02-28-2006, 02:58 PM
eBay issued a statement yesterday saying they're tough on fraud. I thought I'd counter that by feeding our RSS feeds some eBay fraud stories :twistedevil:
full article: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/inq...source=rss&channel=inquirer_business
Quote:Police there [Michigan] are investigating, and may catch the scammer or a confederate. But there are broader lessons in Smith's story for anyone new to eBay.
One is that eBay says it can only warn against scams, not prevent them. "Ultimately, this is between the buyer and seller. This is just a venue," spokesman Hani Durzy told me.
Don't expect much sympathy, either. Durzy even suggested that Smith "let her greed get the best of her" in falling for the scam. "What she did is the online equivalent of walking out of a store and buying something in a back alley," he says.
For that matter, eBay doesn't even count such "back alley" crimes as frauds when it boasts that only a small fraction of total listings - just one-hundredth of 1 percent - "lead to a confirmed case of fraud."
Sure, it's small fraction. But eBay reported 1.9 billion listings in 2005, so it translates into 190,000 confirmed frauds in one year...
Smith is understandably angered by the suggestion she fell victim to her own greed...
full article: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/inq...source=rss&channel=inquirer_business