eBay Fraud Scams exposed

When craigslist filed a lawsuit against eBay, illustrating eBay’s deceptive advertising on Yahoo, I guess Yahoo thought it would be a good idea to use the same (btw. completely against Google Adwords advertiser’s policy) tactic so now Yahoo Shopping ads show up on eBay related searches as ebay com.

If you see this ad on our website, please do not click on it - no need to support deceptive advertising, be it originated by eBay or it’s competitors, such as in this case.

This is an interesting development. I was under the impression that Yahoo and eBay were “buddy-buddy” relationship. In 2006 Yahoo and eBay entered into several partnerships and I thought that those “partnerships” were a partial reason for Yahoo’s discontinuing Yahoo Auctions in US in June 2007. With a Yahoo campaign of this sort, one has to ponder if eBay managed to alienate yet another ally.

No doubt both Yahoo shares and eBay shares are in turmoil so one would expect both companies taking extreme measures to reverse the trend and defend their margins.

Remember Bruce Hershenson of eMoviePoster.Com? Bruce was one of eBay Super Power Sellers who announced after eBay’s infamous site improvements that after he sold 300,000 items on eBay he is quitting eBay completely. Unfortunately he announced it on eBay Seller forums and eBay “accidentally” deleted that very busy thread, so it was preserved on our site as one of the original eBay censorship stories. Whal could be eBay’s motivation deleting Bruce’s post on eBay’s Seller Central, other than censorship?

Business Week just did a good interview with Bruce, titled Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed 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?

Another article worth reading is Was eBay a fad? by RoughType:
June 03, 2008
We already know that the famously cute story of eBay’s origin - founder Pierre Omidyar launched the site to help his fiancee trade the PEZ dispensers she collected - was a lie cooked up by a PR operative. We also know that the company’s vaunted “reputation system” - the foundation of what has long been perceived as a radically new kind of self-organizing and self-policing commercial community - has been crumbling….

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.
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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?
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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.

There are many advantages of having your own domain name, hosting your own online store. Selling on eBay cripples your potential in many ways. While eBay is OK ( or should I say used to be OK? ) for novice sellers it pays to do things right from the get-go and setup your own hosted eshop so YOU can control your own eCommerce destiny. If you sell on eBay and put all you eggs in that basket, one day you will find yourself out of business with no warning, like all the digital goods eBay sellers did just this March.

These series of articles will give you some insight into advantages of having your own hosted store website vs. relying on eBay to do your marketing and ultimately falling a victim to eBay’s management poor decisions which have caused many eBay sellers to lose their livelyhood overnight.

The first article will cover TRACKING YOUR VISITORS. eBay does NOT provide this functionality so while you pay eBay to bring visitors to your site, do you know if they are Nigerian Scammers or real buyers looking at your items? Which keywords did they use to arrive to your eBay listing? Correct, you are in the dark, eBay does not provide you with this information although every web hosting provider has such tracking program installed (this technology is 10 years old!) and owners of hosted websites have this info at their fingertips.

For example, on our site, we see exactly how many visitors arrived to our pages and what keyword phrases they used. While there are thousands of keywords that bring visitors to our site, here are the keyword phrases for this month that people typed into search engines and clicked on search results to arrive to our website. We have selected only those keyword phrases that begin with the word eBay:

You can cross check these search terms and see how they lead to our site, for example a search term “ebay stock article” on Google search will bring up our site on page one of Google’s natural search results - sometimes it is found on page two as Google’s results are fluid.

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So you can see that owning your own site / store gives you a good marketing tool to get to know your visitors. It is an important one and it will enable you to do future planning for your site’s expansion, additional product sales. eBay does not give you such statistics on your auctions.

As time progresses, this site will have additional articles on setting up your store and successfully moving away from the eBay platform. Stay tuned.

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.

As of today, eBay sellers can only leave positive feedback for buyers… this is just another step in process eBay is trying to take to Amazonite itself.

Not being able to leave feedback makes a lot of eBay sellers unhappy, since eBay is much more prone to fraud and scams, compared to Amazon.

This new pop up window presented to an eBay buyer who is about to leave feedback for a seller appears to be encouraging buyers to leave negative feedback.

I am not sure if eBay platform full of 89% positive feedback sellers would not backfire on eBay sell throughs. I personally check the seller rating on eBay and I am used to seeing good numbers. Seeing low feedback scores across the board may just send the buyers to competing websites, such as Amazon.

This article on consumerist.com

It’s Now Completely Impossible To Sell A Laptop On Ebay is a true account of a random person trying to sell laptop on eBay and accounting his experiences with a scammer after a scammer. The blog entry is sad but comical in it’s special way as the blogger describes the ineptness of eBay Live Help and email assistance he received during this typical eBay experience. Definitely worth the read…. the article concludes

” But seriously, try CraigsList or a flyer in your neighborhood. EBay is broken.”

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.”

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%

 

I see another brilliant move by eBay management took place. Last week blogs buzzed about the shortcomings of the now default of eBay’s Best Match. I also chipped in with my opinion on eBay’s Best Match which rewards auction listing title spamming. All the critics pointed to a useful tool eBay Estimator to illustrate the case how repeat keywords increase listing visibility on Best Match.

In response to the critique, eBay pulled the eBayEstimator tool.

Somehow, reading the page eBay Estimator created by eBay labs:

• The eBay developers state: Unfortunately, we have been asked to pull this tool down. However, if you found it useful and want it back, please log your request here: (Every request counts!)
  [Note: Comments can still be posted, but they will no longer appear in the list on the right]
  [Update: Please check back on Monday 04/21/2008 for status information about this tool] This seems as though the developers are not very happy about their own management decision to pull this tool and are looking for support from eBay members in form of feedback right on that page to make their case with the management types who decided to shoot the messenger instead of fixing what’s broken.

• And feedback they got. They stopped publishing comments on this page at 262… so any new comments do not show. For archival purposes and for your reading enjoyment, here is a link to the screenshot of the current comments by the sellers using this tool and requesting it back.
  My guess is that even the first 262 comments currently published there will dissappear because: a) the tool may be revived based on the popular demand… but don’t hold your breath on this one… b) the same management type at eBay who ordered this tool to go poof will get paranoid about all those criticisms voiced on that page and will order these comments to get “accidentaly” deleted.

One thing is typical. There is someone in eBay management in charge of the damage control who makes these silly decisions to censor out those uncomfortable truths about the company shortcomings and they do it in a worst way possible, case and point is this example. If eBay Best Match Algo does not work well and can be gamed, let’s pull down the tool that exposes it instead of fixing what’s broken. Kill the messenger.

This makes eBay look so yesterday I bet this censorizing decision maker in eBay management is one of the grandfathered perennials who are directly responsible for contributing to stifling eBay company growth by keeping it in the mentality of 20th century.

Let the younger, Google style KIDS take over at eBay. Let them roll and keep this tool so they can get a good feedback to improve the Best Match Algo. Good feedback does not mean “great, wonderful eBay”, good feedback comes in all forms, such as “Hey, look, your Best Match can be gamed, and this is how” … so the programmers on your team can IMPROVE the Best Match.

Update April 21, 2008 : Good news, the eBayEstimator is back in a morphed way, better and smarter and soliciting feedback. Checkout this link on how you can improve your listing title on eBay. This one is also cool, it warns you against spamming eBay titles.. Here you also have the feedback page, where user comments continue to be published. Wow, there may be some hope for eBay! It appears that the comments were published sequentially and uncensored, I have sent this comment, and it is published there: “Fix the Best Match, it’s not this tool’s fault that Best Match is broken. This tool is helpful, bring it back”.

Good job eBay!

eBay sellers better learn how do do a Grey Hat or Black Hat SEO, and really quick.

If you are an honest seller with great feedback, stellar DSR’s, etc.. you are now getting out gamed by those sellers taking advantages of programming deficit in the code that runs the (in)famous Best Match, now a default search result sort on eBay.

Scot Wingo of eBay strategies blog described how to game the eBay best match to your advantage.

In a nutshell, eBay’s best match scores popular keywords in the titles of the Auction listing and simply adds on s score without penalizing for spamming the Best Match search algo with repeated terms.

So now, the poor eBay buyers will see titles such as

5 5 5 5 5 New New New Nintendo Wii Console 2 2 2 2

and similar nonsense titles as eBay has forced it’s sellers to play this silly game just to stay on top of the Best Match search results on eBay.

Now if you are an eBay seller, there is a tool that will help you to come up with a similar nonsense auction title which according to eBay brains is better for eBay finding and thus will rank you higher on eBay search results.

http://labs.ebay.com/raghavgupta/demoto/to

Let’s say that you wanted to sell an
nintendo vii console
so put your auction title into the first text box labeled Your Item Title
and test against seach that is most frequent : wii
eBay then gives you suggestions which other words to add to the title
here is a link to the modified Auction title per eBay’s suggestions

See by adding the word NEW few times you have just increased your findability score on the new eBay Best Match.

It’s unfortunate that eBay thinks that repeating the word NEW three or 4 times gives a better value to customer experience on eBay. But since that is a case now, I suppose even if you are a honest seller you have no choice but to play these eBay games till eBay fixes what is officially yet another improvement.

As Heidi said: “One day you are in, next day you are out”

and I will prefix this with “On eBay“

This Huffington Post Reporter
is one of the growing army of eBay users apparently suspended for no reason at all, slugging it with eBay email bot to figure out what she did wrong and how to unsupend her eBay account. Her CV certainly suggests a very intelligent and trustworthy person who would not be involved in any wrong doing on eBay. Looks like a customer eBay would love to have. You can read the article here: The Wrath of Ebay: Visions of Corporate Hell

Many people reported being booted from eBay, citing no reason at all and receiving warped emails from eBay bots in response to their efforts to reinstate their account. The difference here is that we have a published individual reporting this with apparently clean bill of health, so her independent report of her experience confirms that eBay Trust and Safety department Bot which decides who gets suspended for what is far more powerfull than any human reasoning. I suggest to everyone, while these unexplicable permanent suspensions occur on eBay more and more frequently, take a look at competitor sites, set up an account there, buying or selling so you have an alternate place to go. In todays e-world things change fast and it’s the customers who effectively relandscape internet every so often. Maia did the right thing, she gave it her best shot and reported her experience so others can be warned. Word of mouth spreads with a light speed online.