5 Jan
2010
5 Jan
'10
11:44 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
...?Ebay
says that they undertook these measures because of fraud and abuse...
?But essentially ebay has
decided that they are only a community of sellers and that buyers are
second class citizens.
My biggest fraud complaint was auctions that smelled very suspiciously
of shill bidding and other seller collusion. What the current scheme
does is hide that so efficiently that it's essentially not possible to
make an accusation of shill bidding stick. The result is a "fraud
free" system since it's impossible to prove fraud. eBay gets to claim
they cleaned things up and gets to collect higher fees as a side
effect (though it's my belief that the bigger benefit is improved PR
claims).
I have essentially stopped bidding on eBay, and in fact have only
bought one thing in two years, from an eBay store with BIN. It's not
worth the aggravation. Since eBay is still doing quite well
financially, they clearly aren't hurting from the changes they've made
over the past few years that screw buyers. I'm done, though.
-ethan