still go over to a animal rescue site to click on their page of advertisements as a "donation."
My other exception is Google's advertising. It's always been text based, so it's never been the visual distraction that causes me to want to block it.
So true. One time, I googled some words and it gave me the link that i wanted but i also noticed the same exact link in the highlighted ad boxes on top of the link choices. i was going to click on the regular link when i realized i SHOULD click on the highlighted ad since we want to reward google for its nice format text only ads and not the flashy, roll on your screen nonsense POLLUTION and spyware scum we get from other websites. Anyway, that's what i did and still do. if the link is in the ad link, even if i'm not interested in buying anything, i'll click on the ad link and look around just as i would have done with the regular link.
Gotta talk to the Co. President. I can relate.
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Best Buy Sued By Ohio
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· Score: 1
All-in-all if you have a problem with something in any store, take it up with a manager.
We used to go to Montgomery Ward's a lot(before it went out of biz) as a dependable place to buy high end necessary items. Then they started to sell refurbished appliances and equipment WITHOUT LABELLING them as such which is ILLEGAL. We tried to buy a VCR from them years ago and the salesman said he would order it and it would take a week for it to get to the store. WTF!! Before, all electronic stuff would ALREADY be in the store. I guess they were in deep financial trouble if they HAD TO ORDER IT FIRST!! We passed on that.
Then later on, we ordered a refrigerator. THE REFRIGERATOR BROKE AFTER LESS THAN A MONTH AND THE MANAGERS AND SALESPEOPLE WOULDN'T DO ANYTHING AND IT WAS HOT SUMMER TIME!! All our food we had recently bought at the supermarket was spoiling. We had to call up and argue FOR DAYS with the Company President just to get them to honor their service warranty!!
Education will only help so long. What happens when someone writes a worm/virus that replaces the/etc/hosts file with one hacked up to send people to phishing sites instead of banking sites?
I'm beginning to think ICANN or whoever is responsible for internet access should just BAN anyone from these scammer countries or whatever other country they're using to scam on unless they have genuine official business on the internet. This would really reduce the scammers' abilities to scam. And Law enforcement has to be a lot better with heavier penalties.
Education only goes so far. Technology(like ebay's toolbar) only go so far before the scammer evolves.......
when buyers were getting scammed on ebay to wire money for expensive stuff like laptops, ebay people recommended buyers use escrow. Guess what the scammers did? They made fake escrow websites and buyers got scammed again.
when buyers wouldn't trust the escrow sites and wouldn't trust dealing with foreign countries, guess what the scammers did? They now use people who are desperate for jobs in the US as "foils" or "agents" by pretending they're an overseas company that hires the "foils" so they can use their Paypal accounts and have them send $$$ overseas to these scammers. Sometimes they'll just say they'll give them a reward of some kind in items or money if they can use their Paypal accounts. Then, the scammers use their stolen Credit Card numbers to "buy" items off of sellers and send these to the buyers. Guess what happens then? That's right, Police come knocking on the buyers' doors and the foil's door.
Govt officials won't help you out unless the $$$ amount is over the thousands. The scammers' country government are most times just scam accomplices or don't care.
What's all this forcing ME to do? Ditch IE browser for another browser. Firewall & AV on all the time. I no longer store financial/personal info on my computer. I do less business on the anonymous web and especially less on evilbay and would rather do business locally in person. I've pretty much ditched my email. If my banks or anyone need to contact me, they can do so the old fashioned way----->U.S. mail.
Craigslist good Karma. Ebay bad Karma.
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Craig and his List
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· Score: 2, Informative
This article restored my faith in the "google" philosophy, Craig is doing the right thing and not selling out. Until reading this in-depth interview I interpreted the story earlier this week implying Craig had sold out. On the contrary, it turns out a former employee with 25% (closely held) shares sold them independently which is a whole lot different from Craigslist negotiating a sale to eBay.
Craigslist has ALWAYS had the Google philosophy--Do what's good for the community--Everything you do comes back to you. People helping people. I was shocked too about the 25% sell but knew it couldn't be Craig wanting it. If that were the case, he could have sold out for millions of $$$ and retired in style and luxury during the dot com boom. Instead he's just barely or just comfortably paying the bills for running the website via fees from job ads.
I recommend/. readers read the entire interview (warning, its long, but hey, its Sunday morning...). My faith in (as Craig calls us) nerds is restored. We gotta make a living but we don't have to sell out.
Amen.
Its a long shot to think that eBay could expand to include a highly regional business. My guess is its not likely to happen, but if it does I may take another look at eBay.
i'll never take another look at ebay as long as some scam seller from Romania, Russia, Indonesia or Nigeria can hide behind his computer while ebay does very little to stop him from coming back again & again to scam others AND ebay can trap me with legalese ("you bid so you have to pay") into sending $$ to the scam seller because i pressed the "buy it now" button and "won."
The 25% buy by ebay of craigslist looks like another way ebay is trying to make themselves "smell" better without too much ODOR to gain a better reputation for "safety" with the public.
i knew i should have waited 10 years instead of getting that $300 dvd player!
10 years! i'll wait 20!! vhs was good enough for me. they keep making you pay more to switch from one format to the next. my brother wasn't too lucky--2 years ago he spent over $600, that's right, 600 big ones, for a DVD player as a birthday for my father. and right now it's collecting dust in the closet since the first day he gave it. yeah, people are funny falling over themselves for the newest gadgets.:-)
Yeah, it makes perfect sense to "merge" a perfectly good, usable, and friendly system like half.com into ebay. Everything, after all, should be an auction..
I've done a lot of buying from amazon zshops, half.com etc. It seems that amazon.com runs a much tighter ship than ebay does. I got ripped off for about $100 on ebay once, and only then did I realize how helpless the situations is. On amazon, I can buy used, I can buy new, and so far it's all been smooth.
I second that! My nephew bought a bunch of used CD's at Amazon. The sellers sent him something else. He reported it to Amazon. Amazon fixed it and the sellers sent the right stuff. And i'm pretty sure Amazon would have given back his money if he lost it with him and Amazon knowing he paid by CC so is disputable with his CC company. You can NEVER do that with ebay. ebay looks the other way "we're just a venue."
And i don't see how buying at ebay is safer than buying at a flea market. At a flea market, you SEE and CAN TOUCH for youself the item. You can't do that on ebay where you have to rely on the honesty of the seller. I've seen 100% positive sellers with lots of feedback DELIBERATELY LIE on ebay, lying even when you email them questions. So that once you pay for the item, it's too late and you've lost your money!! Many sellers on ebay don't use CC's or paypal or escrow.com. So who the hell's gonna protect the buyer if ebay doesn't????
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.geocities.com/sisal_lo/index.htm for anybody who doesn't know how DISREPUTABLE and UNSAFEebay is
For EBAY FRAUD OF ALL KINDS
HELLO??!! This HAS ALWAYS BEEN KNOWN ON THE SOAPBOX FORUM ON EBAY EVER SINCE NOVEMBER OF 2004. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS EBAY HASN'T BROADCAST/ACKNOWLEDEGED IT PUBLICLY UNTIL NOW.
THANX FOR NOTHING EBAY!! I'M GLAD I ALREADY WARNED MY OWN PEOPLE!!
After all this time observing ebay, looking at ebay is like looking at an UNETHICAL shady scam company speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
ebay does everything in its power to increase $'s. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. They'll say "just bid your max." Then when everyone does that and they don't have many buyers but they want more $'s, they start emailing people to "increase your max" and they don't care if they confuse people as long as they can sucker you into giving up more $.
Actually, I'm surpised with the huge number of other cruel, monopolistic things ebay does such that those things are ignored, but ebay gets sued over such a trivial manner as bidding increments.
This is like the time BEFORE they were going to increase fees this year, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, they CALL UP to SWEET-TALK EBAY MEMBERS (probably one of the first time in history many members get a call) to start up a store, increase their listings, etc. KNOWING THE MEMBERS' FEES WILL SHOOT THROUGH THE ROOF GIVING EBAY MORE $'s.
Or when they coax brand name designer companies to join their special VERO club and promise to be an enforcer for the designer companies to shut down sellers selling counterfeits. Well, people STILL sell counterfeits and ebay still gets their $'s. ebay deserves the Tiffany lawsuit.
There are SOOOOO many examples of this it isn't funny anymore.
Contrast eBay with Google, whose customer service has always been exemplary. Whenever I have an AdSense question, I just shoot them an email. I get back an automated response saying they've gotten my email and then later -- a couple of days at most -- I get back a response from a human. If I'm not satisfied I just mail back to the person who sent my response... haven't had any problems I couldn't deal with that way. That's the way it should be.
ebay is one of the biggest companies that does NOT spend even a reasonable percentage on customer service, let alone fraud. All those "expenses"=stockholder profits.
ebay was never known for their customer service. They foist all those duties on their free "discussion forum seller volunteers" so again, their expenses are 0 to nil. ebay couldn't care less about good customer service unless it makes them $$$. the only reason ebay's saying anything about it is because lots of the sellers complain that there's no 1-800 number for their problems and meanwhile, their fees are getting raised every year and they're getting double, triple, quadruple billed "accidentally" by ebay. what do i think of what ebay says? it's a load of BS. once the public relation steam clears, they'll make semi-valid excuses that "too many people are taking advantage and calling for no good reason and they can't handle the calls" and THEREFORE, they'll go back to their old deliberately negligent ways of "we're just a venue. if you have problems, just email us and we'll send you back an automated message."
There are a few banks which have had to go thru the "outside the US wire transfer" headaches with their clients and have already set up A SEPARATE BANK DEPARMENT FOR WIRE TRANSFERS. So that if your account has a request for a wire transfer to ANYWHERE for ANY AMOUNT, the bank won't allow it unless you talk to them and clear all the guidelines (and they'll hang up on you and walk away from you if you don't have even one of the many access codes or securities they assigned to you when you signed up with them) with them first proving you're you and that you're allowing this. Yeah, it's a headache with clients because they get frustrated with all the fences they have to climb, but in the end, the banks that take this type of policy rarely if ever lose $$$.
This is what i'm saying about banks/businesses with great security. Those banks or other businesses with great security will continue to gain clients and those without will lose clients or get sued. It's difficult to be a cheapskate with security and it's difficult to do business with cheapskate businesses with bad security.
Yeah, it's the client's butt on the line because he didn't treat his computer like the computer was his bank, but on the other hand, it's pretty obvious the bank dropped this one. I sure wouldn't want to hold any of my $$$ with his bank.
More than likely, this bank like all the other remaining banks will have to develop fast SECUREpolicies regarding wire transfers also.
First, the consumer pays for every needed cost by a business. That's a fact just like we all pay when a scammer steals someone's credit card or someone gets into an auto accident and all our fees(credit card or insurance) get raised a little. Do you think when you get reimbursed that it's free, that the business has FREE MONEY out there??!! That's crazy. If your bank is NOT losing money because of scammers because of increased security, they save money having to reimburse their customer and they save money not having to man customer support with irate calls from customers who are crying about an account hijack.
Therefore, why are customers expected to pay $10 for these? Certainly, banks will recoup the costs somehow (through higher fees in general), but isn't the net effect of this type of technology supposed to be a savings?
The bank can "bury" the fees & pretend to you that it's free, but you (I hope) and me know that's a load of BS. The customer pays no matter what. Any bank who says it's free is lying. We all pay one way or another.
Isn't it the bank's responsibility (and liability) to make sure their customers' accounts are secure (assuming a reasonable amount of due diligence by said customers)?
True, but the bank doesn't have direct control over every computer in the world who can easily keylog any of their customers and stick their password and username into their bank website. They give warnings, but when the THIRD WORLD has EASY ACCESS to every first world nation customer's account & law enforcement in those countries are corrupt, you expect the bank to still provide security in said countries??!! The bank's response would be: Don't do anymore banking online. Go directly to your bank where they can put a camera on you and talk to you and see your bank account pass book.
Isn't the savings in reduced fraud and security breaches supposed to outweigh the cost of the security devices? If not, why does the technology exist?
In the long run, the costs go down.
It sounds great and all, but unless offered as a free service, I'll sit this one out.
I don't mind if you sit it out and my cousin who works in the bank doesn't mind if you leave for another bank because you pay no matter what. Also, those BANKS with the BEST SECURITY REPUTATIONS WILL CONTINUE TO GAIN THE CUSTOMERS, especially the ones who understand there is a big problem with keeping 3rd world scammers & anonymous computer user scammers away from their accounts and WHO just want to BE COMFORTABLE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE.
I've told everyone I know never to use the internet for financial transactions or commerce transactions (to not even to buy on Amazon.com or other reliable commerce site unless they have a debit card with an account with a VERY SMALL amount of $$ that they can afford to lose.) and to not put their financial information on their computers anywhere. The only way it will be safe is if there are definite ways to track the scammers/phishers and definite enforcement where the scammers are punished. As long as the scammers can go their merry way phishing their way from one user to another, even if you educate the users, the scammers just evolve and develop more advanced sophisticated tactics. You can tell the user to just type the URL into the URL window, but as you can see with the articles, the scammers just change the host file so that the user believes he's at the correct site. You can tell the user never to click on any emails, but there are already viruses that phishers/hackers use where no clicking is needed as long as it's sent to the user's email.
I gotta agree here 100%. I would go into offices with lawyers and very few of them knew how to do a simple search for a particular file in their computer but they all knew what a certiorari was. Do any genius software engineers without law experience here on slashdot know what it is without looking at a dictionary online or offline?? So who's stupid?? People go for what's "safe" in experience to them because Microsoft has a near MONOPOLY on default web browsers in all the businesses and home computers. The way to break it is to educate everyone you know and the people THEY know about Firefox.
I have to say, Firefox is MUCH MORE than hype with the simple java/javascript disabling, fast surfing, tabbed browsing, nice management of bookmarks, plugins like Foxytunes, etc. I've already deleted the IE icon off our house's desktops and replaced them with Firefox 1.0. I get along with this browser like A HOUSE ON FIRE(fox)!! hehehe
i don't believe her story. What kind of woman doesn't know she ALREADY has those clothes?? My sisters can't leave a clothing store without trying something on and shopping for MORE clothes for hours on end. That's like saying Santa doesn't know which reindeers he has!! My sisters buy LOTS of clothes and barely return anything, only a few clothes that don't fit exactly, BUT THEY NEVER RETURN A BOATLOAD BACK. Probably she buys them for a while to find out what the competition has to copy the outfit patterns and styles before returning them or else she actually is "RENTING" the outfits for an occasion. If it's a case of competition spying, the store has more to fear than a scam buyer.
I'm all for ANY system that routs out the scammers, whether they be sellers or buyers.
You got that right. Except for indie shops, it's the mall store Sam Goodys and boxstore Walmarts of the world who sell music now. So I have to spend money back & forth (spending gas & maintenance on my car to drive to overcrowded parking lots to enter malls[with noisy kids & loud crying babies]) to enter stores like Sam Goody's where their very limited selection of music is stuck where the disco cd's and M$donna's a$$ are. Then, yeah, put on the ear plugs 'cause they'll bang your ear with foul loud rock or rap music from a band you hate. Then you go to ask the clerk some questions about your favorite musician you found online and he says "What?? Who??" obviously not listening to what you're saying while his ears are filled with a headset attached to an mp3 player. Then he says, "oh don't know. I only listen to M$donna music." Then you go to pay for your CD and have to pay their OVER INFLATED PRICES of $25 or more for the privilege of taking it home. Then you open it at home and only find 1 or 2 good songs for something you paid $25 for!!
Thank you p2p and musicians (Shareaza, EmilieAutumn.com, CDBaby.com) who put their music online for me to sample and buy. Bye Bye CD Carriers Sam Goodys of the world!!
The *point* IS that even if everyone switched to FireFox, the spyware companies and hackers will still write their codes. Without ANY type of legislation, it continues to be an arms race or a cleaning race and most people (who are like my friend) can get phished or keylogged and their $$$ stolen in 1 second before the next patch comes out and the criminal or spyware company is able to get away with it and keep doing it to other people under the laws we have presently.
Install Ad-aware, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spybot S&D, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spywareblaster, update, enable protection
I wonder if people who say "oh use adaware, spybot, etc." would say this if the nice authors had NOT made these free softwares AVAILABLE?? what would be the answer be? "oh, go ahead and just reformat your hard drive!!"" (/sarcasm).
Even those anti-spywares are not enough to keep my computer 100% clean. I NEED and so use other anti-spywares on my computer besides those 3. And no, i don't feel like revealing what they are just to educate the scummy spyware purveyors.
My friend (who is basically computer-illiterate and that's the NICEST thing i could say about her computer skills) uses the computer but rarely surfs anywhere except on hotmail to check her email. Guess what? Every time i clean her computer of spyware, Avenue spyware or adware comes up and found out this comes from Microsoft's OWN SITE! Even ebay has adware or spyware on their site with doubleclick. I'm glad she's so computer-illiterate AND doesn't have a credit card AND doesn't deal with Ebay, Paypal, or any of her banks online 'cause she could be in even worse trouble.
Face it, if we don't even have basic laws on spyware, these crap spyware companies along with their $$$ Company Sponsors will keep writing them and they just get worse the better your anti-spyware becomes. It's just an spyware vs. anti-spyware ARMS RACE.
The only time politicians act is when their own families get hurt. I'm GLAD that congressman's daughter was victimized by the phishing scam, otherwise we STILL wouldn't have ANY Congress anti-spyware bills.
It takes a lot of money to market GOOD music. It takes very little money to market crappy music like Pink, Beyonce, Britney Queers, M$donna. And if you really knew how much more better music is out there than these kind of bands who are supported to the hilt with $$ by the labels, then you'd know that a lot of the better musicians finance their own projects with the help of their loyal fan base one way or another. You think it's better to just throw $$$ at a band fast and easy rather than have them work their way up slowly developing their fan base & able to control their own destiny??? then you are living in a fantasy world 'cause the only bands that work that way are one-hit wonders with band members living in poverty sooner or later being USED by the labels or trashy music like M$donna!!!
When a band gets an album cover on the front page of iTunes, do you think that's because it's good? No, it's because the record company paid for "placement", just like they do with the big posters in the windows of Tower Records. That stuff doesn't happen for free.
Yeah, M$donna's labels pay for "placement", too. Does that mean her music is better than Fugazi, Modest Mouse, Anne di franco?? Yeah right! (/sarcasm)
We can all wish for some utopia world where the best music sells the most, but it doesn't work that way. If it did, Linux would be #1, not Windows.
As you said, it's because of marketing. If people would pay less attention to marketing and more attention to the QUALITY of merchandise (or music), it would be a more perfect world. With all the viruses/trojans/keyloggers/spyware coming out, i'm actually thinking of purchasing an Apple computer or a computer with Linux. How's them apples ??
And the labels took a big chunk of any money customers paid for a record.
It was a deal with the devil.
The major record labels were just a bank to finance the artists' distribution & marketing, a specialized bank for artists and musicians but just a bank nonetheless. The artists might as well go to a Credit Union--they've got much lower rates I hear. hehehehe No, better yet, let's view the NEWER business models.
I'm just going to name 2 ways artists are making money now which I listened to on npr.org this week. Now, you don't need these companies to do biz as an artist or "independent creater", but just look at the way the business model CAN BE now without the RIAA.
Artistshare
Maria Schneider, a well-known and highly regarded jazz arranger/band leader now uses artistShare which uses the power & money of the artist's fans and she now makes a little money compared with losing money the past 3 years without her fans' help.
With artistshare, you can buy into various "plans" and get otherwise unavailable CDs, unreleased clips, Schneider's own annotations. At the very top are "Gold Participants" who, for $1,000, get their names listed on her next CD as an underwriter.
Bitpass
Fans make micropayments for specific songs. A comics artist was sick of giving his works away and not receiving any sort of compensation. With bitpass, his fans come back for more while making micropayments and both sides are happy.
Vertical companies' clients are still going to need to service those clients even if the clients choose to rent so companies will get paid rent fees + service fees. For the customers, it would be more expensive, but they can afford to just buy "to own" the software for full price.
For people who buy off-the-shelf software, this is great. There isn't that many softwares that i can't live without except my browser. The first time, i may pick a software that has the newest features like Microsoft Office but later on after a few months discover other software out there that's better like Open Office, so it actually sounds better for me to RENT in the beginning with MS Word.
Open free softwares will still be out there, so they're not affected. There are still a lot of amateur programmers or programmers who want to try something out and put it out there free for people to try.
Let's face it, people will only rent or pay to "own" only if the software is any good.
Don't get me wrong. I advocate switching to another browser on my webpages because of IE's vulnerabilities and continued "patch update" nonsense wasting my time. My only problem with Mozilla gaining in usage %age is that the virus/trojan/spyware makers will aim their slime at Mozilla browsers now. I don't use Firefox or Opera or Safari, but i'm not going to advocate everybody run to the browser I use---Why would i want the scumbags to aim their slime at my browser???? :-)
My firewall and my AV both have scriptblocking so i NEVER have to worry about the usual ad pests as well as the fact i carry spywareblaster and use an alternate browser as my default. If some sites block me because i won't add their ad spyware scum on my computer, that's fine with me. Hasta la vista, baby!! They said goodbye to a customer. What do i care if a few sites block me when I can surf smooth and easy now and get the same info somewhere else that doesn't block me. hehehe For those sites that let me in, i feel guilty, but they should realize if they want me to see their ad, they better put it in SIMPLE TEXT on the side somewhere of the article. I'll pay more attention and respect to that kind of ad than i would to a PUNCH THE MONKEY ad.
As far as videogames, i don't think i mind if they have ads or adtracking as long as it's fast and not a drain on playing the game. you could always press the mute button which is what i do now with overly loud and garish tv ads. if there's an ad every 3 seconds like what was happening a few years ago with the Mountain of ads in the Olympics on tv, i'm not buying the game no matter how good it is.
This doesn't mean i don't see a whole page of advertisements. i still go over to a animal rescue site to click on their page of advertisements as a "donation."
My other exception is Google's advertising. It's always been text based, so it's never been the visual distraction that causes me to want to block it.
So true. One time, I googled some words and it gave me the link that i wanted but i also noticed the same exact link in the highlighted ad boxes on top of the link choices. i was going to click on the regular link when i realized i SHOULD click on the highlighted ad since we want to reward google for its nice format text only ads and not the flashy, roll on your screen nonsense POLLUTION and spyware scum we get from other websites. Anyway, that's what i did and still do. if the link is in the ad link, even if i'm not interested in buying anything, i'll click on the ad link and look around just as i would have done with the regular link.
We used to go to Montgomery Ward's a lot(before it went out of biz) as a dependable place to buy high end necessary items. Then they started to sell refurbished appliances and equipment WITHOUT LABELLING them as such which is ILLEGAL. We tried to buy a VCR from them years ago and the salesman said he would order it and it would take a week for it to get to the store. WTF!! Before, all electronic stuff would ALREADY be in the store. I guess they were in deep financial trouble if they HAD TO ORDER IT FIRST!! We passed on that.
Then later on, we ordered a refrigerator. THE REFRIGERATOR BROKE AFTER LESS THAN A MONTH AND THE MANAGERS AND SALESPEOPLE WOULDN'T DO ANYTHING AND IT WAS HOT SUMMER TIME!! All our food we had recently bought at the supermarket was spoiling. We had to call up and argue FOR DAYS with the Company President just to get them to honor their service warranty!!
I'm beginning to think ICANN or whoever is responsible for internet access should just BAN anyone from these scammer countries or whatever other country they're using to scam on unless they have genuine official business on the internet. This would really reduce the scammers' abilities to scam. And Law enforcement has to be a lot better with heavier penalties.
Education only goes so far. Technology(like ebay's toolbar) only go so far before the scammer evolves.......
when buyers were getting scammed on ebay to wire money for expensive stuff like laptops, ebay people recommended buyers use escrow. Guess what the scammers did? They made fake escrow websites and buyers got scammed again.
when buyers wouldn't trust the escrow sites and wouldn't trust dealing with foreign countries, guess what the scammers did? They now use people who are desperate for jobs in the US as "foils" or "agents" by pretending they're an overseas company that hires the "foils" so they can use their Paypal accounts and have them send $$$ overseas to these scammers. Sometimes they'll just say they'll give them a reward of some kind in items or money if they can use their Paypal accounts. Then, the scammers use their stolen Credit Card numbers to "buy" items off of sellers and send these to the buyers. Guess what happens then? That's right, Police come knocking on the buyers' doors and the foil's door.
Govt officials won't help you out unless the $$$ amount is over the thousands. The scammers' country government are most times just scam accomplices or don't care.
What's all this forcing ME to do? Ditch IE browser for another browser. Firewall & AV on all the time. I no longer store financial/personal info on my computer. I do less business on the anonymous web and especially less on evilbay and would rather do business locally in person. I've pretty much ditched my email. If my banks or anyone need to contact me, they can do so the old fashioned way----->U.S. mail.
Craigslist has ALWAYS had the Google philosophy--Do what's good for the community--Everything you do comes back to you. People helping people. I was shocked too about the 25% sell but knew it couldn't be Craig wanting it. If that were the case, he could have sold out for millions of $$$ and retired in style and luxury during the dot com boom. Instead he's just barely or just comfortably paying the bills for running the website via fees from job ads.
I recommend /. readers read the entire interview (warning, its long, but hey, its Sunday morning...). My faith in (as Craig calls us) nerds is restored. We gotta make a living but we don't have to sell out.
Amen.
Its a long shot to think that eBay could expand to include a highly regional business. My guess is its not likely to happen, but if it does I may take another look at eBay.
i'll never take another look at ebay as long as some scam seller from Romania, Russia, Indonesia or Nigeria can hide behind his computer while ebay does very little to stop him from coming back again & again to scam others AND ebay can trap me with legalese ("you bid so you have to pay") into sending $$ to the scam seller because i pressed the "buy it now" button and "won."
The 25% buy by ebay of craigslist looks like another way ebay is trying to make themselves "smell" better without too much ODOR to gain a better reputation for "safety" with the public.
10 years! i'll wait 20!! vhs was good enough for me. they keep making you pay more to switch from one format to the next. my brother wasn't too lucky--2 years ago he spent over $600, that's right, 600 big ones, for a DVD player as a birthday for my father. and right now it's collecting dust in the closet since the first day he gave it. yeah, people are funny falling over themselves for the newest gadgets. :-)
yeah, it makes so much sense that evilbay, i mean "community-minded" PRETENTIOUS evilbay, dragging along its scam sellers & scam buyers wants a cut of non-corporate-profiteering community-minded craiglist. evilbay auction must be desperate!! hehehehe
I second that! My nephew bought a bunch of used CD's at Amazon. The sellers sent him something else. He reported it to Amazon. Amazon fixed it and the sellers sent the right stuff. And i'm pretty sure Amazon would have given back his money if he lost it with him and Amazon knowing he paid by CC so is disputable with his CC company. You can NEVER do that with ebay. ebay looks the other way "we're just a venue."
And i don't see how buying at ebay is safer than buying at a flea market. At a flea market, you SEE and CAN TOUCH for youself the item. You can't do that on ebay where you have to rely on the honesty of the seller. I've seen 100% positive sellers with lots of feedback DELIBERATELY LIE on ebay, lying even when you email them questions. So that once you pay for the item, it's too late and you've lost your money!! Many sellers on ebay don't use CC's or paypal or escrow.com. So who the hell's gonna protect the buyer if ebay doesn't????
for anybody wanting to see the gruesome insides of ebay.