Ebay Conspiracy?
 

Okay first off does anyone here use ebay? I use it alot and I somehow stubled upon these 1 cent auctions (the Buy It Now is set at 1 cent) and they just contain something like an eBook or a picture that is emailed to the winner. At first I though "Hey this is a smart way to get alot of positive feedback really fast". Seeing as I only buy off ebay its slow going for my feedback, so I was gonna bump it up a bit. Now I have a tendancy to check everyperson's feedback whos auction I bid on. And then I check the person that left them feedback's feedback and so on. I get pretty muddled. But back to the point now, these peoples feedback can have over 500+ positive and it can ALL be from these one cent auctions. Moreover I have the suspicion that these people create 10+ ebay accounts and just buy/sell from eachother. Now what the heck would be the point to that? It gets so muddled and crazy I have no idea whats going on, I am seriously confused at this point... I didnt find a single person who had only a couple of these one cent auctions and the rest as normal auctions.

Anyways I have no idea what the point to these are now and it has me all confused!! If anyone wants to see what I am talking about just go to ebay.com and search "recipe" or something like that and look for a 1 cent auction... then find the feedback and check out the items and everyone elses feedback/items and see what you get.

I just found this to be very strange and pointless. I mean I was going to do it just to bump my feedback up to 50 (I want that damn blue star!). But now I am kinda freaked out and dont want to do it!! I only bought a 1 cent apple pie recipe and a 99 cent dry rub recipe (cause this one might be real and I love BBQ). Tell me what you all think of this madness!

I'm not much of an ebayer myself, but I'd imagine what you're seeing is scammers building up a record of fake positive feedback. Once an account has enough, they list their big ticket item and scam the buyer out of their money. Anyone looking closely at the feedback would see through the scam in a second, but it only takes one sucker for it to work.

I've contemplated setting up a few auctions through which someone could pay me $5 in order for me to leave feedback either confirming or denying the fact that they are capable of sending payment in a timely manner.

I didn't do it because I've already got one warning from ebay and I don' twant to get banned

Yeah, the cost of listing any auction now is up to $.35 so there is a somewhat substantial cost to getting your feedback up to 100 or better. Would you pay $35 just to have a feedback of 100+? Maybe some scammers would. If they thought they could turn around and scam someone for $1000.

I have found that Ebay puts on a good show of protecting people from scams, but really doesn't give a damn about scams as long as they are making money. If some scammer wants to list 1000 auctions for 1 penny a peice and pay Ebay $350 for doing so, they aren't going to do anything about it. Similarly, they have policies stating that they will back you up if you get scammed, but they don't really work. As someone who has been the victim of shady deals on two occassions, Ebay puts up more paperwork and roadblocks in your way than it is worth to recover your lost money.

I think conspiracy might be a little strong, and I doubt whether E-bay, the organization, is much involved.

Due to the nature and extemely high trafiic of E-bay, there are hundreds of very strange things going there. I have bought lots of stuff on E-bay, but I ALWAYS look at sellers rating and take a good look through their history to see what they sold, not just that they sold lots of items.

Buyer beware is always good policy. And, like it was already said, E-bay doesn't seem to care all that much, they exist to make money, not to set up conspiracies or worry about your last purchase.

Peace,

Pierre

E-Bay is a great place to find rare stuff, or just things thare are not sold in your area. However, it is always good to be cautious. The really good sellers will answer questions about active auctions, or even ones that have ended. Ask questions, don't assume, cause you will get burned.

a friend of mine was scamed by someone pretending to be Ebay..they noticed that she was moving toward being a power seller and sent what looked like an offical Ebay Email requesting her password and banking details.foolishly she did & ended up having no control over her auctions.her password was changed and she'd gone from selling clothes to $2,500 computers...she rang Ebay who claimed the would'nt ask for that information as they already had her details. she ended up getting Ebay to stop the auctions and reset her account details before the scammers could drain her credit card....

I hope that scams and scammers will not be the downfall of Ebay. I think they are a great company with a very good business model. So far, they have gotten away with not really paying much attention to the scams. That is, Ebay does not take a visible, pro-active stance against scammers. Ebay usually only takes action on the complaint of another member and seems to allow a lot of the scams to go on as long as they are generating revenue.

Personally, I know that I am using Ebay much less now than I was a few years ago. There are just so many scammers and shady dealers there now. It is like walking through a really seedy flea market where you have to keep checking your back pocket for your wallet every 15 seconds. I really feel bad for newbies who are eager to try out Ebay and aren't experienced enough to recognize a scam the way that an experienced member can. I think of people like my mom who is not that techno-savvy. Would she think to check the location of a seller (staying away from China, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.)? Probably not. Would she always check the shipping charges to make sure they are in line with what other sellers are charging? She might see an auction for what she wanted to buy at a great price without thinking of any of those other tell-tale signs. It is too bad, I think. Much of Ebay has crossed the line from "Buyer Beware" to "Good Luck, you're on your own."

Yeah, this is about the same stance I take on Ebay auctions. If anything I'm looking into appears shady or not "on the level," I'd definitely ask questions or just avoid it and look for a different seller. I've had good experiences so far with Ebay, haven't been ripped off ever or anything like that. Just be careful, and remember, just like buying anything else, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

I have bought over 100 items on eBay the most expensive was about $650 and I have never had a problem. The thing that I have noticed over the last few years is that many items are over priced. Dozens of times I have seen auctions where with 1 or 2 clicks you can find it on Amazon etc.. cheaper. Some/many people get exited with the auction format and pay too much.

A fellow I worked with and some friends of his used to salt bids for each other on audio equipment. Toward the end of auctions they would bid on each others items to try and get the price up. You have to be careful and not get caught up in any fake bidding wars. I'm not sure if eBay really cares that much, they more the item goes for the more money they make depending on the type of auction it is.

I havent been burned of ebay as of yet. But what I have done is bid before I totaly read the auction and ended up buying something that I really didnt want. For example hard cover books: I only want first editions with a good condition dust jacket, and I like to buy from the same seller to save on shipping costs. Well I ended up buying one book, saw that the seller had another one I wanted and just bid without really reading the description. When I got the item the second book had no dust jacket. Its my own fault for not checking before I bid! This is the only real problem Ive had so far

Caveat Emptor applies in force on Ebay.

Also, ebay has a couple bots that run 9 day long 1cent auctions to test the bidding system at all times. At some point, they noticed that despite there being warnings saying "Do not bid, test auction" people bid anyway.
Now they just let it happen.

And honestly, if you fall for a fake email like the one mentioned above, hardly anyone is going to cry for you failing to use common sense. The one thing in this world no one will protect you from is your own stupidity.

Scammers have a variety of methods through which they build positive feedback in order to establish a reputation they can use to rip people off. It's no conspiracy, but as others have stated, you have to be careful on ebay because buyers don't have any recourse through ebay itself. I use a credit card through pay pal to pay for all of my auctions because that allows me to file fraudulent auction claims through pay pal and visa if something goes wrong. You definitely have to protect yourself on that site.

Interesting. I'd stayed away from PayPal because they want a bank account number, and I don't like giving it out. I'd also seen a website or two that was devoted solely to PayPal horror stories.

I don't use Paypal much, but I've been sort of ripped off twice. Once by a guy who assured me a camera didn't have any scratches or blemishes, and it did. It took over two months, but I got most of my money (around $150) back from eBay (and I didn't send the camera back).

The other time, I happened to win with a pretty terrific bid, and the seller, due to some kind of "mistake," didn't have the item, and didn't know when they could get another. They didn't like the feedback I left, and tried to bargain with me through Square Trade. That's a useless outfit!

Other than that, I've done okay with eBay.

But back to PayPal--I thought the contract with PayPal specifies that you can't reverse the charges on your credit card. Otherwise, it would be PayPal left holding the bag when a scammer strikes.

Know anything about that?

I've slowed my buying on ebay as well. There are so many useless auctions on there. When I decide to bid on something I try to be 100% confident that the seller is honest and that the transaction will go smoothly. Have you ever looked up diet pills on ebay? Check out some of those sellers feedback.

"Didn't work, faulty product" etc. etc. And yet people keep buying, and then giving them negative feedback. Why are people still buying? Do they not see the 100 negs in the sellers profile? (or however many it is..)

My dad was on ebay for years selling world banknotes. He would usually sell them for a dollar each. I think he had 97& positive feedback, and about 5000 positives. Too bad for that 3% because there are just some weird buyers out there who bid when maybe they shouldn't have.

I think ebay is a very good concept, yet there are many free to list auction sites out there that everybody should migrate to.

Did you know that if ebay finds out that you're a member and you negotiate a sale off their site, you can get banned? That's going too far for me.

/rant.

Are you sure about that? I've seen lots of warnings on there about how it's a bad idea to negotiate a sell off the site, and how they won't back you up if you do get scammed in the process, but I never heard that it was against their rules. Could be though.

I'm a fairly new ebayer, with only 3 buys so far, and 3 positive feedbacks. I'm looking to sell a couple things pretty soon, and am hoping my low number of feedbacks won't put too many people off.

This is under the Seller Policies, Fee Avoidance:

I guess I have nothing to complain about though, ebay is a business...