Anyone else seeing an increase in fraud on Ebay?

[M A V I C]

I think it may have to do with the economy. A lot of people I know have been having issues with theft. One had wheels stolen from his car, without setting off the alarm of the car nor the locked garage door. They stole his neighbor's car while they were at it. Another guy had his car broken into. A third had his mother's house broken into and robbed.

[-jeffB]

I'm about done with eBay.

I tried to sell a camera for a friend a month or so ago. The buyer used Buy It Now with instant pay via PayPal. The next day, AFTER my friend had dropped the camera off at the shipper, I got email from PayPal saying that the transaction may have been unauthorized, and that I probably shouldn't ship the camera. Within a few hours, I got a notice that the payment had been reversed due to non-delivery (26 hours after the auction closed!), then another notice that the payment had been reinstated and I should go ahead and ship.

We shipped, tracked it to its (confirmed) delivery address in Texas, then got UPS notification that the recipient had MOVED and the shipment had been redirected -- to an address in my own state, less than 100 miles away. I called PayPal, and after some escalation, determined that "Seller Protection" only applies if (a) you use trackable shipping [ok], (b) you ship to a confirmed address [ok], and © it's actually DELIVERED to that confirmed address. If someone at the far end asks for the shipment to be redirected somewhere else, even though you have no control over that redirection, you are SOL. We ended up recalling the shipment and eating something like $60 in shipping and packing fees.

So, I went to leave feedback for this "buyer", and discovered that not only can I not leave negative feedback, I CAN'T EVEN LEAVE NEUTRAL FEEDBACK! The only feedback a seller can leave is positive feedback! I've long had my preferences set to block bidders with negative feedback, but WTF is the point of this if buyers can't GET negative feedback?

I never experienced feedback extortion, so I don't know what drove eBay to adopt its current policy. But as it stands right now, feedback ratings for buyers are a sick joke, and so apparently is "seller protection". I have quite a bit of stuff I'd like to move on eBay, but I'm no longer willing to take the risk.

[MysteryGuest]

C(-)ris wrote:
I don't bother to sell anything worth less than $50 anymore. I have a ton of cables, fans, logic boards, screws, cases, etc. from G4 and G5 towers sitting around because it isn't worth listing them and nobody local has a need. I sent 4 PowerMac G4 MDD cases to recycling this week and a couple iMac G5 cases as well.

Hmmm... I have five words for you. Low. End. Mac. Swap. List.

Minimal hassle and in several years, only two marginally bad transactions.

[lazydays]

I also quit using ebay after being burned by a buyer.

The guy refused to use the listed payment method, went nuclear and left me negative feedback. Since the guy never paid I used ebay's complaint form and noted that the person never paid. Ebay wrote back saying they didn't see a problem and the negative feedback he left for me stayed on my account. Ridiculous.