How much fraud is there on eBay? Last year eBay covered $50,000,000 in claims
relayer
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Up from $36 million in 2003 (and only $7 million in 2002 ) - but since 2002 that also includes their evil step-child PayPal.
But don't worry for poor eBay. It's a drop in the bucket of their $3+ billion in revenues, plus they shared the loss with all US taxpayers.
eBay Annual Report
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Fraud is now rampant on Ebay IMO, and Ebay is a playground for just about every internet scammer and 2-bit crook out there. And good feedback is really NO guaranty of an honest and reliable seller IMO.
Just be careful.
Randy
<< <i><<< How much fraud is there on eBay? >>>
Fraud is now rampant on Ebay IMO, and Ebay is a playground for just about every internet scammer and 2-bit crook out there. And good feedback is really NO guaranty of an honest and reliable seller IMO.
Just be careful. >>
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
I know they refund fees for NPB, etc, but I didn't know they would ever actually pay anyone for fraudulent auctions.
Maybe it is from settlements from people who sue or threaten to sue?
You can file an eBay fraud claim for up to $250 (but it costs $25 to do it)
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<< <i>You can file an eBay fraud claim for up to $250 (but it costs $25 to do it) >>
Didn't know that... thanks for letting me know.
Ebay has plenty of sellers IMO. They might consider putting a moratorium on NEWLY registered seller accounts and make good feedback like gold.
There are only just so many different items to sell and the profit available to the average ebayer has been declining for the last two years. You've got a situation currently that makes the selling venue so competitive that the profit has been wrung out of the deal and scammers are stretching to find the next con.
<< <i> I would think that Ebay would have a robust fraud prevention dept with this kind of loss. As a business owner I could easliy justify the head count to counter this type of bleeding. >>
Easier said than done; as of this moment, Ebay currently has 18,014,637 auctions active. How do you begin to police that?
As for filing fraud claims. On half.com I have ordered more than one textbook that never came in. After the mandatory 30 day waiting period (almost 1/3 through the semester) I filed a claim. I suppose they try to contact the seller to get their side of the story. After having no better luck than I must have, my money including shipping was refunded. This has happened twice to me now and E-bay has never charged me a cent for it. The entire process from purchase to refund took 3-4 months, and I'm not complaining considering how much of this crap they most go through! Only bad part is having to go buy another copy of the same expensive book and being twice as far in the hole for a couple months. I'm sure they do have a fairly robust department to handle just this sort of thing. Problem is, there is really no way to monitor these things before they happen. Anyone else have any ideas?
<< <i>Easier said than done; as of this moment, Ebay currently has 18,014,637 auctions active. How do you begin to police that? >>
With computers and a $36,000,000 budget. VISA does it and they have BILLLIONS of transactions a day. You use your data, mine it, and look for people selling laptops with little feedback, etc.
<< <i>You use your data, mine it, and look for people selling laptops with little feedback, etc. >>
Good point about Visa. Just about the only thing Ebay can do, however, is data mine and create algorithms, but problems crop up. They could come up with programs to curtail shill bidding easily enough, by looking for low feedback buyers bidding on the same seller's auctions and such. Likewise if someone gets 100 feedbacks selling $100 stuff then suddenly lists 20 $5000 items, that could pull a red flag. But one thing that make Ebay so profitable is the people who decide one day to sell a laptop or some other such thing. Many "casual" Ebayers have multi-hundred or even thousand-dollar items in their homes that they will, in time, upgrade and attempt to sell on Ebay. You can't flag every low feedback seller who sells an item over $XXX precisely because that's what Ebay is--a giant garage sell. Many legitimate sellers might list a few things a year, some big ticket, some low-priced, so it's entirely possible to find a legitmate 0 feedback person selling a laptop or some other valuable item that they just replaced.
auction froud at its best
Of course, people who send thousands of dollars to people with (0) or (-1) feedback ratings are stupid to begin with. No system will prevent these mental midgets from being gored.
Maybe we should get the Federal Government involved? Maybe start a new agency!
Dave
<< <i>Here is a perfect example
auction froud at its best >>
I don't get it
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It would not take a rocket scientist to create some simple search methods to eliminate the bulk of the fraud. Eliminating all 100% FB
sellers would probably cut the number to search by 80%. Exclude items under $20. Why bother with that. Those are trinkets. Why the initial weeding down would take some time, an enforcement team of even 100 people ($5,000,000 per year) would recover much more than their cost.
roadrunner
Ebay doesn't need to police 18,014,637 auctions. They can concentrate on the ones they're told about. My guess is that a large percentage of all fraudulent auctions are reported to Ebay soon after the items are listed by expert buyers and sellers from each listing category. Ebay needs to take quicker action on this kind of blatantly fraudulent auction, uniquely identify the sellers, and use the information to help prevent the same person from being able to sign up again the next day.