How The Crooks Get Away With It.......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-tricks.html;

This story explains how easy it is for crooks to continue to do business on ebay simply because ebay doesn't take the necessary steps to stop it. So when we have a seller such as "The British Cartel" who has gone though perhaps twenty (20) different seller names over the last 5-6 years and runs havoc over buyers, engages in fraudulent sales, uses forwarding addresses in the US even though he's based in the UK, etc. we need not wonder any longer how it is possible.

Don has explained some of this to us before, but I thought that this story REALLY makes it loud and clear!

Well-spotted!

Normally ebay loves its buyers as much as it hates its sellers. But in this instance it loves the seller and hates the buyers.

ebay loves the bottom line and its stock holders. Sellers and buyers are simply tools to be used as an means to a end. ebay confuses folks who do not understand that its stock price and shareholders are their top priority.

Many folks get caught up arguing about its terms and conditions when in fact ebay does exactly what most large corporations do; make money for their shareholders. We sit at our desks and are critical of whatever lame new procedure they have implemented because we do not stop and consider that they are doing the right thing for their shareholders and long-term profitability. We only see it from a seller or buyer perspective. Consider their stock performance since it went public in 1999. (in 1999 it was at $26.02 and today is sitting on $60.02 per share.) If you had invested $25k in ebay back in 1999 chances are pretty good that you would not be upset with their buyer/seller terms and conditions.

I am no fan of ebay, they sit on their hands and bank the money as innocent people are being taken advantage of. A big first step would be if they could crack down on allowing some people to own and control multiple accounts. Simply require a valid, unique, physical address for each account and then audit this. But the current situation is very ugly. Between allowing remailers, turning a deaf ear on user complaints, and ignoring the fact that there is a brisk 3rd party market in the selling/trading of 'Top Rated' accounts, and spending virtually no resources on the control of multiple accounts; ebay is missing the opportunity to clean up much of the problem. But I am sure they have run ROI analysis on this kind of thing and it the numbers don't support spending money on this type of oversight. Bottom line, they are a large multinational corporation and behave like one; many of us might not agree with what/how they do things but in the grand scheme of things we don't really matter as much as the shareholders.
Don

A long story that boils down to: big corps don't give a about their customers. The fact is such corporations do not last long.

Real instances of scams on ebay are infrequent enough (as a percentage of total sales) that ebay probably figures that the cure would be worse than the disease, at least from their business perspective. If they wanted to really do something about fraud, it seems to me that requiring some additional verification steps for sellers might be something that could work. ebay has conflicting needs when users sign up to use the site. They don't want to make registration and/or selling requirements so onerous that people don't want to use the site, but if they make them too easy, it's also too easy for bad sellers to manipulate to their advantage.

I don't know if it would work or what it would look like, but maybe once sellers cross a certain threshold they should have to jump through some additional verification hoops to keep selling. Scam artists would probably find a way to stay below those thresholds, but they could set it to a certain dollar amount, etc. They don't want to scare off small sellers who might sell a thing or two here or there, but if someone is realizing real income off of ebay sales, they'll grumble and do what's necessary to keep doing so. Or they could do something like add a "trusted seller" status to long-time sellers with no history of problems.

There are things they can do that would help. Of course they'll never stop fraud completely, but there are little things here and there that could provide incremental improvements. ebay's goal (besides making money for themselves) is to make the site as easy to use as possible, for both buyers and sellers, so I doubt they'll do anything anytime soon to make it more difficult.

I recently saw this article: http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-eb...rket-5261019

In my opinion many folks must buy these look-alike counterfeit goods for status reasons. If they can't afford the real thing, a really good fake may serve their purpose well.

ebay gives the people what they want. ebay will probably only get involved when they get pushback from another big corporate interest.

Gov't pressure is probably out of the question these days. Buyer beware.

Thank you southpaw for posting that link. While the story is rather long, it's a great overview. The statement I found the most interesting was this;

"As a result of our efforts, we're currently seeing an all-time low in fraudulent activity on ebay — with fraud down 50 percent over the last seven years (2007-2014)," ebay spokesman Ryan Moore says in a statement.";

If my memory serves me correctly, this is the same ebay spokesperson who was quoted in the front-page Linn's story last year when edBay abandoned the EMR Program. In fact, I tried to contact this guy directly to try to engage him in some dialogue that might have been helpful to ebay and us. I also wanted (and did!) to question some of the statements he made to the Linn's reporter about ebay's anti-fraud efforts (which are virtually nil in the Stamps category). Naturally, he never responded (surprise!) and things have been as bad as they were then, and will continue to be, so the *ONLY* defense is "buyer beware" (as southpaw also points out).

Bill what I found most interesting are the court cases absolving ebay and Amazon. Copyright and trademark infringement must be policed by companies or else they risk losing it (protection). When the justice system looks the other way what kind of recourse is there? It is truly a wild-west situation.

Agreed. Then it **MUST** all fall back onto Don's main message - EDUCATION. it is critical that the philatelic community figure out a way that a large number of them become aware of these pitfalls and the total lack of anti-fraud work on ebay's part. Stamp Smarter helps, but it just barely toughes the tip of the iceberg. There aren't enough hours in the day for only a few people to try to review even a handful of United States Stamps categories, so the task becomes daunting, to say the least. Without a lot more people willing to devote their time and talent to this cause and without the help of the major organizations/media (APS, ASDA, Linn's, etc), it just isn't possible to dent the problem.

Just last week, as an examplle, there was a story in Linn's about big ebay stamp seller "Noblespirit" and it was a good story. Interesting comments from Joe Cortese (owner) and one of the comments was how ebay had a good sytem in place to counter any fraud attempts that take place in the Stamps category. Which, of course, is totally untrue! So I quickly composed a "Letter to the Editor" explaining why the exact opposite is true. She refused to run the letter because "you had your say in the big story we wrote last year, so now Joe had his say, and we aren't printing your rebuttal".

Great. While her response might initially seem to be sensible, IMO, it is not. Just because you allow someone to present opinions on a given issue ONE TIME, should not mean that person becomes inelligible to comment on the same subject again. What the heck is wrong with healthy debate? If Joe is right, fine, let him explain in depth why he regards ebay's anti-fraud work to be "working" while someone else takes the opposite view. There was an old 60 Minutes regular segment "Point/Counterpoint" in which two nationally-known columnists would fire back and forth at each other with their views on the topic at hand. It was great! That's the way it ought to be in a healthy democratic society. Not an Editor basically saying; "you had your say, now your done having a say"!

So we shouldn't wonder why we can't make educational progress with this big problem that does great harm to our hobby.

Well, that simplifies things. I can cross both Noblespirit and Linns off my list of "willing to do business" with.

Don't rock the boat. It's all a facade. Media outlets will keep the charade going as long as they can, at least till someone comes along (and brings the public with them) and shows that the emperor has no clothes. I'm not sure if Crossfire was the show you were referring to, but this is a big reason it went off the air:



If it becomes obvious to enough people, and the people no longer want to buy bogus goods (including stamps) things will change.

I agree that education is the only recourse. Thank you for all your years of work in the stamp hobby and you and Don's Stamp Smarter endeavor.

Sellers may gripe at ebay's and Paypal's "the buyer is always right" attitude, but in the case you receive a bogus, altered or misidentified stamp, maybe this policy is the only way to go. Although I do agree with Don that ebay can do more re a seller with a poor track record and multiple accounts.

*** Edited by Staff to add YouTube tags. Please use them in the future. We prefer embedded video. ***

Bill's original reference was to 60 Minutes in the 1970s where James Kilpatrick (Conservative) would debate Shana Alexander (Liberal) every week in a segment entitled "Point/Counterpoint". This was later parodied on Saturday Night Live by Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin.

Bill, you should consider posting the unpublished letter you sent to Linn's here, either in this thread or in a separate thread with a title that can be easily found later with keyword searches, and/or that catches the attention of those who are newer to buying stamps on ebay. If Linn's won't publish the content, let's use the other channels we have available.

Great idea! Let's put it here and then think about whether it might get more attention in a different category. So we are open to suggestions. Thanks CJP!

Letter to Linn's Editor;


I read with great interest the Linn's June 8, 2015 page 30 story "Top ebay seller turns consignments into online sucess" by Michael Baadke. Noblespirit, as the story explains, is indeed an outstanding ebay seller and overall "good guy".

But when he contends that "there is an ongoing effort to patrol for items on ebay that aren't exactly as described - to keep it a safe trading enviornment.". Nothing could be further from the truth. As was carefully outlined in a feature Linn's front page story (July 28, 2014) " ebay scraps stamp and coin review programs" excellently written by Bill McAllister, the story clearly demonstrates how ebay has virtually abandoned all anti-fraud efforts in these categories.

Whereas in the past, there were several successful programs ("Stamp Community Watch" and "Enhanced Member Reporting") these have been eliminated in favor of a "Report Item" webform on each page which is virtually useless in that it does not allow for the person who is making the report to carefully explain the reason for the report. So the only available reporting choice (Replica or Counterfeit Stamps) is rarely the reason for a report.

The end result, which has been carefully documented, not only by myself and by others who now use the ONLY viable reporting venue ("Stamp Smarter" (www.stampsmarter.com) is that using the ebay "Report Item" function is simply a waste of time as nothing ever gets corrected! And how can it if there is no way to explain the report? I have never had ANY follow-up or response from ebay after using the "Report Item" function.

So surely Joe ("Noblespirit") and most other observers are not seeing the same trading enviornment that he claims exists!

Sincerely,

Bill Weiss (Weiss Expert Service, APS Life Member)

Point/Counterpoint was entertainment.

The way to sell The ebay Debate to Linn's is as entertainment.

Linn's, OTOH, might think that most people read their rag to relax.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey