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eBay Battles Power Sellers
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:37 AM
from the something-to-think-about dept.
from the something-to-think-about dept.
DigitalDame2 writes "eBay power sellers, angered by the recent eBay policy changes, have been hitting back the auction site with listing boycotts and now with accusations of fake listings and forum censorship. EBay admitted that a "bug" in its system had accidentally placed listings from eBay-owned shopping.com onto eBay.com late Friday night. A California-based seller's new eBay listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items. "This guy has over 35,000 items. And there is no button for a 'buy it now' and no button for making a bid." As a result, sellers are threatening to take their complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, but eBay is not backing down." Normally I wouldn't really care, but I think this is interesting because eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. Watching how things like this play out is interesting to me because I want to believe that the internet will require everyone to be more responsible or lose. But the real question for me is at what point does total marketplace dominance trump that.
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I'm still lost... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm still lost... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google stock info [google.com]
Ebay has had a major drop in its stock value over the past few months. I believe that, since the actual number of auctions/bidders has dropped, this was an attempt to get more money from those people still doing decent business... Power Sellers.
Seeing as to how stock is back on the rise, it appears to have worked from that standpoint. At least for the time being...
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm still lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
And as pointed out by an Ebay executive when the new system went into place -- if a buyer has bad service from a seller, and then gets hit with retaliatory feedback after leaving an honest message -- that buyer is not coming back. And he's right -- I've become extremely hesitant to buy anything off Ebay after getting hit unfairly by retaliatory feedback. That hurts all sellers if enough people decide to just bag it. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080206-ebays-new-feedback-policy-no-real-feedback.html [arstechnica.com]
And of course, retaliation is no secret: [forbes.com]
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What's your point? (Score:4, Interesting)
* *some* buyers are hyper-critical (it's not new (duh, it said that in the listing))
* *some* buyers abuse the system (I've changed my mind, don't want it any more)
* *some* buyers apparently don't know how to use email to see if the seller can satisfy them
But a seller's ability to leave negative feedback stops NONE of that.
Dishonest buyers don't care about negative feedback. If they get it, they just ditch that account and create a new one. So the ability of the sellers to leave negative feedback serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSE other than to intimidate honest buyers who have a legitimate gripe with the seller.
Some buyers suck. That's true in any marketplace. Part of being a seller in any market place is dealing with buyers.
When was the last time you walked into Wendy's, and they wouldn't sell you a burger because you got negative feedback the last time you bought something at McD's?
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Re:I'm still lost... (Score:5, Interesting)
A better idea would be that a buyer can't leave feedback for a seller until that seller has left feedback on the buyer... Crappy sellers would be forced to clean up their act while buyers can give true feedback without retribution.
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Sellers will get screwed even more by this (Score:4, Interesting)
I once sold an old PC that had been in my family's possession for years. Some jackass decided to be an asshole buyer and came back with "this is missing, that's not working", apparently assuming that I was some kind of clearing house who moves too much stock to know the details about a particular item. I responded by describing exactly that PCs condition as shipped as well as the statement that my family had owned that PC for years, so I knew every detail about it. I never heard back from the guy once he realized that I called his bluff and that I could have easily slammed him with a negative about trying to scam me.
But now I no longer have that protection, thanks to this f**king moronic decision on eBay's part. So what's to protect me from asshole buyers like the idiot who tried to scam me? Ban him from future auctions? Oh, golly gee, that will certainly stop other fraudulent buyers, oh boy oh boy. And if you think that eBay will seriously consider removing genuinely incorrect feedback, you need to stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.
This new policy of theirs is going to do one thing: make eBay a haven for scamming buyers who now know that they have nothing to fear when lying about sellers.
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Re:I'm still lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm still lost... (Score:4, Insightful)
FYI I'm against power sellers. They're impossible to communicate with, they don't know anything about the items they're selling, and they take forever to ship items. If you want exactly what you want and want it fast, you gotta buy it from someone with under 250 feedback. The only thing I can think of that power seller would be pissed about is not being able to leave negative feedback for buyers anymore. But you know what, when I leave negative feedback because one of those idiots shipped me the wrong item 2 weeks later, I don't have to fear retribution anymore. That was the best update out of them all and if power sellers don't like it, too bad!
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Ebay isn't the only player in that area (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ebay isn't the only player in that area (Score:5, Informative)
CL is good if you're trying to sell some big, bulky item like a piece of furniture, which people generally would prefer to buy locally and pick up themselves. Ebay is terrible for things like that. Ebay is where you go for things like electronics and other things which are fairly easily shipped.
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Re:Ebay isn't the only player in that area (Score:5, Interesting)
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Matter of Capital, Profit & Competitiveness (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now eBay's board is having a few analysts go through this list of "power sellers" and derive some nice little numbers. (A) What percentage of income on listings come from these people? (B) What is the approximate dollar value in having those auctions available to our users (probably pretty small)? (C) What's it going to cost us to retroactively fix these erroneous auctions, restore the forums and send out apologies to every eBay user? (D) What are is the probability that the FCC will act on the user's complaints? (E) What's the maximum fine we could receive from the FCC?
Now here's the math, if A + B > C then eBay will probably send out apologies and make a good effort to please these power sellers. However, if D*E < C then I'll bet there's no chance in hell they're taking action on this.
Now look at it from the other side of the issue, the power sellers on eBay. What dollar (or percent) value do you assign using eBay to your sales (probably pretty high considering the exposure they offer you). There are competitors however small, you could go to them but it's going to hurt your sales. So the question now becomes whether or not you've lost enough on these fake auctions and censored forums. The answer is obviously no. A young idealist might blindly stick it to the man and suffer in the name of ethics and against censorship. But the businessman would not.
So what Taco is interested in is whether or not eBay is going to do the moral and ethically correct thing and take action C regardless of price or if the sellers are going to move to another site out of respect for free speech and standing up against shadey listings. The answer is "no" thanks to the effect of symbiotic profit experienced on both sides.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All that being said, EBay understands that powersellers
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Alternatives... (Score:5, Informative)
No restrictions on listings, other than legal things (body parts, slavery), no listing fees unless the item is sold, the costs are fair, and NO SNIPING - true actions. If a bid happens in the last 15 minutes of listing time, it automatically extends to 15 minutes.
Morning LOL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody knows the end date/time and should know how much they're willing to pay. What's unfair or difficult about that?
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I do agree - when I'm buying, I put in what I'm willing to pay and if I win, I win...
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree to a point, that the kind of tools who nickel and dime and ratchet the price up should be allowed to fool around if it amuses them to do so. But the rest of us want to get along with things.
I go to a LOT of real-life auctions, so I know quite a bit about the dynamics of auctions. eBay is a proxy bidding system. An 'extend by 15 minutes' rule sounds like an incredible opportunity for a lot of 'gaming' that is far worse than things the way they are. Hell, nickel and dimers could keep an auction going for hours with such an arrangement. A real-life auctioneer would put a stop to that kind of bs immediately, an automatic extension just changes the rules of the 'gaming' it does not 'fix' anything.
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought my house in an auction that allowed sniping. At 11pm I submitted a bid for a property of around $200k. The other party had no chance to resubmit a bid at that time since the auction was closing 15 minutes after that.
The property itself was appraised at $240k.
I knew that the other party would want to revise their bid if they thought they would lose it. They were trying to benefit from the seller needing to sell fast, but didn't expect someone to jump in at the last minute.
So why is that bad for the seller? Since the auction allowed for my bid sniping, the other party never had a chance to put in a counter-offer. I was prepared to go up to $215k, and, judging by their reaction, they probably would have done the same.
The sniping cost the seller nearly $15k because there was no period to re-evaluate the bids.
(Not that I feel bad, I needed the property fast too since my previous home was washed away in a flood. I was just pointing out that the seller lost out on some $ because sniping was allowed)
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Interesting)
With most eBay auctions, a potential buyer is trying to judge more than just the "top price he/she is willing to pay" for an item in a given listing. 9 times out of 10, you can find numerous listings for a specific item desired. Nobody wants to feel like they paid too much for something, and you develop that overall sense of value largely by searching recently completed or auctions still in progress, for the same item you're bidding on. If, say, you want to buy an nVidia 8800GT video card, and you're personally willing to pay up to $250 for it - should you place a $250 max. bid on the first one you find? Probably so, if it's the only one you see listed. But more likely, a search would return 15 or 20 of them, at least, all with various high bids placed on them. So you might, wisely, modify your strategy then - thinking "Well, an awful lot of them only have high bids in the low $100 range right now. I'd hate to win one for $250, only to see 10 more end tomorrow at under $200 -- so I think I'll just place a $180 or so high bid right now."
Sniping, in this scenario, causes problems because when it becomes "the norm" for the "way to win an auction", all the other bid prices no longer help accurately assess what the market, overall, is willing to pay for an item. As a buyer trying to do the research, you're getting flawed numbers - because most things are woefully underbid until the last 20 seconds or so. Furthermore, since eBay auctions are computerized, sniping has gone computerized too - meaning people buying "auction sniping" software packages and using their automation features will have better results than anyone else. Seems like if eBay is going to allow sniping as "ok" - they should at least provide sniping tools as standard-issue on their web site, to level the playing field.
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:5, Informative)
On the buyers side, it rewards the person with the best timing. On the sellers side, it keeps the price lower that it should be.
We are not talking about 'max bid' entries where two interested folks tell EBay what their max price is and it automatically gives it to the higher of the two at a price just above the loosers price. That is more or less OK by everybody's measure.
We are talking about software run on the clients system (or a proxy system) where the max bids are secret. The packages then try and out-time each other at the very end. In this case, the auction goes not to the person who is willing to pay more, but to the person who manages to slip their bid in at the last second.
Example: Bob and Jane both use EBays max bid option and put in a max bid of $100, but Bob entered his bid first. If they both used ebay's max bid, the auction would go to bob for $100. Simple enough.
Enter the bid software. The auction is listed at $10 starting price. Neither users software mades a move until the last second, slipping in a bid for $11. The first one in wins, and if there is not enough time to put in a counter bid, the selling price is $11. (in reality, the software often puts in a bid 30 seconds or so too soon just in case the clock is off, which gives a chance for 2 or 3 rounds of counter bidding till the time is up).
To the buyer, this is great. They were willing to pay $100 but got it for $11. To the seller this is horrid, they had two buyers willing to pay up to $100. To the looser this is also not optimal, since they would have been happy to pay up to $100.
It no longer becomes an auction, it becomes a lottery. Add in a 5 minute auto-extend and sniping becomes impossible.
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Re:Alternatives... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a lottery, because I put in my max bid and so does the other sniper. Guess who wins? The guys that snipes with the highest max bid. Whether my bid comes in at 6 seconds or 5 seconds or 9 seconds doesn't make much difference unless we both put in the exact same bid.
Sniping is GOOD. It prevents stupid bidding wars with idiots that can't value an item by letting me hide my max bid until the very end. No Ebay fever. It's good for them too since it reduced "Buyer's Remorse" where they figure out after the auction that oops, they paid too much because they got "caught up" in the action.
All that does is force everyone to put in their max bid like they should have done in the first place.
I do put in low bids sometimes to signal my presence to friends. Also it keeps the seller from materially changing the auction details, which is a positive especially if a seller has misspelled anything.
-- John.
Parent
Re:Alternatives... (Score:4, Informative)
I am not sure that your observations are correct. Possible explanations, though, are that there is only one sniper for the item, or if there are multiple snipers, the inferior one is bidding lower than the non-sniper Ebay bidder, and the higher-bidding sniper puts in his bid before the inferior bidder. Either way, the mechanics of how sniping works is fairly simple; it is simply a last-second bid. We know that EBay takes the best bid of everyone's out there. We do not have to speculate that it works some other way.
Yes, I agree sniping does not provide benefits for the seller, because the buyers do not have to display their hands. But it is fair to the seller. Sniping benefits all buyers by keeping prices lower. For me and other snipers, sniping software prevents people from bidding "in response to" my bids. I bid what I am willing to pay when I snipe, and I am simply not showing my hand until the last second. Sniping also prevents having a shill test my bid max by driving up the price artificially. When playing poker, do you want to be the first or last person in a round bidding? I am not a poker expert, but I would certainly guess "last", because you have more information - the other persons' bids.
In any market, there is a price to be paid for showing your hand (your asking or bidding price). Sniping allows a bidder to not show his hand.
Like I said, I would like to see you actually try sniping software, instead of attacking it without using it or knowing how it works. Or, name one sniping piece software or service which acts in the "rounds" fashion you described. I doubt one exists, as it would be an inferior product to one that simply enters a last minute bid. There is no benefit to incrementally bidding using sniping software; it is better to simply let EBay perform that for you.
Parent
eBay has great solutions! (Score:5, Funny)
Solution: Hide the names of the buyers
Problem: Buyers are giving sellers negative feedback even though the exchange was fair and square?
Solution: Don't allow sellers to give retaliatory negative feedback
Problem: Someone's found out about the fact you're a bunch of crooks and has posted all the evidence in a forum?
Solution: Delete the posts and claim it was a bug
Re:eBay has great solutions! (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: Don't allow sellers to give retaliatory negative feedback
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Re:eBay has great solutions! (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is, ebay cannot expect its whole user base to be so diligent, which is why this step is absolutely the right one to take.
I agree that ebay took absolutely the wrong track on the hidden names issue, which is why I'm so surprised they stepped up on this one. I'll believe it when I see it.
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Re:eBay has great solutions! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:eBay has great solutions! (Score:5, Insightful)
The term "retaliatory negative feedback" says it all - it's actually against Ebay's rules. Sellers shouldn't give negative feedback just cause they failed to get something right and got called on it via feedback. The buyer's only obligations are to give correct shipping info, read the full listing and pay the correct amount (on time). If the sellers don't like dealing with difficult buyers, then maybe a new line of work is in order.
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You answered your own question... (Score:3, Insightful)
"I want to believe that the internet will require everyone to be more responsible or lose. But the real question for me is at what point does total marketplace dominance trump that."
"eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. "
Why no solid competitors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why no solid competitors? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why no solid competitors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, Ebay now owns Paypal, which is the only way left to transfer small amounts of money online, and the sites are tied together.
Because of all this, a new auction site can't just start small and build up to being a good competitor to Ebay/Paypal. No one would bother using them because no one else is there. The only way to compete with Ebay is to start BIG, and offer everything Ebay/Paypal offer, but for much lower cost. And even that would be a huge risk, because it's banking on the idea that so many people are pissed at Ebay that they'll try it out.
The only company I can see pulling this off is Google. They have the size and money to make a full-featured auction site and get it mostly right the first time out of the gate, and they already have some sort of payment system which could be adapted I believe to be a real Paypal competitor. They also have a reputation for providing many of their services for free, and their reputation overall is very good, unlike Ebay's (or Microsoft's; if they tried this, it would fail immediately just because of their tainted image).
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There was a boycott? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is a problem for eBay. When they make their insertion fees cheap, everyone spams a billion auctions, drowning out the stuff I want with cruft I don't. The problem is, those items can't really be searched away - they are the item being looked for, technically, just not the one you want.
I believe probalby 95% of people on eBay really don't give a damn, it's just a vocal minority spouting. I certainly didn't see any changes. Then again, I use eBay for finding hard to find stuff. Stuff you can buy in a store, is usually less of a hassle buying it from the store (B&M or online) - rather than eBay. eBay's for all those items one either can't find in stores (sold out/not made anymore/rare items), and the ones complaining are those who sell what everyone else can find at an online store. It's not like eBay even has many deals, so bargain hunting isn't an option.
As for the reasoning behind the changes, well, consider "feedback hostage" is rampant on eBay. The seller won't post feedback until you (the buyer) do. If you post negative feedback (say, item was fraudulent), the seller will do the same to you, even though you fulfilled your obligations (i.e., paid seller in a timely fashion, tried to resolve issues with seller, etc). Most good sellers will leave feedback immediately since the buyer's fulfilled their contractual duty to pay. (Part of the changes also involve the buyer not being able to give feedback for 3 days or so, to prevent the buyer from the lesser idiocy of "I paid seller within hour, item didn't arrive 5 minutes later" crap, or the more common "item did not arrive" when buyer hasn't even paid for it!).
There's no real good solution to this - you could do feedback escrow (buyer and seller can't see feedback until both have submitted it), but that won't protect against buyers doing what I mention.
I don't know if the changes are good or bad, but I'm guessing they came out of all the complaints from buyers who left negative feedback because sellers deserved it, while getting retaliatory feedback in return when they did their end of the deal.
Ebay is NOT an auction house, that is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay is closer to an auction engine, it suplies the tool but the SELLER is the one who is the auctioneer, this is odd because usually in auctions there is a threesome going on. Seller, Buyers and Auctioneer. The auctioneer is the middle man and makes sure BOTH sides keep up their side of the bargain.
The whole thing about negative feedback doesn't happen in real auction houses. Rememeber that deal with the vizors of the La Forge not being the real one worn by the actor? Was it the seller OR christies who took the heat for that? Answer,the auction house, they accepted the item and certified it as being real.
If I buy something at an auction I pay the auction house and THEY hand me the item. E-bay is a far cry from this and people forget this.
Auction houses are an ancient invention, there is a REASON they work the way they do so it is only natural that when ebay tries to change this ancient process problems will occur.
If ebay worked like a normal auction house then there wouldn't be any problems other then the typical buyer beware, but that is try anywhere.
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in the long term... (Score:5, Insightful)
If ebay doesn't want people to be turned off, they need to get this under control.
Yes, I've heard it all, there are jerk buyers as there are sellers, and this will mean some honest sellers absorbing negative feedback they don't deserve. The point to keep in mind, is that this effect will be distributed more or less evenly among sellers, leaving it possible to reliably distinguish the good sellers from the bad. Under the current system, the dishonest sellers benefit the most, because they are the ones willing to use threats and retaliatory feedback to prop up their profile.
I'm still surprised ebay had the foresight to do this.
I am a case study (Score:5, Interesting)
I sold jewelry $15-%50 range. Mainly silver with gemstones, almost no costume. I had a rating of about 9000 and % positive of 99.7. I was netting about 35K a year. My system worked on volume. I would make $0.50 to $1.00 per sale. At that size I ended up sending eBay about $70K a year.
The last time they cahnged their fees they essentially killed my profit margin. Now I could have adjusted at that point and probably survived but at the same time they started using some incredibly poorly written bots. These bots decided I was selling illegale stuff and even though I had exceptional records eBay refused to have a human even look at what the bots were reporting.
After over a year fighting with eBay and holding my last months worth of fees (about 2K) I finally got someone from their collections department to give me some information...I ended up settling the debt for $1600 plus a printout of what the bot was reporting.
To sum up, because eBay did not treat me fairly while at the same time demanding more money from me I have completly left them and they no longer get my $70,000 a year in fees.
While eBay is still huge, Google and other search engines provide independent sellers almost as much visibility so I predict that these sort of heavy handed tactics will only speed eBay's decline from the throne of online reselling services.
The sellers who have a problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)
Get rid of the storefronts too.
Ebay is great when it acts as a garage sale, but that is rare since all the professional sellers turned it into a gigantic strip mall.
The FTC will laugh in the faces hopefully.
Did $6,000 on eBay Dec-Jan, stopped listing Feb (Score:4, Interesting)
Since my feedback just recently went over 1,000, eBay keeps sending me e-mail to jon the PowerSeller program. I told them what they could do with it...
Lawrence Person
Lame Excuse Books
http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/lame.html [rr.com]
the final straw (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with eBay is that it has shifted away from being a private auction site used by people trying to sell their own stuff. The modern eBay is home to thousands of somewhat shifty "Power Sellers" who buy stuff at estate sales, thrift stores, and garage sales. They list the stuff with often misleading descriptions and rip people off. Unfortunately, these junk dealers generate huge profit for eBay (I worked out the total fees related to a transaction once, and they came to about 15%, including PayPal, listing and final value costs).
It's time to split eBay into two sites - Pro and Casual Sellers. Let users quickly and easily filter out the "power sellers" and others who sell hundreds of items a year and focus on the amateur sellers offering their well-kept vintage cameras, video game consoles and so on. While they're at it, they also need to fix their feedback approach once and for all. Disabling negative feedback from sellers hamstrings good people and puts them at the mercy of sometimes irrational and mentally unbalanced buyers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But I agree 100%. If I'm looking for a used, cheap iPod I'll
XKCD has a good eBay policy (Score:3, Funny)
eBay: We don't care, we don't have to! (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider this before you yell (Score:5, Interesting)
The part of the article here that caught my eye was "One forum thread from Friday pointed to a California-based seller known as sdc_prod_434012 with no previous eBay transactions whose new listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items."
Like I said I don't have any specific knowledge of this user or case but lets consider the facts and possibilities here. Its a user with 0 feedback, who has apparently never bought or sold a single item on eBay, despite being registered on the site for almost a year now. Then one morning he suddenly wakes up and in a brilliant display of speed and efficiency posts 35000 items for sale at once. Now then, is it more likely that this is:
a) An ambitious new user who was waiting for just the right moment to post his entire inventory for sale.
b) A scammer who is trying to get as many quick fraudulent buy-it-now transactions as he can before being noticed by the security filters.
I'd be willing to bet the correct answer is b, and that the anti-fraud programs correctly detected this user and disabled his items before people were able to bid on them. If this was a legitimate user then its unfortunate and I'm sure that customer service is apologizing profusely, but in 99 out of 100 cases like this its just your garden variety scammer and the fraud detection programs at eBay worked exactly as they were supposed to.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mine is AB-
Re:HOW WAS YOUR EBAY EXPERIENCE? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
CL is great for stuff like furniture, large industrial tools, rental units, and other things which lots of people in your city might be interested in and aren't easily or cheaply shipped. If you want to sell stuff that's worth less than $100 and easily shipped, Ebay is really the wa
Re:The internet doesn't mean you have to play nice (Score:3, Informative)
Ebay is NOT run by virtuous people; it's run by weasels. To see this, just like at their recent rate increases: they sent out emails to all their members loudly proclaiming their new, lower listing fees (which in reality were only lowered a few percent--BFD), and saying NOTHING about any changes to their final value fees, which make up the bulk of the fees sellers pay. To s