xbox 360 auctions

[jokach]

It appears that with the release of the Xbox 360 nationwide, that the number of fraudulent auctions for an xbox 360 on ebay has suddenly skyrocketed. I just wanted to post a reminder that if you are in the market for the xbox 360 and shopping online for it, to be sure you know what you are buying and who you are buying it from.

My guess is that it will be difficult to actually get one before the christmas holiday, I know that locally there were people camping out just to be the first to get one, and from past experience (the PS2), there usually is not enough 'supply' to meet the 'demand'.

Good luck if you can get one before the holidays! :cool:


jokach

[MatrixWatch]

Jokach,

What new measures (if any) is the MW Auction Watchdog team initiating to protect consumers from fraudulent auctions this December? I remember that last year you guys did a pretty good job with this.

[weirdid]

There are a few members on ebay.uk that look for scams in the high value consumer electronics category, and report.
The real problem is with ebay.uk, it can take 3 days to get a listing removed, and the scam artists list for either 1 or 3 days, so get to make a sale.


-weird

[jokach]

Especially at holiday times, we always make an extended effort to look out for what we call 'escapes' in our automated search and destroy auction process. There is no way to 100% guarantee that we get them all, but the percentage is quite high.

The real problem comes in what weirdid said, that these scam artists setup quick auctions in hopes they won't get shut-down. eBay generally has such a large backlog of fraud reports that they don't get to them for a few days, usually after the auction has closed and the consumer has lost their money. Theres no good way around this, except for education and urging that consumers need to ensure they know what they are buying by reading the FULL description, and if it sounds too good to be true at a certain price, then question it. Thats one feature that eBay users sometimes don't use often enough, and it ends up hurting them in the end.

jokach