Flashes of Panic

It doesn’t take too much time spent on eBay to realize that the site is riddled with scams and fraudsters. Why else would they have so many links and “safeguards” in place to “protect” their users?

I’m not suggesting that eBay deliberately encourages scams, or that they don’t care about fraud. I am suggesting that eBay has accepted a certain degree of fraud as an unavoidable cost of doing business, and that they don’t really care about their users being defrauded.

For example:

• Check out the feedback for the user whose account was supposedly “hijacked” to bid on our camera. Three positive feedback notes from small purchases, then a wave of negatives and neutrals for expensive electronics. I doubt, frankly, that the account was ever legit in the first place; I think someone started it, made some small purchases to establish a positive reputation, then launched a wave of attempted frauds before discarding the account. There has been no response from the “original” user.

• We re-listed and sold the camera for some $50 less than the next-best legitimate bidder on the original auction bid. eBay refunded the “final value fee” for the fraudulent auction, but I had to pay for listing the camera twice. Total losses due to the scam, on the order of $60. eBay’s not coughing that up, I’m pretty sure.

• eBay feedback to reports of incidents tends to be along the lines of this incident: send a form letter, make the defrauded party jump through hoops to get partial restitution, etc.

• Here’s another story of a serial scammer who was still “in business” on eBay long after local law enforcement had started investigating him for numerous frauds. eBay makes it difficult to leave negative feedback, which keeps innocent users from being smeared, but also discourages victims from speaking up about being scammed, and its hands-off attitude tends to let the criminals off scot-free.

I increasingly think it’s a bad idea to do business with anyone who has less than 99.9% positive feedback, because if 1 in 1,000 users left negative feedback, there are probably ten to fifteen more who just ate their losses rather than jump eBay’s hoops.

I eBay 100% bad? No. Is it a scam magnet? Hell yes. Are most of their buyer protections security theater intended to provide the appearance of safety, rather than any actual protection against criminals? Undoubtedly. Will I avoid it for any transaction likely to go over $200? You bet.

Now Playing: Deacon Blues from A Decade of Steely Dan by Steely Dan

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