Newcomer impressions about fraud on eBay.

[2221941]

My first listing was a watch, which was purchased but not paid for by a phony buyer.

After re-listing, someone else did the same thing: full bid but no payment.

Same for my camera: phony bid and no money.

In each of the 3 phony bids, the same email accompanied the sale message from eBay:

"Hi Mate, glad I won your item. I'm currently in NZ but you can reach me at xxxxxxx by email confirming the condition of the item".

Since the messages were identical 3 times from different registered  members with high ratings, I think there are groups of phony buyers giving each other positive ratings. They're registered with fictitious US shipping addresses and each one had 100% positive rating. Ebay told me, they'll register the non-payment against these buyers on their account but this is not visible to other members to warn about these phony bidders.

In each case, eBay did not allow a negative feedback for these phonies. Why not? Why does eBay extend more protection to phony buyers and not legitimate sellers?

I think eBay needs to take a serious look at the rating system so that fraudulent members cannot accumulate 100% positive ratings when they have in fact some bad history. Ebay needs to change their policy and allow negative feedback against phonies who waste everybody's time making purchases without paying.

One recent message for my watch came from Asia asking if I would ship to Singapore referring to his 100% ratings. I checked the ratings and found 10 positive ratings all sent at the same time to the second from a single source. 10 positive ratings all sent at the identical time? Please, give me a break, LOL.

As of now, I don't trust the rating system on eBay and don't understand why details of a bad trans.action cannot be visible to other members. I'd appreciate much more transparency on eBay allowing negative feedback with details.

[mr.elmwood]

I am willing to bet those "bidders" were brand new IDs. Along with being new IDs, they did not have a Paypal account. Why would they, they were disposable IDs? In your preferences you can set Buyer preferences" to exclude bidders who do not have a Paypal account.

Fraud, on eBay, is actually quite low. However, it is higher in electronics, watches, cameras, etc.

[pjcdn2005]

Since you are a new seller, people may be more likely to try and take advantage of you soI would suggest that you limit your listings to Canada and the U.S. especially items for $100+. Obviously, not everyone in North America is honest either but it is easier here to provide secure shipping. You can block bidders in countries that you don't ship to by going to Account and Site preferences.

It is also important to have the proper shipping costs listed for those countries that you do ship to.  For expensive items you want to make sure that you are using shipping services that will protect you from item not received claims. If you list the shipping costs ahead of times, there are no surprises for buyers so more chance of them following through with the sales.

I can see your point about the feedback system but ebay did allow negative feedback for buyers until 2008. Unfortunately, some sellers took advantage of it and would leave negative feedback for a buyer whenever a buyer left negative feedback for them so ebay changed the system.