Card Frauds on EBAY Should Disappear In 2007
storm888
Posts: 11,701 ✭✭✭
I am excited now!!!!
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Online auction site eBay heightens security precautions as fraud mounts
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Executives at eBay Inc. are touting security as their top priority in 2007 after an internal survey showed that online scammers may be denting the company's reputation.
Engineers also want to reduce counterfeit items and clamp down on scams between buyers and sellers from different countries, said William Cobb, president of eBay North America.
Representatives are also sending nasty e-mails to sellers who charge egregious shipping and handling fees. eBay reduced the average shipping cost in the "cellphones" category by 25 per cent since last summer, Cobb said.
Spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is targeting all scammers - from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates.
"We're never going to completely stop the bad guys from using the Internet, but we do know that negative experiences are a major reason people leave eBay - and they pass along word of mouth to other people," Durzy said. "In 2007, you'll see a sea change in our approach to trust and safety."
copy/paste: FULL STORY
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_b011827A.xml.html
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Online auction site eBay heightens security precautions as fraud mounts
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Executives at eBay Inc. are touting security as their top priority in 2007 after an internal survey showed that online scammers may be denting the company's reputation.
Engineers also want to reduce counterfeit items and clamp down on scams between buyers and sellers from different countries, said William Cobb, president of eBay North America.
Representatives are also sending nasty e-mails to sellers who charge egregious shipping and handling fees. eBay reduced the average shipping cost in the "cellphones" category by 25 per cent since last summer, Cobb said.
Spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is targeting all scammers - from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates.
"We're never going to completely stop the bad guys from using the Internet, but we do know that negative experiences are a major reason people leave eBay - and they pass along word of mouth to other people," Durzy said. "In 2007, you'll see a sea change in our approach to trust and safety."
copy/paste: FULL STORY
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_b011827A.xml.html
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
0
Comments
Ripken in the Minors * Ripken in the Minors Facebook Page
Here is my 'dream Ebay'.
1) Shipping and handling charges are banned. There is no use for them, other than to try and catch lazy bidders and make them pay more than they would like to for something.
2) Ebay store commissions drop as the % of your inventory that you sell each month increases. You want to clog up searches with 394 separate listings for single 1987 Topps stickers? That's fine. But you are going to pay THROUGH THE NOSE to do so. Meanwhile, sellers who-- gasp!-- actually put stuff that PEOPLE WANT TO BUY in their Ebay stores, and who don't mark up the merchandise by 400%, will pay significantly less of the freight to keep Ebay in the black.
3) A dramatic increase in listing fees, and a like decrease in FV fees. Make it a bad idea for some clown who has 500 CD's from the 1980's to list each one with a 4$ starting bid. If he wants to move them then start the bidding at 99 cents and put 50 of them in a lot. Ebay should be for sellers who want to MOVE stuff; not for stoners who want to try and make $18 a day profit by breaking all their useless crap into small lots and starting the bidding at $5. I know that for me personally there are a ton of searches that I would like to do, but that I don't because I don't want to wade through loads of BS. For instance, I'm sure I miss out on bidding on some nice lots of '60's and '70's cards for the simple reason that I'm just unwilling to search through 2500 listings from morons who want to put up random lots of 6 different cards from 1977 that start with a $2 bid.
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I wish that would happen, but I am not optimistic.
The early answer might be inside of smaller groups like
CU, and N54, etc. Making such a model work for the base
is easy, but expanding it enough to profit the operator
is probably not doable.
google is the best hope, but they don't think so.
AMEN!!
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
<< <i>3) A dramatic increase in listing fees, and a like decrease in FV fees. Make it a bad idea for some clown who has 500 CD's from the 1980's to list each one with a 4$ starting bid. If he wants to move them then start the bidding at 99 cents and put 50 of them in a lot. Ebay should be for sellers who want to MOVE stuff; not for stoners who want to try and make $18 a day profit by breaking all their useless crap into small lots and starting the bidding at $5. I know that for me personally there are a ton of searches that I would like to do, but that I don't because I don't want to wade through loads of BS. For instance, I'm sure I miss out on bidding on some nice lots of '60's and '70's cards for the simple reason that I'm just unwilling to search through 2500 listings from morons who want to put up random lots of 6 different cards from 1977 that start with a $2 bid.
AMEN!! >>
THANK YOU!! Somebody else feels my pain.
<< <i>Representatives are also sending nasty e-mails to sellers who charge egregious shipping and handling fees. eBay reduced the average shipping cost in the "cellphones" category by 25 per cent since last summer, Cobb said. >>
This is laughable. The average cost of cell phones is down over 25% so the guys that were trying to make their money on the shipping charges, obviously had to adjust to the market demand appropriately.
The other reason this smells, is because eBay is not looking out for the consumer by trying to cut shipping fees. They don't collect their juice on shipping, so they have a VERY ulterior motive to get that situation under control.
My Auctions
gives ebay more fees, and makes things simpler for the buyer.
-t
------- 1960 Topps Baseball PSA 8+
------- 1985 Topps Hockey PSA 9+
ulterior motive to get that situation under control."
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That seems obvious, at first look.
BUT, PayPal does make lots of money on inflated shipping.
EBAY is a VERY reactionary outfit. The stories about rip-off
shipping have filtered back to Wall Street (summer 2006),
and that is really what was behind the foot stomping.
Investors panic when they hear about unhappy consumers.
Cobb had to at least pretend that he was concerned, too.
"FREE Shipping" is the solution, but nobody agrees with me
and the mess will continue until they do.
<< <i>Removing shipping fees altogether and just making them a part of the auction seems very logical to me, especially for domestic purchases.
gives ebay more fees, and makes things simpler for the buyer.
-t >>
Agreed. It seems like such a no-brainer that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. What's not to like about free shipping? If Ebay's worried they'll lose sellers because of it then just lower the fees enough to compensate for the the fact that part of the cost is no longer fee-exempt for the seller.
Anyway, I can't figure it out. Whoever started Ebay is definitely waaayyy smarter than I am-- I'll give him/her that-- but whoever is running it right now is a stone moron. There are a million small changes they could make that would improve everyone's life considerably. For instance, give sellers who have stores the option to have a piece of merchandise automatically discounted in price by 10% every 30 or 60 days. How hard could that be? You know there's a ton of stuff out there that isn't clearing the market because the seller is too lazy to go through all his crap and change the price. If that same guy had the option of having Ebay lower the price for him every month or two ( kind of like a Naxcom deal) I bet it would catch on.
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I have engaged in hundreds of debates on the EBAY boards
regarding the issue. I can count on one hand the number of
people who have supported my position. (Although, I do get
emails from people afraid to post publicly, who are in favor.)
The "average" EBAY seller is not the sharpest card in the deck.
Once they get their minds made up that EBAY "benefits" from
increased FVFs on shipping, that is the end of the semi-rational
discussion.
If you could count all of the complaints about rip-off shipping
that have appeared on this board alone, you would see a
pretty high unhappiness quotient.
Sellers now hate buyers. Buyers hate sellers. The sellers'
moto is to heck with the customers, just give me more
money for handling your order.
The few sellers that would be run-off by the change would
never be missed, and overall customer satisfaction with the
venue would dramatically increase... almost immediately.
Rip-off shippers would no longer be able to monopolize the
first pages in the most popular search-preference results.
There would be no more worries for buyers about whether
or not they were going to get burned on shipping if they
bought something.
EBAY will not reduce fees to accomodate the scheme, but
they might announce (in July) that there will be "no increase
in fees" for the balance of 2007. That pitch would make it
more palatable for the majority of the peasants.
Once a seller has tried "FREE Shipping," he/she will never
go back to the other scheme. It eliminates a major point
to worry about being argued with over. The buyer pays
the same amount, and is not unhappy about S&H. (Buyers
still complain to me about things, but NEVER about S&H;
one less thing, as Gump said.)
I can't see how free shipping would equate to higher sales numbers for me. At the same time I can see how lower priced items with free shipping, would appeal to a lot of repeat buyers.
Scenario: If I have an ebay store front and employed two workers to list, package and ship, how do I pay them? I honestly think that if ebay went to a free shipping venue, my sales would go down. Because I feel buyers would not even factor the 'free' part into their bidding strategy after a while. They would expect it and get use to it. Meanwhile my sales numbers would diminish. Pretty soon I could only employ one person. Then after a while, I would be going out of business.
Try asking a brick and mortar shop to not charge you sales tax on your purchases. Or a waiter to skip getting his tip because it's factored into the menu price.
Free shipping is a similar scenario.
I myself don't gouge on shipping and don't like to be bent over on shipping either. If I feel the shipping is too high, I adjust my bid accordingly as I'm sure most buyer do. Or I move onto another sellers with reasonable shipping rates.
One thing I don't like some sellers doing is hiding the shipping amount in tons of other so-called sales policy fine print in the text of the listing. Basically hiding it.
Ebay should require or change their individual auction item pages to have the shipping amount right at the top of the page and not buried in the small print. The shipping charges should be required to be listed on the listing pages of all the searches too. Instead of making this optional, it could become mandatory. This would help a great deal.
I wouldn't like ebay to further dictate my selling policy by requiring free shipping on their venue. They already let so many rip off artists stay in business. Shady sellers with over-priced shipping charges will eventually go out of business without ebay interferring.
I would like to see paypal not take a cut of the shipping amount.
If I and I do, charge the exact USPS rates to my buyers, I lose on the shipping because of the cut the paypal fee's takes. That to me is a class action suit ready to unfold.
Again, these are just my opinions.
I do think BOOPOTTS idea of some type of fee reduction for ebay store owners that actually sell items from their store is a great idea. I hope I read your post correctly. Sort of an incentive to move product. The more you move, the lower the fee's. Also, I agree the searches sure are clogged up with a lot of over priced junk.
As it is, I'm getting fee'd to death by nickels and dimes by ebay/paypal.
Also, why do some ebay store sellers not break down their inventory into different categories within their store? There's one seller who has items I'm interested in, but has every card listed under one catagory and they have over 4000 items listed. I'm not going to spend an hour searching for a couple of cards I may need for my sets out of that listing mess.
Regards,
Rich
Just wait until Congress passes the bill up there right now to make everyone pay sales tax on your internet purchases. Ebay might want to look into the lobbying business.
<< <i>I am excited now!!!!
///////////////////////////////
Online auction site eBay heightens security precautions as fraud mounts
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Executives at eBay Inc. are touting security as their top priority in 2007 after an internal survey showed that online scammers may be denting the company's reputation.
Engineers also want to reduce counterfeit items and clamp down on scams between buyers and sellers from different countries, said William Cobb, president of eBay North America.
Representatives are also sending nasty e-mails to sellers who charge egregious shipping and handling fees. eBay reduced the average shipping cost in the "cellphones" category by 25 per cent since last summer, Cobb said.
Spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is targeting all scammers - from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates.
"We're never going to completely stop the bad guys from using the Internet, but we do know that negative experiences are a major reason people leave eBay - and they pass along word of mouth to other people," Durzy said. "In 2007, you'll see a sea change in our approach to trust and safety."
copy/paste: FULL STORY
http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_b011827A.xml.html >>
This statement is a first class joke. Ebay will and always will have as its "top priority" maximizing their profits. Frankly, it is simply way to easy to perpetrate fraud on ebay. And frankly again it would be quite easy to catch and prosecute these criminals if society is willing to do so. It is impossible not to scam on ebay without having a significant paper trail. The Pink Panther could successfully catch and prosecute ebay scammers. Throwing ebay scammers/criminals in jail would be like shooting ducks in a pond, but right now it seems like nobody wants to "shoot" these criminals. Get interpol involved, get the FBI involved and REALLY do someting about the problem, and I think you'd see most of the ebay scams disappear.
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The buyers were happy, they got the exact cards they needed without bidding and I did not have the stress of seeing cards all week long at 75% below what they are worth. Could I have done better on ebay? possibly, but I saved at least a hundred or so dollars in fees. Plus all transactions were checks, no paypal fees either.
When and if I put some of these cards on ebay i will charge 2.00 shipping. Any insurance will be optional and if not picked up by the buyer I will gladly do it.
Steve
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"Free" only means that the cost of shipping is included
in the price of the item.
I sell light and heavy stuff. Shipping is "Free," but the
buyer pays for all expenses involved in the sale (even
the shipping costs) when he/she buys the item.
<< <i>"Free shipping mandate is an absurd idea that would destroy the company. "
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"Free" only means that the cost of shipping is included
in the price of the item.
I sell light and heavy stuff. Shipping is "Free," but the
buyer pays for all expenses involved in the sale (even
the shipping costs) when he/she buys the item. >>
Then your expenses you're charging your buyers are included in
the BIN price, meaning you have your items in an ebay store. Well, if that's the case, then 'free shipping' does work because you can adjust your price to get what you need to cover those fixed costs for youself.
I don't know how you can include it with ebay auctions and say it's factored into the price unless you always get the amount you want for your items thru the auctioning of the items. Highly unlikely in a pure auction format.
I think a simple change to the ebay placement of shipping fee's on each and every auction page will clean up the shipping charges mess. Then each buyer can just look at a glance and see the shipping charges of each item they're interested in bidding on. And they (the bidder) can decide if one seller is gouging on shipping or is charging a fair amount for the service.
Although, another side of the coin, on psa cards, one seller may charge $2 for shipping. This might include a psa card thrown into a padded mailer with no packing materials inside. Another seller might ship every psa card in a sturdy box and charge $5 for shipping. So the shipping charges never really are the same unless the packaging is identical on each transaction. It's comparing apples to well-protected oranges.
The bottom line is how dumb are buyers if they can't make a determination of reasonable and fair shipping charges as opposed to a seller that uses shipping as a profit making part of the sales equation? If you can read and add, it should be easy.
If you can't, you probably shouldn't be buying anything on ebay to begin with.
Consider 4 Sharp Corners's business model - shipping on a 1st card is $3.50, on the next 5 cards is $1 apiece, and on all cards after that in the same order is $0.25 apiece. I may have 40 or more cards in an order from them (I think my record is 79). By that point, they've gone to using flat rate boxes for shipping (with several of the PSA-issue cardboard boxes inside), and my shipping charge averages less than 50 cents per card.
If they were required to include shipping cost in the starting amount, they could not only count 50 cents; they would have to charge at least a couple dollars. They have employees to pay, and proper shipping (which they do) takes time and uses supplies (as well as costing for postage/insurance/DC). Now the cards that were opening at $3 will open at $5 or more, because they cannot build the quantity discounts in for frequent buyers.
When I know I can get the card at about $3.50, I'll buy a good deal more cards than I will at $5.
Nick
Reap the whirlwind.
Need to buy something for the wife or girlfriend? Check out Vintage Designer Clothing.
would be very bad for sellers who combine shipping."
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Item prices would go up a bit, and the shipping charges
would no longer be an open-ended profit center.
In the 40-card+ example, the increase in item prices would
be pretty small.
There IS a current disadvantage to sellers offering "Free S & H."
I do NOT recommend that anyone rush to volunteer. BUT, I know that
it works, even with this CURRENT disadvantage:
1. Sellers offering Free S&H are disadvantaged in the most popular
search-return scheme (lowest-price first). The shipping-gougers will
always monopolize this search return, UNTIL "Free" S+H is mandated.
EBAY says they are having "great success" in "ending shipping charge
abuses." If that claim is true, the "Free" concept will never be implemented.
Another option EBAY says they are looking at: Display the "total gross price
delivered" in search return. This would likely move most/many of the
shipping-gougers to the bottom of the preferred search results.