Are ebay/paypal trying to keep users safe? – we don’t think so!!
After many months of alerting ebay to fraud on their site we have come to the conclusion that the claims made about buyer protection are (for the most part) empty rhetoric.
It seems that they may be knowingly tolerating the sale of counterfeit and fake capacity flash memory in the interests of profit. We find a recent email sent to ebay members recently particularly suspect. To find out a little about why we think ebay’s so-called buyer protection claims are largely spin – read on!
Ebay makes this statement on ebay.com at the top of the bid history results page:
To help keep the eBay community safe, enhance bidder privacy, and protect our members from fraudulent emails, eBay has changed how User IDs display on the bid history page. Only you and the seller of the item can view your User ID, all other members will see anonymous user IDs, such as x***y.
Oh really – is that so? Are ebay being honest here? Somehow we think not. We think it is more to do with protecting ebay and paypal revenues by preventing ebay members from warning buyers about fraudulent sellers. Ebay and paypal make a lot of profit out of fraud – they are addicted to the money this brings in and rush to bury the evidence when fraud is uncovered.
Not only that – it seems ebay is now making it more difficult to view negative comments. You used to be able to click on the negs and see the comments – seems they are working on hiding these too! I found recently that I could not access negative comments about some sellers – now it is getting to the stage where (other than going through the whole of a seller’s feedback) buyers cannot access negative feedback for a seller. Just who is this protecting?? Not buyers, for sure!
An ebayer sent us this screenshot of an email from paypoo – oops, sorry – I meant paypal (or did I?)
We blocked out identifying information to protect this ebayer’s privacy – we find this email laughable in the light of the way that paypal has treated fraud victims recently. Just who do paypal and ebay (same company) think they are fooling? We have a lot of evidence about their dealings now. We can see clearly that all the claims of buyer protection are less than truthful.
Buyer protection on ebay? forget it! Seller protection? – only if you are making a lot of cash for ebay/paypal. If you are a fraudster who lists hundreds of fake items it seems they are willing to protect you. If you are an ordinary person, you can forget it!
After months of investigation we have concluded that ebay/paypal have no interest in anything except money. They don’t seem to care about anything except profit.
We expect ebay members around the world received a message from ebay yesterday or today entitled:
Demand an end to unfair trade practices
Here we seem to be invited to endorse ebay’s toleration of fraud!! Here is the text of the message in question – decide for yourselves whether ebay acts in your best interests or not!!
eBay was built on a simple idea – that we could empower people by building a global trading platform where
practically anyone could buy or sell practically anything. But that idea is now under threat from certain brand owners and manufacturers who are trying to turn back the clock and block the sale of their products on online marketplaces and other websites across the EU.
Ultimately, what is at stake is the right of sellers to compete fairly in the wider online marketplace, and the right of buyers to be able to access the best possible deals from the widest possible selection of goods.
Some of these brand owners argue that their objective is to revent the sale of counterfeits on eBay.
But thanks to our work with 31,000 other rights owners, only 0.15% of listings last year were detected or
reported as potentially counterfeit. The real aim of these brands is to block the sale of all their products
on our site – regardless of whether such items are new or second-hand, genuine or fake. It’s not just luxury items that are affected, but also everyday items like children’s toys, electronic equipment, lawnmowers and
pushchairs. And if we want to prevent other brand owners from following suit, we need to act now.
We are therefore calling on European policymakers to amend EU competition law to stop these unfair
trade practices. But we need your help to persuade them to take action. If you would like to join our
campaign against online trade barriers, please sign our petition.
Regards,
Your eBay Team
Fightflashfraud sees ebay’s petition as a fraudsters’ charter rather than anything else – signing this will help counterfeiters and fake flash sellers continue their trade. The barrier manufacturers want is a barrier to fraud – we want one too – ebay obviously doesn’t! Do not sign this petition!!
WE DEMAND THAT EBAY STOPS FRAUD ON THEIR SITE!!
