eBay credibility

[jokach]

I just have to share something that is getting increasingly frustrating with eBay. In beginning to research stuff for the upcoming holidays, I attempted to search for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on ebay, would you believe that out of all the results, more than 3/4 of them are for the 'information' on how I can get the game, but not actually selling the game?

Although its been said a hundred times over, the fact that ebay does not take terms of service violations seriously enough is beginning to push me away from even attempting to shop there, and I'm not sure if anybody else agrees. Even other electronics or game products I have attempted to find on ebay in the last few days have been outnumbered by the number of fraudulant auctions offering information or cheat codes using misleading titles. ALL of these actions are against the terms of service of ebay!

I can't say that every fraudulant auction I came across so far this morning were due to a matrix site advertisement, but many of them were.

For anybody who may just be browsing our site for the first time, be sure when you are searching eBay for the upcoming holidays, read the auction description well, our efforts here to close down matrix auctions is very strong, although ebay sometimes doesn't take our efforts seriously enough to actually do something about it. Its a shame that there are so many people out there willing to rip off innocent consumers, especially around the holidays. They should take those efforts and do something good for society instead of helping to break it down ..........

Ok, my rant is over .....

[weirdid]

I agree with you jokach, just about anything you search for now, brings up page after page of scams, links, and rip-offs, it gets boring trying to find the item you need.

[sisco50]

Can't disagree with what is being said here about eBay but wanted to add a comment. Maybe the situation is that these new auctions are being increased at a rate much higher than eBay can check them out and shut them down. Maybe they are just losing ground against all the people that are disregarding the TOS? Or maybe they are in no hurry to lose all that revenue that is being generated by these auctions? Makes one wonder.

[ycchen]

$$$$ is the right answer.

[mercinary]

Ycchen is right. eBay has two conflicting goals:

#1: Making revenue, keeping the stock price rising, and making the business look good financially

#2: Keeping eBay a safe, consumer-friendly place to do business


I think that if the truely wanted to get rid of scam auctions, they would find a more effective means of operation. I personally have a significant number of ideas of how their processes might be changed to accomplish this (including automated solutions), but I'm not going to go into that here. I have a feeling that the time is coming where eBay is going to have to make some of these changes, or face a consumer revolt (or government action).

-Merc

[MatrixWatch]

In the past 18 months I have had the opportunity to speak with eBay officials, media jounalists, eBay-vigilate groups, and eBay-Watchdog group leaders. I guess that my thoughts on the matter can be summed up in one way: "Mod Chip".

Huh? You ask.. What does a mod chip have to do with this?

For those who are not game-console savvy, mod chips are a way that XboX and PS2 owners bypass the system bios of the console and install other software. It also enables people to do all kinds of things that the game industry doesn't like, such as copy games straight from the DVD onto an expanded hardrive, etc.

Technically, they are not illegal in and of themselves. They are only illegal under most state laws when they are "flashed" with software to perform certain actions.

Now, here is my point. They are VERY difficult to purchase off eBay. In fact, a title search for "xbox mod chip" yields zero results. When and if a modded-out xbox, or a mod chip is offered for sale on eBay, it is quickly taken down.

Why? Because Sony and Microsoft know that if mod chips could be sold and exchanged on eBay, then all kinds of piracy would result. I'm sure that these two mega-huge industries had a very appealing way of getting eBay to monitor these auctions.

But, that is my point... EBay is monitoring these auctions. My observation is that eBay picks and chooses what they want to monitor and they allow certain scams and items to fall by the wayside. A sad result is that the so-called "lesser scams" multiply exponentially to the point where it is difficult to find a legitimate auction in a sea of scams. This was Jokach's observation.

So, what is eBay's response? They have repeatedly quoted to the press that they rely heavily upon the reports submitted by the eBay community. That means groups like ours. However, the detailed-statistics reports issued by our Auction Watchdog teams have shown that this avenue is not being taken as seriously as eBay leads the public to believe.

I spoke to the Office of the President at eBay, Inc. once, and I told the executive that if eBay ignores this problem then it will come back to bite their marketshare later on. Jokach said that he is seriously considering not shopping there anymore. There are TONS of people out there who feel exactly the same way. Sooner or later a young entrepreneut is going to lauch an eBay competitor that offers better security and a safer bidding experience.

It would be like the Mozilla Firefox of the online-auction world.

Many people will begin to flood this safer and smoother alternative and eBay will be unable to position itself to compete after years of neglect. Plus, even their adequate response as a result of competition will only embitter the customers moreso as they see that eBay only gets something done when profits are threatened.

This will happen eventually, and when it does the vigilante groups from all over the internet will sigh out an 'I told you so' and close out their eBay and PayPal accounts for good.

And a good day that will be. :)

[sisco50]

Damn... Once again I can't disagree with the posting here. lol Viable competition would be greeted with open arms. :)

[Dreamer]

There are a few flaws here, unfortunately.

There have been auction sites online before eBay and there are still competitors out there now. But they don't have the success as eBay. I doubt any company will ever be able to step up and offer a serious challenge. There are just too many people that know eBay and that use it. You could offer a site 100x better in everything imaginable way, however, if I want to sell my pokemon collection I'd rather list it on eBay where I know it could be seen by potentially millions.

As my example I'll use operating systems. Windows is flawed. Each version is probably specifically designed to have major bugs so you'll buy the next one. But there are 2 main alternatives. Buy a mac instead of download linux for free. Alot of people design software for linux and makes it available for free. I feel linux is superior to windows in all aspects...but people still buy windows.

The only way to offer a competitor to eBay is to spend 10s of millions of dollars promoting this new site. If they draw in the customers it will work, but if not, they have no choice. So, a competitorwon't work.

As for money issues, I don't think its a money issue that they want to derive revenue from scam auctions. I think 1% of all auctions being a scam is a healthy number. I'd imagine its much lower than that. If my boss came up to me and said he's docking 1% from my paycheck, or one penny for dollar, I'd laugh at him. Who cares? So, thats not an issue either.

Somebody made a good point of reading auctions very carefully this holiday season. If you can avoid shopping eBay thats best. A few years ago an eBay story made the local news of somebody spending $300 on a PS2 when it first came out, or something similiar. Whatever the system was was impossible to find anywhere. But when they got the package it was just for a scanned picture of a PS2. After rereading the ad an argument was made it didn't specifically say a PS2. Let me see if I can find an article on this.


http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=16017

PIERCE COUNTY - "It's basically my only Christmas present."

All Jake Bisenius, who lives near Gig Harbor, wanted for the holiday was a Sony Playstation II. He couldn't afford it until he found a deal.

"I was surfing the Web looking at Ebay and found it. Wow, I can save $50. Free shipping, only $275," said Bisenius.

But instead of a deal on a PS2, all he got was a piece of paper.

"This is what I got for $275," he says holding up a paper with a picture on it. It's a picture of about a hundred of Playstation II's.

Bisenius was shocked to realize he'd bought a picture, not the real thing. He thinks he fell for a scam.

The ad looked legitimate. Then he went back and noticed instead of saying pictured below it only said picture below.

The ad says, "We guarantee the item to be exactly as shown below".

It was. Exactly.

Bisenius tried to contact the sender and heard no response. KOMO 4 News also tried but none of us could get through to the seller, SoCal Auctions based in San Diego.

The ad has been taken off Ebay and the company is investigating. If the company determines that it was fraud, Ebay's insurance will cover up to $175 for each person who was scammed.

After saving and getting his friends and family to pitch in, now Jake is left without a Christmas gift. He does have a message for SoCal: "What goes around comes around. That's about it. I hope your $275 is worth it."


So, thats good advice. Now why doesn't eBay do anything? Well, what can they do? These scumbags don't care if their accounts get canceled. They'll just make another. If you put a gun in the hand of a person who is hell bent on killing somebody or something than they'll do it.

The only way to really do it is to setup a filter like email programs do. Here is a bunch of keywords to search for before an ad goes live. If a keyword is found, the ad is delayed until a human can verify it. But the problem with that is people will find out those keywords and adjust their ads appropriately.

I think if anybody has a great idea on what eBay could do to fix this they should email them. I dont' see a good solution.

[weirdid]

I think that if ebay was serious about removing all the link auctions we report, then they would do it.

On the first day it might take about 3 hours to view and hit the kill button, i'm sure they have a automated mailer, that sends out all the mail to the seller, and all the bidders.

After this, may be an hour a day would be enough to find kill any new reports,
this would even catch the one day auctions.

Scammers would soon give up, if they know there was no chance of getting a sale.

[MatrixWatch]

I think that if ebay was serious about removing all the link auctions we report, then they would do it.


Exactly. That is what I am trying to say as well. eBay is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to scammers. If they don't crack down then scamming wil grow, but if they crack down too hard then the online-bidding process is bound to become more complex. If it becomes too complex then they will not be able to generate the revenue that comes from lots of people using their service with ease.

But, it is inevitable that eBay will need to crack down, and the result will be very similar to the Internet Explorer issue. Because eBay is so large, scammers will choose to target them, and if either the scamming or the scam-proof policiies drive customers crazy then a new market giant is bound to emerge. The new company would likely offer a faster, smoother experience to online bidding.

Remember that eBay is so popular because their service is easy to use, and the transactions are quick and simple. They are not popular because they are eBay. All of that popularity came because of decisions they made, and scammers are a huge threat to the simplicity of eBay, from payment issues to auction descriptions, to legitimate sellers and buyers.

In the meantime, eBay walks a tightrope in the same way that PayPal does, trying all the while to not disappoint too many people who fall in the gray areas within which they set their policies.

It will be very interesting to see how things turn out.

The Auction-Watchdog team here at MatrixWatch.org successfully protected thousands of eBay shoppers, and I hope that we can do the same this year. This time, I hope that eBay recognizes us for it.