eBay Considering Steps to Help Shillers and Scammers Regain the Magic

[regic]

Question # 9: Bidders on big ticket items are getting hammered directly to their email in-box with fake Second Chance Offers. It’s ridiculous. What are the plans to address it? ...
Bill Cobb: ... And we are going to potentially have to take some actions that are going to seem like they may not be Community friendly. Because we cannot, we probably cannot go forward with just allowing everybody to see everybody’s Bid History and you know, who’s bidding on what. And that’s really unfortunate, because I think that’s kind of the fun of eBay. We’re trying to think about how best to do this but as Matt said, especially on high priced items. We cannot, this is not a good use. This is not fair to our sellers who are actually not the ones trying to use Second Chance Offers. It is very unfair to our buyers and we’re going to have to take some steps to handle this. And it’s unfortunate but we have to above all, have a safe Marketplace. So as Matt said, look for some you know, coming soon some changes on this.

And from Caped - who's very reliable - later in the thread:

it's not just bidder search, but also blocking the ability to see bidder's IDs

In other words, Ebay appears to be planning to eliminate the Bidder Search function, and make ALL auctions private. This will be great for:

a) shillers

b) shillers

c) scammers

d) PowerShillers

e) bidders who want to bid on seventeen of the same thing at once, and then pick the cheapest, without any of the sellers noticing

and bad for

a) honest sellers

b) buyers who don't want to be shilled

c) sellers who want to check out a buyer's bidding history

d) board helpers who want to help a poster with a problem

e) everybody who wants the site to be safer and more transparent

Is this truly sickening, or is it just me?

eBay Stores board thread:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000354078&tstart=0
eBat Town Hall transcript (PDF format):
http://pics.ebay.com/aw/pics/commdev/Sep..._Final.pdf
eBay Trust & Safety board thread:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000223413&tstart=0

[xppman]

I just read that whole thread on the T&S board.

A couple of things is what I see.

1) eBay want's to hide the growing fraud and has no interest in stopping it as they profit from it.
2) eBay may very well be doing all this self destruct stuff so the stock plummets even more.
(That's when they will start to do their buy backs they announced earlier)

Really sad situation over there all around guys. I can't recall ever seeing so much turmoil in so many areas. It' is as if it relly is coming down to the wire.

[stardust]

beadhappys has it up on the Stores Board.  It's all just shit.

[regic]

Many reactions on eBay's bidding board - almost all of them against this proposed change.

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000353698&tstart=0

I'm gonna bet that the actual figure is ebay catches 1% of fraudulent auctions and 99% are caught by users.

But this new measure should keep the fraud figures right down. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist.

[BellisimaJ.]

They are so fucking stupid. It is so obviously a very transparent attempt to simply hide what goes on.

They are so going to run ebay right into the ground.

[bargainbloodhound]

My suggestion to eBay would be to test this in a very limited number of categories (namely the ones that compete with my websites) during the holiday shopping season before implementing it on the entire site.  :twistedevil:

Thank you eBay for continuing to drive buyers off of your site and into the arms (and shopping carts) of those of us with websites.  :twistedevil:


ps whoever came up with this latest attempt by eBay to regain its magic is a

[xppman]

Thank you eBay for continuing to drive buyers off of your site and into the arms (and shopping carts) of those of us with websites.

Ditto  I hope they do keep it up. 

[FiberGuy]

My suggestion to eBay would be to test this in a very limited number of categories (namely the ones that compete with my websites) during the holiday shopping season before implementing it on the entire site. 

Ohhhh yeeeeeah.... expand that to "FiberGuy's Categories, too" and we are in 100% agreement. 



I must admit... if there was ever an idea had for ebay to reduce it's fraud NUMBERS, this is a WHOPPER!

[thentavius]

Maybe I'm stupid, but I didn't understand a word of what Bill Corn on the Cob said. Talk about rambling internet speak that means nothing.