Should I scam the scammers?

[Black]

freeradical wrote:
[quote=Black]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
[quote=Black]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
[quote=Black]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
[quote=hal]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
This has been one of my biggest complaints about ebay since I first started buying (around 1998?). They only care about getting their fees, and they eliminated only way to cut them off from income when they bought PayPal. They don't care about individual buyers/sellers. They will only pay attention to a call/email from a large business or an important law enforcement officer with the direct phone number to ebay corporate security office.

Edit: is there a way to get a UPS account so you can generate a tracking number but not have them charge you until it has been picked up?

This is not true at all. When I first spotted this scam, the buyer account had something like 300 + feedback in just a couple of weeks. Now ebay is managing to stop them before they reach 100. Perhaps you forgot about the old days when 100s of scammy apple sales would launch at a time and stayed listed for several hours. You seem to think that it is easy to stop this activity - it is not. Not without a magic wand.
If they really cared, there would be a link to report auctions. Some AI would look at whose account was reporting it, which account was being reported, age of both accounts, and the accuracy rating of the person reporting it. They could ban an auction/account in milliseconds.

They do actually work to try to keep ebay safe - if EVERYONE thought as you do, they would have no biz at all. Every item that catch these guys and cut off the account, ebay losses money.

I don't really believe there is a significant portion of their income is being lost that they can't write off.

And I have a UPS account, but the minimum cost is at least $6 - first class is under $2. UPS never charges until it's delivered - not sure how this might be effective.

Generate a tracking number as soon as the auction ends. Send them the tracking number. Never ship the item until you have payment in an account that you can cut off from ebay access so they can't reverse the charges.
Filiam, you're usually pretty solid on info... but I'm wondering here if you have enough recent experience with eBay to understand how it currently works.
I have not listed anything for sale for over 10 years and I have not logged in to bid on an item in over 18 months. Does it look much different now if you log in? I only see the Report item link that takes me to the log in page. Will an auction be removed immediately, or a bidders account be deactivated, any time a "power user" reports something?
hal's response covers it, for the most part.
Your complaint is that they don't allow unlogged users to hammer the "report" links, and thus they don't care about stopping fraud?
Can you quote where I said that?
Just trying to figure out what your beef is- help me out.
hal and I think eBay's efforts to protect the buyer are pretty good and that there has been increasingly more attention to it over the years.
You seem to think otherwise...?
Just a test of the quoting system here...;-) Quotes coming through loud and clear on this end, Houston.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

[Black]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

Filliam, you don't have a basic understanding of eBay procedures. It takes time for the process to run its course. The timing of the story can not be taken as having had any influence on what the outcome would have been.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Black wrote:
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

Filliam, you don't have a basic understanding of eBay procedures.
That is your opinion, and I see it as an insulting one at that. I have been buying from online stores before "ebay" existed.

The timing of the story can not be taken as having had any influence on what the outcome would have been.

I will take this also as your opinion unless you can point to information that shows ebay typically processes refunds in this time frame. I think he would have gotten a refund in another two or three working days.

[NewtonMP2100]

so you want to be the meat [ between the bread ]......in the SCAMwich.....???

[hal]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

As much as I hate agreeing with Black - he's right. That transaction is a slam dunk, 100% certainty to get money back from ebay. Even though the guy was dumber than a brick. You are assuming that he only got a refund because of publicity - that is not true. It's SOP at ebay.

Anywhere the is money changing hands, you will find crooks - that's a reality of life.

You are assuming that ebay only wants a cut of every transaction and they don't care if people get ripped off. Think about it for a moment... even a monolith like ebay can come crashing down with the right circumstances. They want people to feel safe on ebay and work pretty damned hard to make it so. It is in their best interest to police the site as much as is humanly possible.

I can fill your ear all day long with complaints about ebay, but YOUR complaints are unfounded.

edit:

Filliam H. Muffman wrote: I will take this also as your opinion unless you can point to information that shows ebay typically processes refunds in this time frame. I think he would have gotten a refund in another two or three working days.

This is a classic "not as described" case. It's against the rules to put something that is not a game console (like a picture of a game console) in the game console category. You can't say, "Well, I clearly described it as merely a picture of a box and this idiot bought it anyway" - no... no f'ing way.

It doesn't get any easier than this... Like been through this dozens of times - promise... I know what I'm talking about.

[mrbigstuff]

hal, a question, somewhat related to the discussion that popped up:
what about the bogus auctions that are perpetually listed containing some fragement of truth, such as car wiper blades listed from $4.99 to $6800 and other similar "oops, sorry, musta been a typo" scams? I am seeing more and more of these for nearly everything I search for. Do you have any experience with these, such as RAM listed for some stupid price or other items with which you are familiar?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/14-28-Universal-...ltDomain_0&var=&hash=item4d120d5dc1

[Black]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
[quote=Black]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

Filliam, you don't have a basic understanding of eBay procedures.
That is your opinion, and I see it as an insulting one at that. I have been buying from online stores before "ebay" existed.

The timing of the story can not be taken as having had any influence on what the outcome would have been.

I will take this also as your opinion unless you can point to information that shows ebay typically processes refunds in this time frame. I think he would have gotten a refund in another two or three working days. I have nothing else to say about this, other than this discussion is about how eBay is currently handling things, not 5/10/15 years ago.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

hal wrote:
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
As I noted in the X-bone (Xbox One) thread, people were selling pictures (and empty boxes) of the previous generation of game consoles. When a scam has been going on for at least 8 years I don't see them going out of the way to protect users (both buyers and sellers). Additional note: he didn't get a refund until after the paper ran the story.

As much as I hate agreeing with Black - he's right. That transaction is a slam dunk, 100% certainty to get money back from ebay. Even though the guy was dumber than a brick. You are assuming that he only got a refund because of publicity - that is not true.
Please highlight what you see as the quote where you think I even remotely implied that was the case.

You are assuming that ebay only wants a cut of every transaction and they don't care if people get ripped off. Think about it for a moment... even a monolith like ebay can come crashing down with the right circumstances. They want people to feel safe on ebay and work pretty damned hard to make it so. It is in their best interest to police the site as much as is humanly possible.

I guess I should have posted the extended version that I decided to delete. I believe ebay runs hundreds (thousands?) of calculations on an hourly basis to monitor how much fraud is impacting their income and reputation. Then they throw a microscopic fraction of their income at the problem until the equations balance out again.

If the X-bone picture auction was so obviously a fraud, why was it allowed to complete? Craigslist (which ebay partly owns) frequently pulls fraud posts so fast that most of the time I never see the linked 'can you believe this CL?' post unless I click on them within few minutes.