posted on October 10, 2003 09:18:32 AM new
I Have been strung along for a while by a buyer in France, sends cash I do not receive and then tells me he is going on holiday for 2 weeks and will settle up at the end of it. Now I have an email from his father saying he has been hospitalized until the end of October in an emergency. Well I went on to see what he had bought and thought I might check it out with one or two English speaking sellers if I could. The alarm bells started ringing when I saw the extent of his purchases, there was a zillion things and it must amount to a few thousand dollars. Now I could be wrong and he might well settle up with everyone (the postage should be worth
having alone)......but....is it about time that e-bay started asking for something up front to protect sellers and prevent potential farces ? I Mean at the end of the day if all the sellers claim back their fee's then of course it is a huge waste of time for e-bay too. They used to ask for a credit card if you tried to register with a hotmail or yahoo address but I am no longer sure that this is the case. Deadbeats are a nuisance but the potential is enormous if someone loses it and goes bananas buying things. How much business will it kill it they start demanding something up front ??
posted on October 10, 2003 03:23:57 PM new
If buyers had to put up a credit card or other ID, then that would kill a lot of shill bidders and ebay's profits would drop. They aren"t stuppid. Ebay is nothing but a scam
posted on October 10, 2003 06:00:20 PM new
dbest, I have often wondered if ebay turns a blind eye to the shill because it ultimatly pumps up their profit? Or maybe they really cannot police it. Last couple of days I think I've seen it more and more.
Newbies sometimes outbid themselves when they dont know what they're doing, right?
But when you see the bid history where a reg buyer bids, then a newbiew bids like three times up over themselves...then the reg comes back, then either a new newbie comes in...or...well theres many different scenarios. But I almost get a feeling on them. Especially when there is identical items listed.
posted on October 10, 2003 09:46:07 PM new
File NPB and FVF and move on. There are better things to worry about like relisting those items and getting them sold for real.
posted on October 11, 2003 06:24:10 AM new
Yes i think shill bidding is a very tremendous problem on ebay. Everyone knows it is there yet ebay tries to avoid it. They have no active action to get rid of shills. There only action is to depend upon the ebay community to police it for them. In many ways ebay has encourge shills to operate making it harder for the community to police the shills by making it harder to see information about others. Shill bidding is good for ebay in that it brings in revenue. One day people will wake up and see that ebay is just one big scam. Yes I support the bidder getting registerd with a credit card.
