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ebaY Debases Fraud Reporting
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ebaY
Makes it More Difficult to Report Fraud and Hijacked
Accounts on Their Site
20
Mar 2007
There are different ways to approach a problem some that
are considered healthy, and some not. The healthy way is
to admit you have a problem, and then look for and implement
a solution. The unhealthy way is to pretend you don't have
a problem, blame everyone but yourself for the problem,
lie about it, attempt to intimidate and punish anyone who
brings the problem to notice, and limit the ways the problem
can be reported. ebaY has chosen the unhealthy approach.
ebaY continually lies about the level of access the scammers
and counterfeiters have to their site. They manipulate
their listing numbers to try to hide what is going on,
on their site. They remove threads from their boards that
discuss the problems, and suspend the users who are doing
the discussing. ebaY has tried intimidating off ebaY sites
reporting on the ebaY problems, and has blamed everyone,
from the ebaY users victimized by the scammers and hijackers
to Yahoo and Microsoft for not doing enough to protect
ebaY. ebaY has taken no responsibility for their own issues.
The route ebaY has taken lately is to limit the information
users can see so the users can protect themselves from
fraud. They are hiding bidder identities, so that users
cannot tell is bid shilling is going on. They have removed
fraud warnings from ebaY Motors that provided some limited
alert notices to new users. Though ebaY did add a 'report
this item' link to every listing a while back, they added
it in the very fine print, at the very bottom of the listing
page, where most users would not know of its existence,
and would be unlikely to see it. But at least the button
did exist, linking to a form by which a user could easily
report a problem.
Though this button still exists and still works for some
types of reporting, the ability to report an item a user
did not bid on as fraudulent, has been removed from ebaY
Motors and ebaY Core. This is the option that makes most
sense to use to report a fraudulent listing
In contradiction to itself this is what you get when you
try to use the above option. You can't proceed unless you
input the information required by the following screen
- rendering the above option useless.
Items can still be reported as counterfeit, or using other
options that don't apply, or users can find and then wade
through page after page of the ebaY help/contact forms
and report hijacked accounts or fraudulent items in that
manner. Unfortunately, even fewer users know about how
to contact ebaY in this manner, than they do about the
report this item button at the bottom of the listing page.
ebaY continues to manage to hide contact information, discourage
users from reporting problems, and makes it very hard for
users to actually report serious issues, once they actually
find a method to contact ebaY.