eBay Fraud Scams exposed

In the article eBay: pro-choice, but only when it suits the writer brought up an interesting point when he said:

“… and certainly hasn’t done much to neutralise the increasing toxicity of the eBay brand.

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!, I thought. eBay Brand is becoming increasingly toxic. What caused this? Major Media finally noticed and begun publishing news of too many years with too many complaints by eBay customers who were ripped off, cheated, scammed and simply ignored by eBay management.

Then I found another article by the same Author: eBay trashed its brand for sake of profits he wrote earlier.

Randy Smythe published this Article: eBay death of thousand cuts in February 2008
warning about management’s questionable decisions and changing marketplace conditions.

eBay’s managemen IS aware they are losing marketshare, as eBay’s spokesman Griff mentioned just a few days ago at eBay Live! 2008:

“
Griff: We had to make these changes because, without buyers, there will be no eBay in two years.

“

But unfortunately it appears that solutions offered by eBay top brass are still in the spirit of money grabbing, uncompetitive, monopolistic strategy which permiates everything eBay has done for the past 5 years. Thus eBay continues to be perceived as a marketplace full of fakes, cheats, scammers, stolen goods headed by the type of management who will close their eyes to the crimes perpetrated on their website (since they derive revenues from such crimes) till they get sued out of millions and forced by courts to make the venue safer.

Just before I completed publishing this, another news source appeared with the same observation: Sydney Morning Herald published just one hour ago: eBay pays the price for PayPal debacle

It’s hard to imagine anyone doing more damage to eBay’s reputation than the auction giant has done to itself over the past few months.

Finally bowing to public (and potential legal) pressure, eBay last week announced it has scrapped plans to force its members onto the PayPal payment system, which it owns, by excluding all other payment options except cash on delivery.

Everyone from the Reserve Bank to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission could see it was anti-competitive and monopolistic. EBay insisted it was for the protection of the buyers and sellers. My only surprise was that it could maintain this public stance with a straight face.

Update: 7/12/2008 Here is a link to eBay Brand discussion from 2005. So three years later time has shown that many of the industry experts were right three years ago.

As predicted, eBay’s stance of ‘just a venue’ bringing buyers and sellers together had no leg to stand on in European courts yesterday. Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Givenchy won their lawsuit against eBay and a hefty US $63,000,000 fine will perhaps make those at eBay helm think about ignoring the counterfeit problem across eBay sites.

The case against eBay in a commercial court in Paris was brought jointly by six brands belonging to the LVMH group.

Louis Vuitton Malletier, the group’s handbag and luggage section, and clothing brand Christian Dior Couture accused eBay of “negligence” in allowing illegal copies of their goods to be sold in online auctions.

Four perfume brands - Dior, Guerlain, Kenzo and Givenchy - sued for what they called “illicit sales” of their products.

They alleged that even auctions involving their legitimate perfumes were illegal, because only specialist dealers were permitted to sell them.

The court barred eBay from selling the four perfumes in future

According to the judgement, eBay must pay 19.28m Euros in damages to Luis Vuitton Malletier, 17.3m to Christian Dior Couture and 3.25m to the perfume brands.

The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris says the ruling is seen as a landmark, because it could oblige eBay to rethink its business model.

In the traditional tone spin and deny, eBay spokesman defended eBay platform by saying:

“If counterfeits appear on our sites, we take them down swiftly, but today’s ruling is not about our fight against counterfeit. ”

( WHOAAA! BS - eBay does not take fakes down SWIFTLY! As a matter of fact attorneys involved in eBay VERO program continuously complain and document cases where they reported fakes yet eBay refuses to take them down… I mean why would eBay be reluctant to do so? Simple: every sale = percentage of it goes to eBay pocket.)

eBay spokesperson further spins eBay’s position on this ruling:

“Today’s ruling is about an attempt by LVMH to protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice and the livelihood of law-abiding sellers that eBay empowers everyday. “

(GEEEZ! Now eBay talks about “uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer” HA HA HA HA … Tell me another one! Pot calling a kettle black. Just as we speak eBay is trying to remove PayPal competitors from eBay Australia site being told by the Australian Competition Watchdog Agency this is illegal, preventing Google Checkout from competing on eBay properties, issuing a new rule eBay sellers cannot advertise their own web page on eBay ABOUT ME pages…. the list goes on and on!… how is that for uncompetitive commerce practices? Here is an awesome article just published linking these two issues together: eBay: pro-choice, but only when it suits and some quotes from this article:

” eBay is screaming blue murder over being banned from selling Louis Vuitton goods by a French court… meanwhile it is pushing on with banning all payment methods except PayPal.”

“While eBay has reluctantly backed down from imposing its PayPal-and-nothing-else policy after a strict talking to from the ACCC, it hasn’t officially abandoned the policy. A public meeting in Sydney to discuss issues with the ACCC doesn’t seem to have advanced the cause much, and certainly hasn’t done much to neutralise the increasing toxicity of the eBay brand.“

I suppose I am not the only one making the same connection.)

The court barred eBay from running ads for the perfume and cosmetic brands or face a fine of $79,000 per day.

Heather McDonald, partner at law firm Baker Hostetler, said: “eBay has policies and procedures in place where they will intervene in an action between a buyer and seller if there’s a problem, and they profit directly on the basis of every item that is sold on their Web site.

“This gives them an affirmative obligation to take steps to make sure that illegal goods aren’t sold, and they certainly have the ability to do that.

“They have been able to make sure that you can’t buy a handgun and they have been able to make sure that you cannot buy pornography or prescription narcotics or other medicines on eBay.

“They have the ability to do this, they have just chosen not do and to rest the entire burden of policing eBay on the shoulders of the trademark and copyright holders whose rights are being infringed here.”
Sources:
BBC News
CNN News

The Tiffany lawsuit is next in line…I doubt eBay will win that one….
This is an article from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/technology/29ebay.html
Highlights below:
“Company officials say they do everything they can to stop fraud. The company says only a minute share of the items being sold at any given time — 6,000 or so — are fraudulent. But that estimate reflects only cases that are determined by eBay to be confirmed cases of fraud, like when an item is never delivered.”

“The Tiffany lawsuit, in addition to accusing eBay of facilitating counterfeiting, also contends that it “charges hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees” for counterfeit sales.

In 2004, Tiffany secretly purchased about 200 items from eBay in its investigation of how the company was dealing with the thousands of pieces of counterfeit Tiffany jewelry. The jeweler found that three out of four pieces were fakes.”

“The women say that by watching the listings they have uncovered a ring of a half-dozen or so counterfeiters, most of them living in Rhode Island within a few miles of one other. They say the sellers supply one another with fake jewelry, conceal the fact that they are buying from one another to boost their seller status, and regularly dole out positive feedback to each other to fool potential buyers.”

This just skims the surface. Everything from handbangs, makeup, perfume, autographs, software, movies, music, iPods, etc. are fake. Today, the consumer assumes that the item is fake until proven authentic.

You can fool some people all the time and you can fool all people some time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. eBay stock is reflecting the opinions of shareholders. As usual eBay is underperforming Nasdaq, EBAY shares lost 17.66% in June, compared to Nasdaq loss of 13.55%… so this bad economy stock market losses argument is out the window as well.

Feel free to post your opinion on the one of the most frequented eBay stock forums here:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/EBAY

Update 7/11/2008 eBay denied stay in LVMH case

The French Court of Appeals today denied eBay’s (EBAY) petition to stay an injunction issued June 30 by a Parisian court that requires eBay to halt all sales of four LVMH (LVMUY) perfumes over any site worldwide that is accessible from France, according to an eBay spokesperson.

An eBay spokesman says the company “will comply as technically and humanly possible” with the injunction while it continues to pursue its appeal of the ruling.

In a statement, LVMH says that today’s denial of the stay “confirms the seriousness of the faults committed by eBay’s sites . . . and confirms the significance of the legal precedent set by the Paris Commercial Court’s Judgment on June 30, 2008.”

The perfumes brands affected are Kenzo, Guerlain, Christian Dior, and Givenchy.

The lower court’s order bans not just sales of counterfeits, but sales of genuine bottles of these perfumes, because LVMH chooses to limit sales of these products to exclusive licensed distributors, and it does not permit its licensed distributors to sell over eBay.

Thus, the order bans so-called graymarket sales — sales of genuine products through unauthorized channels — which are not considered illegal in the United States, but are in France. According to lawyers for both sides, the injunction even forbids individuals from reselling genuine LVMH products that they received as gifts.

The injunction apparently takes effect immediately, and violations will be punishable by daily fines of 50,000 euros (about $80,000).

Here is a notice eBay has placed on its French site about today’s ruling.

There were times not so long ago that any time there were some negative news about eBay, the eBay PR department would issue some positive news fluff PR releases and effectively counter the negative news with positive.

Lately, there are so many negative news articles in just about all major media that it is simply impossible for eBay PR to cover up all that negative publicity.

As eBay gets negative billing on Major media, as opposed to few independent blogs, millions of readers become will suddenly have confirmation of their own “hunch” that ‘there is something rotten in the state of eBay’.

• Forbes : Reserve Not Met, Gurus Dump eBay advising investors to dump EBAY shares 02.25.08
• Forbes on eBay losing counterfeit lawsuit to Hermès in France 06-09-2008, summarizing other ongoing lawsuits by major design houses against eBay.

• Business Week Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed on 6-3-2008: As consumers opt for fixed-price purchases, what happens to the company that perfected the art of online bidding—and the scores of e-auctioneers?
• Business Week eBay Auctions: Going, Going… on 6-19-2008 :
  The thrill of the hunt is fading for buyers, and longtime auctioneers aren’t happy with higher fees

• 
  Sunday Times UK Edition on 6-22-2008 : eBay’s small sellers rebel. This year’s conference took place in Chicago and was the most controversial in the seven-year history of eBay Live. The company had been expecting 10,000 people. It looked like half that number had turned up and the exhibitors’ hall seemed to have been reshuffled to hide the gaps.

• Australian News.Com.Au : My way or the highway, says eBay on 6-18-2008 : EBAY Australia has fired off a strongly worded letter to its 5 million customers, warning that failure to comply with its new PayPal ruling will result in an immediate removal of product listings. This is the strongest sign yet that nothing will stop plans to make PayPal, an eBay subsidiary, the only electronic payment mechanism available on the auction website. EBay’s directive comes despite a preliminary ruling last week by the competition watchdog that restricting transactions to PayPal would be anti-competitive.
• 
  NY Times EBay Tries to Buy a Little More Love From Sellers on 6-20-2008 : The key problem with eBay is that the value of what it offers has not kept up with the price it charges sellers. Between the fees to list items on eBay — essentially advertising — and the PayPal transaction fees, eBay often charges about 13 percent of each transaction. Sellers can pay a tad more, about 15 percent, to sell items through Amazon.com’s Marketplace service, where they get a little more protection against fraud and a site that arguably offers a better experience for their buyers. Or they can set up their own Web site and buy advertising and transaction services a la carte — an ever-more-effective option as people increasingly shop through search engines. These days, many consumers associate eBay with fraud and scams as much as they did with unique items and bargains a few years ago.

• 
  Wall Street Journal EBay Angers Sellers, Pleases Buyers on 6-24-2008 : EBay has operated a feedback system that let buyers rate their experience with sellers and vice versa. The company has now shifted to a system under which only buyers rate sellers. The sellers say that leaves them open to forms of blackmail and extortion by buyers, such as threatening to leave negative ratings if sellers won’t make such concessions as giving partial refunds to buyers who contend they pay too much.

• Wall Street Journal EBay Gets Little Love from Software Makers on 5-22-2008 : Software & Information Industry Association says many of those programs are pirated, and it hopes to publicly shame the e-commerce giant into cooperating with the software industry’s anti-piracy crusade. The software-industry trade group criticized eBay for being “totally non-responsive” to its efforts to eliminate fake or copied software from the auction site, says Keith Kupferschmid, the head of intellectual property at SIIA.

Check out the comments on the above articles. There are thousands of unsatisfied eBay sellers and buyers reacting to recent eBay changes.

eBay shares fell from $30.38 to $28.17 in past 30 days. Yahoo finance forum for EBAY stock is flooded with unhappy EBAY sellers and buyers who resourced to account for their negative experiences with eBay and PayPal there as more and more eBayers realize that eBay will not listen to any other voice of reason but it’s Shareholders and financial bloggers are also noticing the trend: Here is a lates article eBay Falls from Grace from Yahoo Tech Ticker Blog

The reports from eBay LIVE! are quite interesting.

First this YouTube video shows a ghost town in the conference room that should be full of eBay Power Sellers (Note: eBay does not allow video taping eBay live sessions, now you know why)

Then AuctionBytes transcripts some of the eBay LIVE! Q and A sessions,

Oooooops Griff, don’t you wish you kept your mouth shut? Remember eBay is all bunnies, daisies and lollypops!

where eBay spokesman Griff declares:

Griff: We had to make these changes because, without buyers, there will be no eBay in two years.

“Bullshit!” someone says.

“No bullshit,” he responds; “absolutely true. The rate of decline in the growth of buyers…it was ripe for buyers going other places, and if the momentum starts, eBay is over.“

EBAY shares opened at 28.85 and are down over 3% to
Real-time: 28.24 Down 0.93(3.19%) 3:21PM ET as I write this post today.

Online auction giant eBay was convicted Wednesday of selling counterfeit goods and ordered to pay 20,000 euros (30,000 dollars) in damages to French luxury group Hermes, Hermes’ lawyer said.

eBay was convicted on basis of these arguments by Hermes’ attorneys:

• eBay was more than a mere host for the counterfeit items.
• eBay is an active player in the transaction because not only does it offer a number of services to improve the sale, but when it does not work well enough or fast enough, they intervene with the client.
• They are perfectly informed of the transactions since they take a percentage cut.

This appears to be a landmark case since for the first time, eBay was found guilty of complicity in aiding in sales of counterfeit goods and eBay’s usual argument “We are just a venue” was thrown out of the window.

It is perfectly possible that Hermes sought such a low punitive damages so it would be easy
to win this lawsuit and then this ruling can be used as a precedent ruling in other cases pending vs. EBAY.

Luxury fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Dior Couture have also taken legal action against eBay before the Paris commercial court, respectively seeking 20 million and 17 million euros in damages.

Both brands accuse eBay of complicity in the sale of counterfeit goods by allowing buyers and sellers to transact without imposing any controls.

Also in France, the auction industry took legal action against the online giant last December, accusing it of encouraging trade in pirated and stolen goods.

And in a potentially major case, the cosmetics giant L’Oreal last September launched legal action against eBay in five European countries including France, over the sale of bottles of counterfeit perfume.

It’s good to see that European courts are taking tough stance on eBay’s lax approach to crime on their site. eBay consistently denies there are any serious problems with fakes, fraud, scams, hijackings, account security breaches, etc. on it’s site…. while we and other eBay security watchdogs prove this otherwise.

It’s a shame eBay is not interested in cleaning up it’s site and prefers hiding the massive amount of fraud and scams, so trademark owners have to resort to suing eBay. We have pointed out many times that eBay is not genuinely interested in eliminating sales of fake goods on it’s site because eBay is too happy to take it’s commission on whatever is sold on eBay, be it counterfeit, stolen or simply non-existing merchandise.

eBay Shares lost 5.81% down from $31.58 on April 9, 2008 date of Hermes lawsuit initiation, EBAY shares closed at $29.28 on May 30th.

I had to bring that lipstick on a pig picture in again. eBay has just been exposed trying to hide / delete / censor the ugly fallout from it’s new feeback policy.

eBay is full of scammers. eBay has been full of scammers. eBay is a scammer paradise. eBay tries their damnest to deny this and hide the truth about scams on it’s own site, instead of working to eliminate those scams.

In the traditional spirit of trying to hide the scams and scam artists on eBay site, misleading unsuspecting users to that false feeling of eBay being safe, once again, eBay deleted evidence of the new eBay feedback policy changes being immediately adopted by eBay scammers to abuse eBay members.

While eBay focuses it’s efforts on covering up scams on eBay and PayPal sites EBAY shares dropped 2.33% in a single day down to $29.31 by close of market June 2, 2008.

If eBay censors YOU on eBay message Boards, I recommend you take a look at the Yahoo Message FORUM for eBAY stock, perhaps eBay censors can silence you on eBay forums, but you can still present your story to eBAY shareholders, so they are not kept in dark.
visit eBay FINANCE FORUM ON YAHOO We know eBay does not listen to it’s customers, BUT eBay does listen to it’s shareholders.

So what is this all about? Stay with me for a minute.

eBay feedback changes: eBay no longer allows eBay sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers. eBay sellers are screaming bloody murder because they know eBay is full of con artists or nutso buyers who will abuse this and try to extort financial gain from the sellers threatening unjustified negative feedback, leaving just plain crazy malicious eBay feedback, destroying business reputations on a whim.

Yesterday AuctionBytes brought published article on eBay’s new feedback policy being abused by scam artist to extort money from eBay sellers. A link to the eBay seller discussion forum is provided from the AuctionBytes article.

Sure enough, eBay deleted the whole discussion. If you try to reach the link pointed to by AuctionBytes Article Sopranos Meets eBay in Feedback Extortion Scheme
The other case involves a feedback extortion ring that looks like an eBay version of the Sopranos. An eBay seller posting on the eBay discussion boards published correspondence he said he received from the winner of one of his auctions. The buyer reportedly said he and four other eBay users “are in the business of selling Positive Feedbacks to eBay Sellers for $20 each, totaling $100 for 5 Positive Feedbacks. If you purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks for $100, you not only get to sell your items, you also receive 5 Positive Feedbacks. As you well know, Feedback is EVERYTHING to an eBay seller on whether they are successful or not. I’m sure that you want to remain successful in your eBay business. Plus, along with the 5 Positive Feedbacks, we will also Guarantee Never to contact you again and we take you off of our list.”

This article links to:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000711130&tstart=0&mod=1212267983950 and if you click on that link…. YOU GUESSED IT! IT WAS DELETED BY EBAY
Instead of that eBay discussion, you will see a message:
This discussion thread has been removed for one of the following reasons:
-the initial post in the thread was in violation of our Board Usage Policy.
-the member that started the thread has requested that it be removed.
-the thread expired due to inactivity

eBay routinely censors “uncomfortable” truths from it’s forums. Thus we even have a specific section here, ebay censorship, dedicated to what never existed on eBay… or at least what eBay claims never existed or was removed by a glitch, mistake or an oooopsie!

Now let’s see, we know the member did not ask for their message board thread to be removed. So that’s out. Next: we could not find anything in the initial post to be against eBay Board Usage Policy - and the thread certainly did not expire due to inactivity… the comments kept pouring in, there were over 400 when eBay censor decided to pull the plug. So what was it?

Again, it must be accidental, as the current eBay spokesperson put it describing previous eBay Discussion Board deletions:

…suggested that forum posts critical of eBay’s policies had been deleted. EBay denied that any forum deletions were intentional. If any posts were taken down “it was accidental,” the spokesman said. “We’re not afraid of hearing from our community and allowing them to post and discuss things and be angry on our boards”

Here is a page one of the DELETED EBAY DISCUSSION, certainly no rule breaking there, IT’S JUST YOUR USUAL COVER UP BY EBAY, TRYING TO HIDE SCAMS AND PROTECT SCAM ARTISTS ON IT’S SITE:

Discussion Post a reply | Print
Sellers, I just got the following email:
in**anaftw (9 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:01 PDT
Listen very carefully. I am the winner of this item. I have 4 other eBay Users in place either bidding on or have won items from you plus myself totaling 5. We are prepared to leave you 5 Positive Feedbacks or 5 Negative Feedbacks depending on your actions. In a nutshell, we are in the business of selling Positive Feedbacks to eBay Sellers for $20 each, totaling $100 for 5 Positive Feedbacks. If you purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks for $100, you not only get to sell your items, you also receive 5 Positive Feedbacks. As you well know, Feedback is EVERYTHING to an eBay seller on whether they are successful or not. I’m sure that you want to remain successful in your eBay business. Plus, along with the 5 Positive Feedbacks, we will also Guarantee Never to contact you again and we take you off of our list. You’ll even get a receipt for your purchase. Now, here’s the important part. If you refuse to purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks, we will leave you 5 Negative Feedbacks for starters. We have 100’s & 100’s of eBay Users in place that we can use to leave feedbacks. In fact, we have enough to consistently leave you Negative Feedbacks for months resulting in you having to shut down your business. The absolute worst thing that you can do at this point is to try and contact eBay at any time about this or refuse to cooperate; we Will start leaving you Negative Feedbacks and shut your business down. Make no mistake, we’ve been doing this for years and have the power & resources to continually leave you Negative Feedbacks resulting in the closing of your business. Think about this, if you try to report us to eBay and they try and suspend our account or something like that, it will not stop us whatsoever. Remember, I said we have 100’s if not 1,000’s of eBay Users in place that we can use to leave you Negative Feedbacks over & over again until you are forced to shut your business down that you worked so hard to build up. Even if eBay were to keep suspending our user accounts, we have plenty more that we can use to keep leaving you Negative Feedbacks and there’s No way that eBay can keep up and stop us. They have tried & failed miserably. They also know about what we do. So the best and smartest thing that you can do is protect your business and just purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks from us. That way, it’s done and over with and you can successfully continue to run your business without ever hearing from us again. We will give you up to 72 hours from now, to reply. The sooner, the better of course. Just send us an email stating that you want to purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks from us and let us know your main email that you use so we can contact you. If we don’t hear from you by the end of the 72 hours, we will assume that you are refusing to cooperate and we will start leaving you Negative Feedbacks. So don’t do anything stupid. The smartest thing that you can do is take this seriously, we know what we’re doing. After we hear your reply to this email, we will contact you with further instructions.

The buyer is in fact the person who won my auction.

So… what would you do?
Previous 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 … 11 Next See last post
421 replies Date posted Reply #

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tr**arn (44 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:03 PDT 1 of 421
Report the email and send it to Ebay for FB extortion.
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19**jenn (15 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:03 PDT 2 of 421
Did this come through “my messages?” Yikes! I’d forward it to ebay.
Folks, hang onto your dashboards.
Here comes another speedbump!
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tr**arn (44 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:03 PDT 3 of 421
What is the buyer’s ID so we can block them?
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in**anaftw (9 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:04 PDT 4 of 421
A little more about me and the auction:
Sold for just over $100
I used featured plus (will I get that $9.95 back?)
I am a lowly bronze power seller with sales just under $2,000/month, so nothing that outstanding, but it’s a good chunk of my income.

The buyer has 3 feedback, all over 1 year old and from NARUs.
The name and email address that it came from match the name and email on the account that won the auction, so this doesn’t seem to be a hidden scam from someone who isn’t an ebay user.
I currently have 100% positive and a little over 500 total feedback in the past year.
I’ve been told to call PS support on Monday about this and have forwarded the email to ebay.
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ch**t49 (91 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:06 PDT 5 of 421
so you have thier address? drive to thier house and burn it to the ground
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ci**girlhardware (378 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:06 PDT 6 of 421
This sounds like it might be criminal.
http://www.ic3.gov/
from the site:
“The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).”
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pl**sedtameetcha (12 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:07 PDT 7 of 421
Scary.
LR
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lo**postid (0 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:14 PDT 8 of 421
sounds like a “business protection” fee to me LOL.

I would love to get this email!
Have it tracked to the hometown, and have them arested for extortion.
Sure, the cops don’t care about feedback, but:
The absolute worst thing that you can do at this point is to try and contact eBay at any time about this or refuse to cooperate; we Will start leaving you Negative Feedbacks and shut your business down. Make no mistake, we’ve been doing this for years and have the power & resources to continually leave you Negative Feedbacks resulting in the closing of your business.
That is a personal threat! Notice they don’t specify what “business”, it could be an in home business or in town. This is a personal threat, and should be treated as such.
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:19 PDT 9 of 421
I would go to the media immediately, forget ebay, they’re slower than molasses in January in Alaska.
Print it out with full headers, a copy of the auction, a copy of the bidding history of that auction and all other pertinent paper trail and go to your local tv and newspapers with it.
I would also send it to the State AG’s office in the buyer’s state with a cover letter explaining factually (no emotion) how this came about.
Don’t let ebay bury this one.
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mo**erof3wonderfulkids (0 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:19 PDT 10 of 421
Wow
He won your auction and instead of paying you for the widget he bought he wants YOU to pay him $100 to get 5 Positives? That means he is ready to bid on 4 more of your auctions?
BLOCK HIM.
Then report him to Ebay…and pull contact information. It’s probably not valid and that is one of the reasons you can get negs removed.
————————-
I’m offically on Strike-No listing and no buying until the Feedback Policy is Null and Void.
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pu**e*couture (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:20 PDT 11 of 421
It was only a matter of time………..
And eBay claims it was “worried about SECOND CHANCE OFFERS”
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:21 PDT 12 of 421
purse, don’t raise my blood pressure SCO scams my behind!
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tu**eyjackson (324 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:23 PDT 13 of 421
We’ll see if the system works. If eBay does what they say they’ll do, this nut is out of luck.
As to the fee credit for featured plus, yes, as long as this was not a multiple item listing and you successfully file the UID.
I wouldn’t mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.
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wi**ysgrandma (2341 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:23 PDT 14 of 421
Check your e-mail
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pu**e*couture (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:24 PDT 15 of 421
Seriously, I get chills……………..thinking about SCO “fraud” claims by eBay
I swear, I have bought AT LEAST 900-1,000 widgets *PER YEAR* on eBay, and have NEVER received a fraudulent SCO.
Can you say fraudulent FRAUD?
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:24 PDT 16 of 421
who are the other 4 referred to?
Come on, this is the system ebay created, let ebay handle this publicly and address how they will stop this nonsense now. Not one seller at a time.
It is extortion and it’s a chargeable offense.
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co**ie10 (11166 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:25 PDT 17 of 421
I would go to the media immediately, forget ebay, they’re slower than molasses in January in Alaska.
That’s probably the dumbest thing you’ve said on this board.
OP - you HAVE to report it to Ebay. They are the only people who can shut down this looney.
By all means, send it to the media as well, but Ebay must be your first port of call.
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ww**88 (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:25 PDT 18 of 421
You need to report this to eBay as extortion. Pull the buyer’s contact info (email and phone) and call him and email him. If the phone and/or email is bogus, report to eBay (if bogus any feedback he gives will be deleted). His contact info will have his address. Call the police department in his city and file a report.
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ai**rushayatollah (198 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:26 PDT 19 of 421
They will block the one ID, then the seller will get negs and NPB’s out the wazoo.
I actually wouldn’t go through FeeBay because if they take any kind of action at all the police may not have to get involved.
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ho**luludance (32 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:26 PDT 20 of 421
Post this on Trust and Safety.
Does Powerseller support function over the weekend?
I’d call Live Help.
File the extortion report.
I wouldn’t answer them at all.
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ai**rushayatollah (198 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:26 PDT 21 of 421
Contact ISP though.
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:28 PDT 22 of 421
IF ebay had a track record of doing the right thing in a timely manner, I would use ebay.
Can anyone say they’ve got a good track record?
Go to the media, let the media know that the system ebay has set up is failing miserably.
Not only will this fool leave negative feedback, the seller will then have to go through all of ebay’s hoops to get it removed.
Who are the other 4? Are there 4 others? Talk about the perfect threat.
—
co**ie10 (11166 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:28 PDT 23 of 421
Shame you didn’t post with your real ID so that we could all see who this person is that won the auction.
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:29 PDT 24 of 421
cobbie, posting with a selling ID is a good way for people to mess with your auctions, don’t you think the OP has had enough of that already?
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pl**t1here2 (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:29 PDT 25 of 421
Send me their address.
If they’re close enough, I’d like to have face to face, um, chat with them,
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ai**rushayatollah (198 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:29 PDT 26 of 421
A cheerleader.
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ho**luludance (32 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:30 PDT 27 of 421
Shame you didn’t post with your real ID so that we could all see who this person is that won the auction.
Oh, yes, and then some numnut here will bring the buyer to this thread and all hell breaks loose.
Nancy, I appreciate your sentiment about eBay, but eBay DOES shut down people like this. The advice given here has to be what’s best for the OP, not what will embarrass eBay the most.
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tr**arn (44 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:31 PDT 28 of 421
This is one example of when a seller should post with their selling ID. Without it we can’t block or help report this scary buyer. What if this buyer is trying this scam on multiple sellers. The OP should warn them.
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lo**postid (0 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:31 PDT 29 of 421
After we hear your reply to this email, we will contact you with further instructions.
That was a mistake on their part. Respond to it and see what the ‘further instructions’ are! Maybe it’ll be a better way to get info on this guy.
Try telling him you need his account info so you can transfer the $100 to him directly. And you don’t trust paypal for this transaction.
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lo**postid (0 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:32 PDT 30 of 421
Join him in his game, but make sure he never actually gets any money from you
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pl**t1here2 (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:33 PDT 31 of 421
Not sure if it was mentioned, but don’t worry about possible negs, Ebay most likely will do away with any you get from this.
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ca**mom3boys (924 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:34 PDT 32 of 421
Please post the auction number.
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:34 PDT 33 of 421
Honolulu, if you think hiding this ‘in house’ with ebay is the solution, fine.
I don’t. This is out of control garbage and those who want to stay and sell are getting all kinds of ridiculous feedback (because a buyer can with impunity ) and then this kind of cr@p?
And since the policies have changed, get an eyefull and see what people are teaching others to do to sellers on ebay, just google it and you’ll be shocked.
The plans are being formulated and some will take it to the extreme we see here.
Unless someone is prosecuted or publicly shamed, it will not stop.
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tr**arn (44 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:34 PDT 34 of 421
Lulu, I didn’t think about someone tattling to the buyer. There are some that would do just that.
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pl**t1here2 (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:35 PDT 35 of 421
These people need to be jailed.
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na**ybusinraleigh (2967 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:35 PDT 36 of 421
Furthermore, will ebay block this buyer from registering again? How?
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ai**rushayatollah (198 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:35 PDT 37 of 421
Wall Street Journal.
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my**gbokali (256 ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:36 PDT 38 of 421
This is BS OP….report to ebay, call the police, scream it on the hilltops…I wouild tell everyone you can. YOU CANNOT LET THEM DO THIS TO YOU…..no matter what they say.
DO NOT GIVE IN….please. I wish I could help you personaly cause this is just down right wrong not to mention has to be against the law.
and its EBays fault. Sorry, just my opinion.
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mi**yteoil (Private ) View Listings | Report May-31-08 14:37 PDT 39 of 421
You really need to report this guy under multiple reporting functions through ebay. Maybe forward it to the higher ups at eBay also. They really should see what has been created with their new fb policy.
I also agree that it is a shame that we don’t know the id of this person.
Does he have a lot of fb?
—
Page 1 of 11 Go to page
Previous 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 … 11

and a screenshot of page 1 of 11 of the Censored / Deleted eBay forum from the Google Cache

How much do you wanna bet eBay will request Google to delete the cache???

The PayPal fiasco in Australia has not lost it’s juice yet, it’s indeed getting more and more interesting. Today’s article in The Sydney Morning Herald titled Clerical error exposes Google as anonymous eBay critic shows a document source screenshot identifying Google as the source of a very good document prepared in response to eBay’s attempt to stifle payment methods competition on it’s Australian site.

This 38 page document demonstrates an excellent knowledge of eBay’s inner workings and summarizes eBay’s motivations quite well:

It is submitted that:
(a) There are two markets relevant to eBay’s proposed conduct. They are:

(i) the market for the supply of online marketplace services to online buyers and sellers in Australia - in which eBay operates; and
(i¡) the market for the supply of peer-to-peer online payment processing services in Australia - in which PayPal operates or, alternatively, the market for the supply of online payment processing services in Australia (including peer-to-peer and non-peer-to-peer online payment systems) - in which PayPal operates.
(b) eBay has substantial power in the market for the supply of online marketplace services to online buyers and sellers in Australia.
(c) PayPal is likely to have substantial power in the market for the supply of peer-topeer online payment processing services and the market for the supply of online payment processing services, more generally.
(d) eBay’s proposed conduct will immediately increase transaction costs for all eBay sellers and buyers, and remove any impediment to PayPal further raising prices to eBay sellers in future.
(e) eBay’s proposed conduct will reduce the quality of producVservice provided by PayPal on the eBay Site and elsewhere as PayPal will have little incentive to innovate, improve its product offering, or provide beüer quality customer service and support once it has secured a ‘captive market’ of online sellers on the eBay Site.
(f) eBay’s proposed conduct will foreclose competition from all competitors of PayPal currently allowed on the eBay Site.
(g) eBay’s proposed conduct willforeclose competition from existing competitors of PayPal, more generally. Exclusion from the eBay Site and the network effect of increased adoption of PayPal outside the eBay Site will deter or delay innovation by existing competitors.
(h) eBay’s proposed conduct will foreclose potential competition from new entrants into the market. Exclusion from the eBay Site, the network effect of increased adoption of PayPal outside the eBay Site, and the difficulties of building critical mass against PayPal’s installed customer base, will prevent or delay entry by new competitors.
(i) The proposed conduct is not necessary to achieve eBay’s claimed purpose, nor is likely, of itself, to be effective in achieving that purpose. One of eBay’s substantial purposes for the proposed conduct, is anti-competitive.

1.3
0) The public benefits claimed by eBay should be disregarded entirely, or alternatively, be given very little weight, by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the Gommission), because they either:
(i) will or are likely to exist in the absence of the proposed conduct and, as such, cannot be said to result or be likely to result from the proposed conduct; or
(ii) are illusory.
(k) eBay’s proposed conduct will result in significant public detriments including a reduction in consumer choice and a reduction in the overall quality of online payment processing services in Australia.
1.4 Accordingly, it is submitted that the proposed conduct has the purpose and is likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition in the market for the supply of online payment processing services, and that any likely benefit to the public from the proposed conduct will not outweigh the significant detriment to the public from the substantia, lessening of competition,
1.5 The Commission should revoke eBay’s Notification by giving eBay a notice pursuant to section 93(3) of lhe Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (the Act).

Here is the 38 Page Document submitted to ACCC, most likely by Google requesting that ACCC prevents PayPal from being the only payment method allowed on eBay Australia.

Last year in June, eBay temporarily discontinued it’s ads on Google in retaliation to Google’s plans to hold a Party that coincided with eBay Live event. I guess we’ll see if the retaliation streak still permeates eBay’s corporate culture or if it has left the building with Meg Whitman.

Recently eBay opted to artificially increase listing counts by inviting Mega retailer Buy.Com to list on it’s venue and listings jumped by approximately 500,000 plus

I suppose the Wall Street was not happy about eBay’s shrinking listing count so they had to do something about those dwindling listing numbers.

It was proven before, that when you clog up the venue with lots of duplicate listing and eliminate the ‘uniqness’ factor by purging the smaller sellers who carry the special one of the kind inventory, the overall sales will drop. Since all the new changes took hold, we have been watching the Medved chart which tracks eBay sell-throughs. The sell-throughs on eBay appear to have reached all time low.

Here is a link to the MedVed Chart:

http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?SSHAAllALLCAT

Will low sell-throughs have impact on seller and share holder retention? You Bet!

Yahoo has a busy forum for eBay stock holders, not many happy campers there:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/EBAY

Last month we have noted decline in eBay search traffic based on ComScore reports and independently confirmed by AuctionBytes report using Nielsen data.

Here is an updated table on Unique Visitors and Site Searches for month to month change from March to April 2008.

Property  Unique Visitors
                    Apr-08 vs. Mar-08    M/M
Total Internet     190,728     188,010   +1%

Google             141,080     137,480   +1%
Yahoo              140,613     139,518   +1%
eBay                81,874      80,903   -1%
Amazon              58,683      58,057   -1%

comScore Expanded Search Query Report
April  2008 vs. March 2008

Expanded Search Entity  Search Queries (MM)

                                  Percent Change 

                       Apr-08 vs. Mar-08
Total Expanded Search  15,088  14,988  -1%

Google                  6,531   6,639   2%
Ebay                      474     450  -5%
Craigslist                277     273  -2%
Amazon                    149     137  -8%

eBay continues to show decline on both metrics on month to month basis, while Google continues growing.

Similarly eBay stock share price flatlined / declined in April 2008

                    April 1 -08     April 30 -08
NASDAQ               2362.75     2412.80
Google                465.71      574.29
eBay                   31.41       31.29
Amazon                76.70        78.63

Recession is supposed to be good for eBay, at least it used to be during the past tough economic times. It is important to note that Amazon and Craigslist show slowdown as well.

We own several ecommerce websites and primarily market through Google. Many of our websites appear on page one or two of Google natural search results…. so I was interested how these stats benchmark against our own sites, testing if Google natural search results bring increased traffic on year to year and on month to month basis.

Here are our stats, site A and site B

SITE A
Month Unique visitors
      2007  vs. 2008
Jan  14409     16106
Feb   7994      9307
Mar   9572      9326
Apr   8679     10241

SITE B
Month Unique visitors
      2007  vs. 2008
Jan   1276      1741
Feb   1054      1618
Mar   1099      1503
Apr    992      1220

It is important to note that :

• most traffic to the site is brought by Google natural search results
• no paid adversing traffic to the site, e.g. we do not advertise on Google or any other site to bring additional visitors to these sites
• our marketing or site content has not changed significantly from last year to this year
• both sites are ecommerce sites

This quick reality check with our own website confirms that while eBay visitors and search traffic declines, Google generated visitor traffic continues to grow and gain marketshare.

If you are developing your own store under your own domain name, be sure to learn all you can to market your ecommerce products via Google.

Is eBay hurting for shoppers? It would certainly seem so. First we saw eBay rewarding those shoppers who gave negative feedback with a coupon, now eBay started to send eBay Bucks incentive to some shoppers or more accurately, non-shoppers. Here is a screenshot of the eBay Bucks incentive.

As reported last month, user growth, page views and searches on eBay site reached zero to minus territories. eBay Sellers are in revolt over fee increases desquised as fee reductions, unattainable dangling carrot discounts, feedback policy changes, PayPal 21 day money freeze. Buyers lost confidence in eBay marketplace while back, when eBay made it impossible to identify shill bids due to eBay hiding bidder’s IDs, citing site fraud, while insisting fraud is almost non existent. eBay shares flatlined three years ago. Everyone and their mother is suing eBay on grounds of deceitfull business practices.

It was speculated when eBay purchased over 25% share in Craigslist that eBay is on a fishing (not phishing) expedition to observe craigslist’s success and then copy it. It is a known fact that beyond it’s founder’s innovative idea to create an online auction, eBay’s executive team has not invented anything since. eBay’s management is great at spending it’s cash on mostly miss (Skype) sometimes hit (PayPal) acquisitions. Less then a month ago we have commented on a eBay vs. Craigslist lawsuit which set the stage for Craigslist initiating their own proceedings against eBay. The full document is available here and it provides some interesting insights into what allegedly goes on behind the scenes. Read the document, it provides a peak into the world of corporate espionage, false advertising, deception and other corporate shinnanagans you won’t find in official company press releases.

eBay is certainly not a stranger to being accused of unfair play and facing substantial fines and penalties for it’s mistakes. Here is a abbreviated history of some legal processes she has faced or is currently litigating:

August 11, 2003 SHARE PRICE 25.46
eBay Accounts for Lawsuit Loss: The auction giant shaves $30M from Q2 results after a patent verdict against it was upheld last week but says it will appeal. February 28, 2008 Case MercExhange vs. eBay settled, As a part of the settlement, eBay purchased all three patents from MercExhange involved in the lawsuit, and related technology and inventions, as well as a license to another search-related patent portfolio that was not asserted in the lawsuit

July 30, 2004 SHARE PRICE 39.16
PayPal Sends Users Notice of Class-Action Lawsuit Settlement: PayPal and plaintiffs reached a settlement in the class-action lawsuit stemming from 2002, when two PayPal users filed class action lawsuits against the online payment service owned by eBay. Some of the accusations by the plantiffs were that, as of early 2002, PayPal was understaffed, hid its customer service phone numbers to save money, had rude and unhelpful phone staff, did not answer customer service email, and “without notice or warning, erroneously and unnecessarily” limited or closed accounts and then made it difficult to restore the accounts.

June 22, 2004 SHARE PRICE 43.60
Tiffany Sues eBay over Fakes : Tiffany said 73% of items purchased on eBay in a study it conducted were counterfeit

April 29, 2005 SHARE PRICE 31.71
Tentative Settlement Reached in eBay Stock ‘Spinning’ Lawsuit : the settlement calls for the payment to eBay of $3 million by Meg Whitman, Pierre Omidyar, Jeffrey Skoll and Robert Kagle, who are officers/directors/controlling stockholders of eBay, and a payment to eBay of $395,000 by Goldman Sachs Group, eBay’s investment banking firm.

In June 6 2006 SHARE PRICE 31.59
Net2Phone, Inc. filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (No. 06-2469) alleging that eBay Inc., Skype Technologies S.A., and Skype Inc. infringed five patents owned by Net2Phone relating to point-to-point Internet protocol. The suit seeks an injunction against continuing infringement, unspecified damages, including treble damages for willful infringement, and interest, costs, and fees

August 7 2006 SHARE PRICE 24.12
Louis Vuitton Malletier and Christian Dior Couture filed two lawsuits in the Paris Court of Commerce against eBay Inc. and eBay International AG. Among other things, the complaint alleges that we violated French tort law by negligently broadcasting listings posted by third parties offering counterfeit items bearing plaintiffs’ trademarks, and by purchasing certain advertising keywords. The plaintiffs seek approximately EUR 37 million in damages.

September 6 2006, SHARE PRICE 27.53
Parfums Christian Dior, Kenzo Parfums, Parfums Givenchy, and Guerlain Société also filed a lawsuit in the Paris Court of Commerce against eBay Inc. and eBay International AG. The complaint alleges that we have interfered with the selective distribution network the plaintiffs established in France and the European Union by allowing third parties to post listings offering genuine perfumes and cosmetics for sale on our websites. The plaintiffs in this suit seek approximately EUR 9 million in damages and injunctive relief

April 26th, 2007 SHARE PRICE 34.22
eBay, PayPal face court action Class action alleges unfair monopoly: eBay warned shareholders yesterday that it is facing a possible class action suit in the state of California and is likely to be hit by more patent cases. The suit alleges that eBay and PayPal acted “to improperly ‘monopolise’ the forms of payment that sellers can use on eBay”.

August 2007 SHARE PRICE 33.54
class-action lawsuit in which attorney John Fabry stated, “eBay has been deceiving millions of consumers over the years by claiming their auctions start when submitted, when in reality they do not begin for at least several hours, and up to 24 hours. However, the clock starts running on your selected auction time even though eBay hasn’t posted it yet

Jan. 10, 2008 SHARE PRICE 30.36
Lawsuit Filed against eBay Over Coin Listing Policy: The American Numismatic Association (ANA) and the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) are suing eBay for defamation and unfair and deceptive trade practices

May 13, 2008 SHARE PRICE 31.41
Craigslist has filed a countersuit against eBay, alleging that the auction site used its minority stake in Craigslist to engage in unfair and unlawful anticompetitive behavior, false advertising, trademark infringement, and other misdeeds.

Update: 5-15-2008 Craigslist illustrates on their blog how eBay uses deceptive advertising on Yahoo providing a screenshot of advertisements eBay ran up even on the morning of 5-14-2008. Interestingly enough, if you try to search on Yahoo for www.craigslist.org or craigslist.org those deceptive ads no longer appear.

Now that eBay came up with another way to remove competition from their site by imposing PayPal as the only payment method in eBay Australia, (and this is just a testbed market and if successful, the same is to follow for other markets where eBay can attempt to get away with it) some Aussie sellers and consumers are not happy about it and point out that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission cannot grant eBay Australia request for PayPal only payments

New US Sellers on eBay are already forced to accept PayPal or major Credit Card via merchant account if they are too new or if their feedback is not quantitative enough:

You can immagine that lot of sellers are screaming bloody murder because they do not want to be forced to accept PayPal and fork over 3% of the transaction to PayPal if they can receive Money Order or Cashier’s Check which costs the seller nothing… but then eBay would not be making that 3% additional profit forcing PayPal, eh?

This blogger just published Shame, eBay, Shame! describing PayPal promotion going to eBay buyers who do not use PayPal and concluded:

“That con will be brought down upon the eBay sellers – those who don’t wish to be involved in the hideous restraint of trade fiasco that eBay is attempting to wrought.

“

It is the vendor who should dictate which payment options he/she wants to permit to exchange his goods/services for money.

We have utilized many brick and mortar venues for our retail sales before, but I have never heard from a Mall Management or Swap Meet Operator something like: ‘well you know, cash is not safe … what if some buyer passed a fake bank note to you! …. or traveller’s checks may be fake as well, so for this reason if you wanted to sell in our venue/marketplace, you cannot accept cash, money orders or travellers checks… and ehm, since you are new around here, you can only accept Credit Cards or our Mall Gift Cards (… as we at the Mall get a percentage cut from our Gift Card transactions, which of course, makes it safer… ehm ..)’

Another fake claim eBay makes is that PayPal is cheap. I have personally recommended PayPal to many of our newbie merchants (we own a hosting company so we get lot of requests for recommendation in this area) but since PayPal increased their rates quietly, they are not one of the most expensive options out there so we recommend against PayPal.

Check these PayPal fees: 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction so you would be paying $0.59 to PayPal on $10 sales
vs Real Merchant Fees here for example 2.1% plus $0.25 per transaction so you would be paying $0.46 to merchant CC processor

—
Update 5-8-2008 : here is an interesting news article
eBay boss: “not offering PayPal is like buying heroin” the folks Down Under are definitely not happy about being forced to PayPal and are very vocal about it. A smart credit card merchant service company should make a fortune marketing to eBayers.

—
Update 5-10-2009
Australian financial, commercial and internet industries appear to stand united against eBay’s attempt to stifle competition using “consumer safety” as a smoke screen to push through PayPal as the only payment method on eBay Australia property. Here are some interesting points made in submissions to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission:

• Australian Bankers’ Association:
  “2.1 ABA’s concerns
  The ABA opposes the Notification, its chief concerns being that:
  (a) the Conduct would limit the choice of both eBay buyers and sellers
  without justification for doing so;
  (b) the benefits of the Conduct as described in the Notification are overstated; and
  (c) the Conduct will have the effect of eliminating competition in an important segment of the market for online payment services, and of distorting competition in the balance of that market.
  2.2 The ACCC should revoke the Notification
  ABA submits that the ACCC should revoke the Notification under s 93(3) of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (”the TPA”) because the Conduct:
  (a) has the purpose and/or is likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition; and
  (b) is not likely to result in a benefit to the public, or to the extent that it would result in any likely public benefit, any such benefit would not outweigh the public detriment that would be caused by the lessening of competition likely to result from the Conduct. According to Phishtank.com, 72% of the phishing sites it identified in February 2008 were fraudulently imitating eBay or PayPal websites.’ More recently, eBay has been subject to phishing scams affecting sellersm6 The Conduct does nothing to prevent these phishing scams. A further potential security issue for PayPal is that PayPal does not take the same steps that banks take to verify the identity of their account holders by requiring the provision of drivers’ licences, birth certificates, etc.
  “

• Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc : ”

  Prevailing prices on eBay will increase
  PayPal impose various fees and commissions on users receiving payment through PayPal. eBay’s proposed conduct would impose these additional direct costs on eBay sellers who do not use PayPal, or who do not exclusively use Paypal. The direct per-transaction fees alone could cause affected eBay sellers to raise their fees by up to 5% to compensate.

  eBay and PayPal’s notoriously poor customer service record
  Many websites on the Internet are devoted to criticism of eBay and PayPal’s customer service, policies, and actions. Some examples include www.nopaypal.com and www.paypalwarning.com. A frequent criticism of eBay and PayPal’s customer service is that they are ‘faceless’ corporations, who to the greatest extent possible try to ‘hide behind’ email communication, typically conducted with boilerplate ‘form’ emails, and that they do not make available, or do not sufficiently make available other contact methods such as telephone. If eBay proceed with their proposed conduct, PayPal will in effect have a largely ‘captive market’ and will have no incentives to provide better levels of customer support, or a better service generally. In short, PayPal will be free to give less and charge more.

  PayPal’s ‘user agreement’
  Australian users of PayPal’s services are required to accept the terms of a contractual ‘user agreement’, which is posted on the PayPal Website. Many of the terms of this ‘user agreement’ are potentially misleading, unconscionable, unfair, or unenforceable. Some specific criticisms of the PayPal ‘user agreement’ include:
  The user agreement is in reality, not one agreement but constitutes more than a dozen separate documents. The ‘user agreement’ incorporates the terms of 13 other ‘policies’ by reference, including a ‘Privacy Policy’, ‘Closing Accounts and Limiting Account Access’ policy, ‘Buyer Complaint Policy and PayPal Buyer Protection Policy’, ‘Fees Policy’, ‘Acceptable Use Policy’, etc;
  PayPal reserve the right to amend the user agreement and policies at any time;

  The user agreement allows PayPal to place a ‘hold’ on any funds in a user’s account for up to 180 days and to ‘fine’ the user up to $3000 for contraventions of the Acceptable Use At common law, this ‘fine’ is likely a penalty and would be unenforceable for that reason; and The user agreement (and associated polices) contain many terms which may be ‘unfair terms’ within the meaning of Part 2B of the Fair Trading Act 1999
  (Vic), including terms which:
  o Permit PayPal but not the user to avoid or limit performance of the contract;
  o Penalise the user but not PayPal for a breach or termination of the contract;
  o Permit PayPal but not the user to vary the terms of the contract;
  o Permit PayPal unilaterally to vary the characteristics of the services supplied to the user;
  o Limit PayPal’s vicarious liability for its agents; and
  o Limit the user’s right to sue PayPal.
  The effect of eBayls proposed conduct will be to force eBay users who currently exercise an informed choice not to deal with PayPal to accept the current and future terms of PayPal’s user agreements and policies.

  On the whole, eBay appears to be arguing that:

  eBay customers are incapable of choosing the ‘best’ payment option, according to eBay’s definition of what the ‘best’ option is;
  For those customers’ own good, eBay must force them to use the ‘best’ payment option;

  It is impliedly irrelevant to eBay’s decision-making that the ‘best’ payment option is provided by a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, and will result in a significant financial benefit to eBay.

  eBay’s argument is condescending and paternalistic at best, and ignores the fact that eBay users are capable of making rational choices about what they view the best payment method to be

  Most if not all of the benefits claimed to result from eBay’s proposed conduct are already available to buyers and sellers who want those benefits. The only change in those benefits which eBay’s proposed conduct would cause would be to force those benefits upon people who currently choose not to receive them because they view the associated costs as too high. EFA submits that this cannot properly be characterised as a public benefit.

  EFA submits that the ACCC should revoke the notification lodged by eBay.

  “

• Australian Securities & Investments Commission :
  “However, unlike most AFS licensees that provide banking or non-cash payment services, PayPal has declined to become a signatory to the Electronic Funds Transfer Code of Conduct (EFT Code). The EFT Code is the key consumer protection code of conduct applying to the payment services industry, and covers fundamental issues concerning consumer rights, security, disclosure and resolution of mistaken or unauthorised payments.
  PayPal’s business involves the provision of EFT transactions in relation to EFT accounts within the meaning of Section 1 of the EFT Code, and, if it became a signatory to the Code, it would be regulated by Part A of the Code.
  Part A prescribes rules of conduct relating to the provision of EFT transactions, including around: record-keeping requirements, liability for unauthorised transactions, liability in cases of system or equipment malfunction, audit-trails, and complaint investigation and resolution procedures.
  ASIC considers that it is highly desirable that PayPal become a signatory to the EFT Code, given the large numbers of retail customers who use eBay, as it would provide an additional desirable layer of consumer protection that is not currently in place”

• RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA: “
  The Reserve Bank sees some potential issues with the proposed conduct in terms of its impact on competition in the Australian payments system
  The issues: The proposed conduct by eBay is to mandate the use of PayPal for almost all transactions on the eBay site. This raises three potential issues in relation to the payments system.

  The first is that it could limit the ability of new on-line payment systems to become established and for alternative systems to compete in the on-line payments space.

  The second is that it could restrict merchants’ ability to negotiate lower fees.

  And the third is that it restricts choice for consumers

  eBay states that the service operated by PayPal offers some security advantages to consumers relative to other payment methods currently available for eBay transactions. Should consumers value PayPal’s security features highly, they will choose it over other payment methods and this may, in turn, place pressure on those other systems to improve security for similar transactions. It is possible that, in the long run, this competitive process may achieve safer payment facilities than would be the case if PayPal were the only payment option available.

  “

These comments by some of the best brains in major institutions of Australia are not just some bloggers rantings. They clearly summarize and expose the true motivations of eBay management.

Update: 5-26-2008 eBay has submitted their official eBay response to Objections against PayPal being the sole payment method in eBay Australia. The response reads oddly fractured and quite dissociated from eBay’s original underlaying claim that PayPal is the safest way to pay. It makes an interesting point:
“Condition 1
4.6 eBay buyers and sellers who do not wish to pay PayPal fees are able to avoid doing so by listing and purchasing items through competing services, such as other online marketplaces, list, search and redirect sites, online and offline classifieds, specialist listing sites, individual retailer websites, and the like.
4.7 It is also significant that, since the announcement by eBay of the proposed implementation of the Project, Oztion’s membership has reportedly increased by approximately 22% to over 250,000 members.’ It would appear that this is attributable to migration of buyers and sellers from eBay. Accordingly, there is evidence to suggest that a number of sellers will choose alternative sales platforms in response to the implementation of the Project, providing a strong incentive for eBay to maintain a competitive offering.”

Are we to understand that eBay is telling buyers: If you don’t like PayPal, go away-> the Oztion’s way. This does not appear to be a customer friendly approach. This take it or leave it attitude, verbalized, certainly enhances eBay’s bully image. But what else is new. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced they will make a ruling within next 2 weeks.

Update 5-30-2008 It appears that GOOGLE submitted it’s objection to eBay’s attempt to push out the competitor payment systems from it’s Australian marketplace. AuctionBytes reporting on this here. :
“eBay prohibits sellers from accepting Google’s Checkout service as part of its Safe Payments policy, and apparently Google is concerned a move toward a PayPal-only policy in Australia would impact its market share. The anonymous ACCC submission reads in part:

eBay’s real purpose, or one of eBay’s substantial purposes, is to substantially lessen competition in the Market for Online Payment Processing Services, by preventing or hindering competitors of PayPal from competing effectively against PayPal in that market. eBay and PayPal are related bodies corporate. eBay is acting to increase PayPal’s share of the Market for Online Payment Processing Services, thereby increasing the revenues to the eBay group as a whole.

The submission also called the public benefits of the PayPal-only policy “illusory.”

Craig posted on his blog in blog.craigslist.org a response to eBay’s lowsuit filed against Craigslist, alleging that CL BOD unjustly dilluted eBay’s stake at the company.

eBay is sure to deepen alienation with it’s two major competitors. First the ongoing tiff with Google over eBay’s refusal to allow Google Checkout as a payment option that ultimately sunk eBay listings from prominent search result positions on Google seach and now a legal action against it’s other most prominent competitor CL.

Craig said in his blog:

“We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.”

“Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.”

These two sentences characterize eBay perfectly.

Craigslist did not get lawsuit happy when eBay acquired Kijiji and begun directly compete with CL … BACK THEN we were thinking - eBay acquires stake at CL, observes the business so it can copy it’s success and directly compete with them.

This event concides with onlyebay blog celebrating kijiji 400,000 listings in US while Craigslit boasts over 30,000,000 monthly listings according to this Craigslist valuation.

So what does eBay seek to gain by this lawsuit. One observer said that perhaps weakening CL’s financial position by costly litigation may force CL to monetize on more of it’s properties and thus further increase eBay’s paper profits. Better paper profits = more shareholders thinking eBay is worth investing in.

Update: May 2, 2008 :

• CraigsList blog provided additional information.
• eBay provided a link to the Redacted Court Document eBay vs. Craigslist

In late January we have heard of eBay acquiring an Israeli security firm Fraud Sciences, reportedly to help make eBay PayPal a safer place, although it was rumored on TechCrunch that:

January 28th, 2008 at 11:10 am

Guys, it’s an inside job. The new president for Paypal knows the VC firms for FS and his first act of president is to help out his friends by buying some no-name fraud company. BTW, some factoids, 1) revenues weren’t $10M a year, they were $1M their last year, 2) It wasn’t $169M all in, but that was based on performance expectations which will never be met because they just alerted all their customers they were closing their doors and killing off any revenue streams …

OK, it’s three months later… How is that x million investment doing? I sincerely hope that millions of investor’s funds are not just squandered away. Security area is a best place eBay should invest some capital and we would like to get some upates on what’s new and exciting following this acquisition.

Technorati Profile

Looks like the recent eBay changes anounced in February are taking their toll. ComScore published month to month search query reports for major internet sites and eBay along with some AOL properties are the only ones in the minus territory.

Where there is no searching, there is no finding. No finding = no sales.

Update 4-26-2008 Reading AuctionBytes Blog today, a confirmation of decline Year over Year post independently confirms this trend:
Nielsen Online’s eBay Data Shows Interesting Trends
By: Ina Steiner
Tue Apr 22 2008 23:42:38
In preparing a Newsflash article about eBay metrics, I calculated the percent change in Page Views and Unique Audience for January, February and March 2008, year-over-year, from data provided by Nielsen Online.

Page Views

January: Down 10.54 percent year over year

February: Down 10.69 percent year over year

March: Down 12.82 percent year over year

Unique Audience

January: Down 9.57 percent year over year

February: Down 4.75 percent year over year

March: Down 6.31 percent year over year

The decline in page views has to be of concern to eBay - an almost 13 percent drop in page views in March from the previous year.

I was curious if the numbers might hint at any boycott effect. Looking at the numbers month-to-month, it shows a 13.21 percent drop in page views from January 2008 to February, and a 6.48 percent increase from February to March. There was also a 10.85 percent drop in time spent per person from January 2008 to February. It’s always tricky looking at month-to-month numbers, as seasonal effects can cause swings.

The raw monthly data from January 2007 through March 2008 - including time spent on site per person - is included in the Newsflash article, which will be published later this week.

comScore Expanded Search Query Report

    March 2008 vs. February 2008

    Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations

    Source: comScore qSearch 2.0

                                             Search Queries (MM)

                                                                  Point Change

                                                                    Mar-08 vs.

    Expanded Search Entity           Feb-08          Mar-08          Feb-08

    Total Expanded Search            13,806          15,088            9%

    Google Sites                      7,390           8,267           12%

      Google                          5,917           6,531           10%

      YouTube/All Other               1,473           1,736           18%

    Yahoo! Sites                      2,262           2,391            6%

      Yahoo!                          2,234           2,359            6%

      All Other                          28              32           14%

    Microsoft Sites                     984           1,054            7%

      MSN-Windows Live                  952           1,019            7%

      Microsoft/All Other                32              35            9%

    AOL LLC                             864             891            3%

      AOL                               493             527            7%

      MapQuest/All Other                371             364           -2%

    Ask Network                         452             506           12%

      Ask.com                           283             316           12%

      MyWebSearch.com/ All Other        169             190           12%

    eBay                                480             474           -1%

    Fox Interactive Media               337             377           12%

      MySpace                           330             368           12%

      All Other                           7               9           29%

    Craigslist.org                      239             277           16%

    Amazon Sites                        139             149            7%

    Facebook.com                        103             107            4%