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eBay Slammed Over Levels of Fraud 522

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.'"
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eBay Slammed Over Levels of Fraud

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  • by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @08:56AM (#14271244) Journal
    "With all the amount of profits that eBay makes, then there is ample scope for additional staff. Frankly, it is totally unsatisfactory, not just for Ben Sherman but for all brand holders. EBay have rejected the accusations, saying that the company has a good relationship with law enforcement officials.
    I was once defrauded of around $1,500 for a laptop on ebay. Hundreds of other people had bought the same laptop from the same "ebay store" and they retailed at around $3,000. I don't know if I did anything stupid because there were 50 other people that also bought the auctions this store had made. In the end, the guy running the operation just turned out to be stupid. He thought he was making money on Toshiba laptops. But he was actually operating deep in the red.

    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 ... with all the money they make, maybe they could carry a little more responsibility?

    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.
    • by Symphony Girl ( 110627 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:04AM (#14271277)
      My own experience is that they avoid doing anything about fraudulent sellers. They make it almost impossible for buyers to turn in complaints and their arbitration option is toothless. So is Square Trade, by the way. If you do manage to thread your way through the maze of links to actually turn in a complaint, it gets ignored or brushed aside. I love ebay for small purchases, but I never bid an amount I'm not willing to lose.
      • by PIBM ( 588930 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:59AM (#14271578) Homepage
        Oh yes there is quite a lot of fraudulent seller. I tried, for about a full month, to get my hands on a 6800GT for a good price, when the 6600 just had been out on the market. At that time I was closely following every auction on those, and I quickly noticed a pattern between a few sellers & buyers. For those sellers, if an unknown price wasn't reached, someone (always the same set of users) were bidding at the last minute, to win it and make sure it would not sell for lower than they intended. There is no reasons real people would have bought at the price they were putting, since it selled less at the retail, and yet they kept doing it every day, 8-12 times a day. (yes, there was many of those) When the price was higher than the retail, that really seemed like real people battling for it, and just not noticing they were paying too much...

        Even the "notes" the buyer were leaving were making no sense at all! I did try to win many auctions, at prices that were "ok" and only one was lost to a real user. I did put a complaint, and kept trying, but they just sent me an automatic reply telling me they could not tell me anything about what will happen, if anything.

        Last I checked, those sames users were still scamming everyone :(
        • by Oliver Wendell Jones ( 158103 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @12:04PM (#14272505)
          Same sort of thing happened to me when I tried to buy a PCMCIA TV tuner/capture card. The auction ended early in the morning and I was the winner at a price of around $50. The same seller had numerous other auctions for the same item, including several Buy-It-Now options at $75. I went ahead and paid using PayPal, since I'm a responsible ebayer, and was surprised several hours to receive a notice to let me know the item was no longer in stock, and it would be so long before they were that they were just going to refund my money - thanks for playing.

          I replied and asked them to immediately cancel all of their other auctions for the same item and they replied and told me that they used an automated software system to handle their auctions and they couldn't cancel their auctions, but they assured me they wouldn't start any new auctions for that item until they were back in stock

          That's been 6 months ago now, and they still list the same item for the same Buy-It-Now price and still start their auctions at ridiculously low prices like $0.99. To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been a day since then that you couldn't buy that item from them at their price.

          I sent an e-mail to ebay about the lack-of-sale, and included all the previous correspondence, and asked them to please cancel all the auctions of that item by that seller and I received a generic "thanks for writing, we'll look into it" e-mail in response.
      • My own experience is that they avoid doing anything about fraudulent sellers.

        That is because the more they do, the more they "sort of" admit that they are - at least partially - responsible for the problem. Ebay would like to be very much like Kazaa and Napster in their arguments of "they're using the software we provide, but we can't be responsible for what they do with it." The more Ebay takes on fraud, the more they put themselves out as the police on the site, and they're not willing to accept that responsibility.

        • by Random_Goblin ( 781985 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:01AM (#14271999)
          Ebay would like to be very much like Kazaa and Napster in their arguments of "they're using the software we provide, but we can't be responsible for what they do with it."


          However unlike Kazaa and the service formerly known as Napster, they charge money for every transaction going on under their noses, thus rather ruining their argument.

          To break out the metaphors;

          If i own a nightclub, and charge people for admittance, and some of those people sell drugs and stolen goods, I have the defence that i didn't know they were doing that sort of thing on my property, they were supposed just to be coming to dance.

          If however I'm taking a payback on every drug deal and dodgy sale, my defence of ignorance is shot to hell!
          • If i own a nightclub, and charge people for admittance, and some of those people sell drugs and stolen goods, I have the defence that i didn't know they were doing that sort of thing on my property, they were supposed just to be coming to dance.

            Actually, it's interesting that you bring up that analogy. In fact, thanks to the 2003 PROTECT Act, club/venue owners in the US can now be held not only financially, but criminally responsible for illegal activity that occurs in their venues, whether or not they
      • by Izago909 ( 637084 ) <tauisgod@g m a i l . com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:26AM (#14272199)
        My own experience is that they avoid doing anything about fraudulent sellers. They make it almost impossible for buyers to turn in complaints and their arbitration option is toothless. So is Square Trade, by the way. If you do manage to thread your way through the maze of links to actually turn in a complaint, it gets ignored or brushed aside. I love ebay for small purchases, but I never bid an amount I'm not willing to lose.
        I recently had the opposite experience. I sold and Xbox 360 with a bunch of games and extra controllers on a 3 day sale. One the day after it ended the buyer rold me that he needed anoter day to transfer the funds to his checking account. The next day he made the payment via pay pal. The very next day he told me that he suddenly moved to a place that had no address, meaning I couldn't ship it to him. I had already recieved payment, my page stated all transactions are final, and I had everything boxed and ready to ship.
        Even if he had really moved to a place with no adddress, I find it very hard to believe that he had no relatives, friends, or a place of business that I could ship it to for him. He was easily able to convince paypal that somehow I had defrauded him. Less that 4 days after the auction ended paypal gave him his money back, and put my account at almost -$900. If buyers can use paypal to change thier mind about a purchase, why can't they use it to get their money back in the case of legitimate fraud?
        • by keraneuology ( 760918 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @11:54AM (#14272423) Journal
          If buyers can use paypal to change thier mind about a purchase, why can't they use it to get their money back in the case of legitimate fraud?

          A better question is: why do you continue to use PayPal? I've had a deep-seated distrust of them ever since the account-freezing issues. Apparently not too many other people cared about the lack of accountability and customer service.

          If you like their business practices then by all means continue to use them. Personally, if PayPal (IMHO illegally) denied me a $900 payment I would never even consider using them again. But that's just me.

      • ...but I never bid an amount I'm not willing to lose.

        You may send all amounts you're willing to lose to my savings account :)
      • by seanvaandering ( 604658 ) <sean@vaandering.gmail@com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @01:32PM (#14273272)
        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.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      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.

      Do you actually think people are less likely to commit frauds after switching websites? I don't think so. I've been frauded on ebay too - for a $350 horn. Being a European ordering from an American private person, I never had a chance of filing a complaint. The international justice system only seems to work for corporations. The closest thing I can do is to go to Small Claims Co
      • by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:11AM (#14271309) Journal
        I should have added that I'm assuming matters like these will be handled better by Google. Or perhaps the seller will need to have a registered credit card with Google in order to place an auction.

        I don't know, there has to be a better way to implement this that protects sellers.

        By the way, there were Europeans involved in the court action against Mr. Hale (the convicted in my case) and they got all their money back too because there were people here in the states representing everyone.

        I'm sorry to hear of your misfortune, I hope everything is resolved somehow for you. If you know anyone in Texas, now would be the time to ask them for a favor.
    • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:09AM (#14271296)
      I had a fun time with an e-bay auction. I won an auction for a collection of hard drives. Nothing listed in the auction said anything more than "used hard drives". Turns out that earlier "winners" received IBM disposed HDs, meaning they were completely useless. A large group of people were defrauded over a period of months. All complaints to Ebay went unanswered. However, being geeks etc, this large group of people started corresponding, bringing together evidence of a systematic mail fraud in action. The parent corporation of this particular company was notified in a chance to make right before legal actions would be taken. (Seems mail fraud above a certain dollar amount gets the fed's attention, as it was across state lines:) So the parent shut down the fraudster, and made good on all purchases.

      The bad part about this supposedly happy ending? The last 5-8 people were notified by this group in time to not pay. I was one of those. I got a "bad rating" from the fraudster, and this is still on my ebay account to this day.

      Ebay not only does not respond to fraud, it does not care about its customers because it doesn't allow corrections of feedback (not that it really matters) under any circumstances. Well, I believe they do now, but guess what - feedback from closed accounts should be dropped. It's not.

      The easy solution is to only use ebay for specific items, and make sure if the $ amount is high (more than $100-$200, get personal contact info and deal with the individual directly. CC's are also useful. Having a phone number really helps, as you can do some due diligence before completing your buy.

      On the whole, this approach has worked for me post that one incident, and the people I've dealt with have been good people overall. Just remember, if it looks too good to be true, it is. Even on Ebay.
    • Look, not to be a jerk, but I probably wouldn't buy a computer online that was selling for half the retail price. I'm sure many would disagree, and tell me that I'm missing out on some good deals.

      I was once defrauded of around $1,500 for a laptop on ebay. Hundreds of other people had bought the same laptop from the same "ebay store" and they retailed at around $3,000. I don't know if I did anything stupid because there were 50 other people that also bought the auctions this store had made

      It may just b

    • The eBay 'venue' (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hlh_nospam ( 178327 ) <instructor@nOsPAm.celtic-fiddler.com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:36AM (#14271826) Homepage Journal
      Disclaimer: I sell stuff on ebay [ebay.com].

      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.com]. 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 [blujay.com], 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 [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).

  • Responsibility (Score:5, Informative)

    by hug_the_penguin ( 933796 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @08:58AM (#14271247) Homepage
    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
    • Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BlewScreen ( 159261 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:07AM (#14271291)
      And if they did more to stop it, you'd be less likely to use their escrow service and they'd lose money...

      I do think it's the consumer's responsibility ultimately, but just pointing out that eBay has incentive to drag their feet.

      I'd be interested to see stats on the number of auctions that close every day vs. the number of auctions that are shut down or that turn out to be fraudulent. It seems, from the news coverage at least, that it's getting worse, but they're constantly getting bigger, so perhaps it's not.

      There's no reason to report a successful, legal, pleasant experience on eBay, but people love to read about how others got ripped off. And those that get ripped off complain louder than those who have not will 'advertise' their non-fraudulent experience...

      -bs

    • Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nurseman ( 161297 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .namesrun.> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:07AM (#14271292) Homepage Journal
      The feedback system is flawed. A friend was caught like this.
      The seller opened a small store, and sold small figurines at low cost for months. His feedback was in the 90's. Then the holidays roll arround, and suddenly he is selling exclusive, hard to find, big ticket items. If you look at his feedback, he was great. Of course, this guy took all the cash and ran.

      My friend lost $1500 for some one of a kind trinket. I would rather pay a few bucks, and be sure of the seller. Only small items for me from now on with Ebay.
    • by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:56AM (#14271951) Homepage
      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.
    • Re:Responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)

      Like all corporations eBay execs are afforded 100% immunity from personal liability regardless of how many people they harm through inaction. They get massive compensation packages regardless of the number of laws they break "in the name of the company".

      Want to fix it? Eliminate immunity protections. If a corporation breaks the law or facilitates fraud and the executives of said corporation knowingly ignored the problem or authorized the illegal actions then said executives should be personally held t

  • by bl00d6789 ( 714958 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:02AM (#14271260)
    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.
    • They probably have a list of business practices like Google does. I'm pretty sure one of eBay's is "be evil."
    • There's a certain benefit to a business to portray themselves as a reputable safe company with which to do business. Once they lose public trust, legitimate buyers and sellers will stop using the site.
    • by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:31AM (#14271409) Homepage
      I second that. The real problem with eBay is that it has no real competitors - there's noone else that you could turn to if you want to buy or sell stuff online really (not counting some special cases like putting used books/CDs on amazon), so eBay can get away with pretty much everything. Considering that most users actually *are* honest, they really don't have to do anything - the fraudsters will still be few and far between even if they do nothing, or at least few and far between enough to not totally ruin eBay's own reputation.

      It's high time for Google Auctions. Remember how webmail quality suddenly rose significantly when GMail was introduced? (Let me just say "2 MB of storage on hotmail"...) The same thing would be true here, too, or at least I hope so: quality would rise and prices would fall when there's competition.

      Remember, kids: capitalism is good, but it only works if there's competition. If there's none, it degenerates into a system where one company extracts all the money they can from everyone by doing pretty much nothing at all.
      • Remember, kids: capitalism is good, but it only works if there's competition. If there's none, it degenerates into a system where one company extracts all the money they can from everyone by doing pretty much nothing at all.

        This leads to the next question, which is "why is there no competition?" Cheap, fraud free online auctions are a hard problem to solve. IMHO the only way is by having as much transparency as possible, e.g. comment system a la slashdot for each auction, for each seller, full transaction
  • by Darth Maul ( 19860 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:04AM (#14271274)

    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).
  • 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".
  • by The I Shing ( 700142 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:04AM (#14271276) Journal
    Mod my comment up or I'll leave you with negative feedback!

    I, for one, welcome our upcoming Google Auction Overlords.
  • by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) * on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:06AM (#14271283)
    Rember our friends priceritephoto.com [priceritephoto.com]? They are a full fledged eBay dealer [ebay.com]. Though not as obvious as most other eBay scams, fraud companies like them are operating on eBay.
  • "eBay blames its account holders for not installing proper security on their home computers and for replying to so-called "phishing" emails."

    Agreed. Users must protect themselves. In the non-cyber world, leaving sensitive information lying about is inexcusable, so in should be in the cyber world. However, eBay should be more aggressive in dealing with these security breaches. I am not suggesting eBay does this out of altruism, but instead for self preservation.
  • eBay don't care! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:07AM (#14271289) Homepage
    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.
    • They try to deal with some pirated stuff, though not very discerningly. When I tried to sell legal copies of some Adobe products my auction was shut down pre-emptively. I got them reinstated after sending them an irate email.
    • I've filed millions of complaints about those guys "subject spamming", which is theoretically against policy, but eBay couldn't care less, because they're making money off each sale.
  • by mbarron ( 673170 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:09AM (#14271297) Homepage
    Buyers have the most damage done to them, but don't be too harsh on the sellers, as a seller myself I have been the target of several scams, mainly involving feedback. I treasure my 100% feedback rating and low life scum take advantage of this by buying something and reporting it as not received.

    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.

    • by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@nOSpam.keirstead.org> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:48AM (#14271506)
      ... 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.

      • I'm a reasonably high volume seller on eBay and I've seen it happen several times, usually with camera or new computer equipment:

        - Buyer claims not to have received item, despite someone having signed for it, threatens to leave negative feedback and chargeback via VISA/MC/PayPal

        - I issue refund

        - Buyer leaves no feedback whatsoever, positive or negative

        - A week later, buyer is selling the precise item on eBay, sometimes even using the photos from my auction that they won in the first place (*grrrr*)

        But that
    • by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:16AM (#14271675) Homepage
      I had some moron give me negative feedback because he couldn't read. I sold a graphics card (Matrox G500 Dual Head.. was a while ago) and described it fully, even down to the model number etched on the motherboard, with a link to the site containing informaiton about how to decode that number. The description also clearly stated that whilst a good 2D card, it was pretty useless for 3D.

      *3 months* after selling, I get a negative feedback saying I'd sent a different item to what was described.. I'm like WTF??? and post as such. This guy never attempted to contact me directly (before or since) so I've no idea what he was smoking when he wrote that. Unfortunately the negative feedback stayed on my record & I lost a couple of items I was buying after that.
    • 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
  • by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:10AM (#14271305) Homepage
    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.

    • by DJCF ( 805487 ) <stormsaber@g m a i l .com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:28AM (#14271396) Homepage Journal
      You make the mistake of assuming people care. Why didn't the free market solve the MS problem -- you know, the one where Windows is crap. MacOS is significantly better, how come 98% (or whatever the statistic is) don't use a mac? (Their data is worse the slightly extra expense.) The answer is because they really don't care at all. Or how about Firefox vs. IE? Firefox is free and miles better than IE, how come no one uses it? Because they dont care.

      When an ebay competitor which is significantly better comes along, sure, we'll all switch. But few others will -- they'll carry on using ebay until they get burnt, because they... dont... care. And eventually some of us will switch back to ebay because of the sheer volume of people using it.

      • Market forces (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:06AM (#14271615) Homepage
        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.
  • by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:11AM (#14271310) Journal

    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.

    • I've got a better suggestion:Don't use eBay

      I haven't used eBay to buy or sell anything, *ever*, and I'm still alive. Can you believe it? Not only am I alive, but I'd consider myself a happy, relatively well-adjusted individual. You should also try it! I've *never* been scammed at all!
    • Don't accept moneyorders, WU, MG or the like - card is king, and PayPal (while evil) is also decent.

      Moneyorders are fine - IF you wait for them to clear before sending out an item and IF you never promise "cash back" on one (that's the big $ scam).

    • Total Crap (Score:2, Insightful)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )
      As someone who does not live in the US, these three ignorant and mis-informed comments piss me off to no end when they affect me on ebay:

      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'

      • The trick with the money order scam is that they clear, but a few weeks later the money order is proved fraudulent (and the money is withdrawn. It was a big scam in dead tree classifieds, as well. Be cautious of money orders drawn on no-name foreign banks (ABN, UBS and the like are no different than BoA or Citi) from areas where paper processing is still done.
  • I have been lucky...I got screwed on one deal for about $20.00. That's it. But when you look at the way eBay operates, on kind of an "honor system" and you have millions using it, you're bound to get dishonest people more and more, and you're bound to get the honest people getting tired of it.
  • Make certain things about accounts operate only through telephone or mail. E.g. once you have sold more than a certain amount through eBay (say, $1000, or 100 transactions, or whatever), then some changes to your account (including new offers, perhaps over a certain value) will result in issuing a mailed note to you so you know something is going on with your account.

  • 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.
  • It may seem like ebay doesn't care, but that could be because policing their network manually would be very expensive, even if they could find cheap enough labor to do it. So the question is, what technologies are out there that could help detect fraud? I imagine if someone could come up with something that would be a great VC opportunity, but obviously it's a very hard problem. You have feedback, but what scammers tend to do is to start new accounts, win a bunch of really small items, get good feedback,
  • Not my experience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chunews ( 924590 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:17AM (#14271337)
    I purchased a car from a dealership in NJ (aka the "Mafia Car" by my coworkers) through eBay last year. I was bidding up against a "Buy it Now" price and, in the last 30 minutes, a new user joined eBay and bid me up over the BiN price by $100.

    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!

  • eBay and PayPal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Peregr1n ( 904456 ) <ian.a.ferguson@gmail.com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:19AM (#14271344) Homepage
    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.
  • by Madcowz ( 904786 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:21AM (#14271358)

    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.

  • Fraud (Score:3, Interesting)

    by certel ( 849946 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:22AM (#14271364) Homepage
    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.
  • ahh ebay politics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Danzigism ( 881294 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:22AM (#14271369)
    I work for a Historical Society based in Delaware.. We currently authenticate autographs, take on consignments, and sell hundreds of items a week on Ebay.. Mostly political, presidential, music and hollywood, and sports related autographs.. We've been a business for over 20 years, and have even auctioned off John F. Kennedy letters to Ross Perot while he had a bid-war with Bill Gates..

    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..

  • by asdfasdfasdfasdf ( 211581 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:25AM (#14271381)
    Last week, I got an officer in Miami to go to a scammer's house who I tracked down who stole $1000 from me using a (surprise) laptop auction. I've been ebaying for 6 years now, and he had over 35 positive feedback, 100%, recent activity.. none of the signs of obvious phish/fraud. (It was through the recent activity/shill feedback that I tracked him down) I had phone contact, etc..


    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.

  • Why just eBay? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Crysalim ( 936188 )
    It isn't just eBay that functions with such negligence of fraudulent activity as long as it's financially beneficial. This kind of thing happens in any free market you will see. Capitalism begs for it, and it even results in the amount of things you can buy and how you can buy them.

    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,

  • by bwian ( 514220 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:28AM (#14271395)
    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 [ebay.co.uk]
  • by Saint37 ( 932002 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:29AM (#14271403)
    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/ [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
  • While we're piling on ebay here, someething should be said about the comedy that is "negative feedback."

    Of course, it works like this: if you leave negative feedback for a scammer, he leaves it for you. Sure, if you're lucky, the scammer will be de-registered and your negative feedback will disappear. However, you have no guarantee of this. Hence, you play it safe and do not leave negative feedback for fraudsters, and everybody loses.

    • 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.
  • And I shudder those few very few instances I'm forced to process a credit card through Paypal which of course is just another tax because credit cards work fine without PayPal.

    You're just asking and waiting to get robbed on eBay. It's just matter of time.
  • I've had over 100 transaction on ebay buying and seeling everything from video games to lawn flamingoes. I once had someone complain that a hard drive was dead on arrival and refunded them the price even though they never sent the item back. And I once received a fake GBA game, though it plays fine and looks exactly like the real thing (the suspicious packaging gave it away). I consider that 2% rate pretty acceptable considering the money I've made through sales and the money I've saved through purchases. T
  • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@ c o m c a s t . net> on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:45AM (#14271483)
    I've dealth with fraud before professionaly in the credit world. I've also deal to a fair level with fraud on ebay. Fraud is normally fairly easy to spot if you know what your looking for. Bottom line is that ebay can and should do a lot more to prevent fraud than they are now. Here are steps ebay can take that would have very minimal cost.

    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.

  • by Bill the Cat ( 19523 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @09:46AM (#14271489)
    ...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.
  • I opened an account many years ago on ebay and I only used it when I had to find a special part or item in a hurry, so I logged in perhaps 2 or 3 times a year. So I attempted to log in to my account at one point and my password had been changed. I looked under my account, and apparently I was running an auction for expensive photography equipment!

    Obviously a fraud, correct?

    Well, I sent email to ebay's fraud department. I heard nothing after 2-3 days. I sent more email. Nothing. I was getting concerned
  • Well the are other options for online auctions-- if Ebay sucks- use something else.

    Like Craigslist-- oh wait.....

  • From our side of the fence, the side where we actually feel the effects of fraud, nothing could happen quick enough to stop it. We are the victims. We are the investigators and policemen.

    They are on the other side of the fence... (funny how the word fence and eBay are used in the same sentence) They have to field and judge and arbitrate for countless amounts of problems. Whether it's a simple mistake or a deliberate deception on the part of a seller OR a buyer.

    As my my personal experiences? I thought I
  • by tcc ( 140386 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:05AM (#14271610) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Imagine... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tsmithnj ( 738472 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:06AM (#14271616)
    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?

  • Is eBay safe? (Score:3, Informative)

    by nmg196 ( 184961 ) * on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:29AM (#14271767)
    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.
  • by path_man ( 610677 ) on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:29AM (#14271776)

    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.

  • Here's My Story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pwthoma ( 187561 ) <pwthoma AT philzy DOT com> on Friday December 16, 2005 @10:52AM (#14271921)
    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.

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