Greg, I guess all of your dealings with ebay have gone well and you have not lost money due to their processes or procedures. That is good for you, I on the other hand have not been so lucky. A few dollars here a few there add up. Then to have to work with their systems to recover the money is a real challenge. How many non paying bidders I have run across that just scamed their way using all the loopholes ebay never addresses. I even had physical threats from a buyer because I questioned what was wrong with a $10 beer tray I sold him. Even after I refunded his money (my policy to refund to any unhappy buyer) he continued to harass me, my family and even use the phone to do so. I reported it to ebay, their response was to ignore the person. I finally has to resort to notifying authorities on my own and after nearly a year these threats stopped.
You think I encourage criminal activity. My question to you would be, why would a savvy multi million dollar auction house allow schill bidding in the first place. Are they not capable of electronically shutting this down? BTW, if I was accused of criminal activity for every wish I made "I wish I would have thought of it first" I guess I would get the death penalty in that legal system.
Ray Homiski Elizabeth, NJ
Ray:
So you would encourage criminal activity? Hmmm.... Not wise, atmo.
Let's do a quick reality check: who pays for everything on eBay? The
buyers do. Any
fee that a seller pays to eBay or PayPal is paid from funds that his/her
buyers have
already paid (or will pay in the future) to him/her. Without buyers, eBay
ceases to
exist. In the end, however, EBay only cares about one thing: making ever-more
profits. They only do things like fraud prevention grudgingly, and only to
minimize
bad publicity and keep the wheels of 'progress' (i.e. more profits for
eBay, see
Rule #1) greased.
In fact, the number of buyers on US eBay is slipping, as buyer retention
has become
a problem. That's no wonder, when 99% of the policies on eBay and PayPal
favors
sellers rather than buyers. Amazon.com had more buyers in 12/07 that eBay
did. That
is probably a trend.
Fortunately, beginning in May of this year, eBay will prohibit sellers
from leaving
retaliatory negative feedback for their buyers, so the fear of retaliation
that
stops buyers from posting perhaps 80% of their negative feeback comments
will no
longer exist. However, the several scams that are in place to help sellers
get as
many of their negatives removed as possible will remain, so savvy sellers
will still
be able to whitewash their feedback ratings somewhat, but at least things
will get a
tiny bit more fair on eBay beginning May 2008.
Greg Parker
Ann Arbor, Michigan
États-Unis