A message to EBay

[radman]

Some may be familiar with the Garmin 2730's I found at EBay a couple weeks ago for $230. Seemed too good to be true, and it was. Turned out to be a hijacked account, and has returned daily ever since, using 1 or 2 different hijacked accounts each day, sometimes 5 for sale, sometimes more-13 today. Each day I reported them to EBay, and each day implored them to keep an eye on the category. Never happened. Today I sent this-

Sir/madamOver the course of the last 2 weeks, you have had an individual hijacking seller accounts and using them to fraudulently list Garmin 2730 GPS's. The number of units has varied from 5 to, today, 13 listed, always the same Buy It Now price, cost ($230), description etc, always a 24 hour time period, without fail. I have reported these on a daily basis for 2 weeks, calling for the category to be monitored and these listings eliminated and the offender found, if at all possible. Still they continue. If your service cannot contain even the easiest to spot fraud (not to mention having me call your attention to it repeatedly), I have severe doubts that anything or anyone here is protected. As a result, I have recommended to my fellow Dept heads here at the University of Minnesota that EBay no longer be used as a sales venue. I have some 50 vehicles coming up for sale this fall as part of our annual turn-around, and had planned to use EBay to sell them, rather than having a local auction as we have in the past, this due to good results using EBay as a sales venue. We have reconsidered this, and the response to this note will determine if we use EBay at all for future sales. I have to say I am not one bit impressed with the quality your security dept has so far displayed. If a company can't guarentee the safety of it's customers, I don't see how it can survive long. Your present success is fleeting I would think. Time will tell.

D Broderick

Fleet Sales Mgr

Fleet services, University of Minnesota

Minneapolis,Mn

I would highly suggest if you've ever used EBay, check your "My EBay" occasionally, the jackers tend to use high "good" feedback, stagnant accounts. YOU will be charged for the sales that occur, and the bad news is it will take a lot of work to straighten the whole mess out if you get jacked.

 

[Ignacio]

I did this same sort of thing a couple of years ago doing the dirty work to spot fake FJR, other motorcycle, and snowmobile frauds. I found over 100 in a 2 week period, they all disappeared about 20 minutes after I'd e-mail, and never once did I get other than a form e-mail reply back. The form would thank me, tell me how serious they are about security, and thank for using eBay, but nothing every how they were going to fix the systemic problem. It's a blackhole....which you've discovered.

It's a shame that eBay won't address the well-intentioned people like yourself directly and does make one wonder why they can't predict and whack fraud off quicker than you and I can so easily do. Something is fishy on that point too and I think it's probably going to end up (and I don't say this lightly) some sort of federal regulator investigation or class-action suit to sort out.

Meanwhile, it goes well-stated that a buyer be EXTRA EXTRA aware on eBay.

 

[radman]

They have a bazillion different product categories to monitor-I don't envy them the task. But they must get a handle on this, buyer-seller confidence is their stock in trade, it all goes to **** if they can't keep it.

 

[radman]

There are 17 of the Garmins now on hijacked accounts.

 

[Ignacio]

There are 17 of the Garmins now on hijacked accounts.

The hackers have got to be succeeeding to keep doing it. I wonder who's lefting the empty bag on these kinds of things? I wonder if the buyers are the ones being left the sucker?

 

[Mogambo]

I had two pairs of brand new, in the box, Tag Heuer sun glasses. I used to be a dealer for Tag Heuer watches and I also sold the sun glasses. The sunglasses were of superb quality and made by Premiere Vision and licensed by Tag.

When I closed my business, I sold one of the pair on eBay. The buyer was thrilled and gave positive feed back indicating so. I listed the second pair, almost exactly as I had the first, only to have eBay yank the auction and refused to let me re-list. They said they had suspicions that they could be fakes. Obviously they weren't. I thought WTF?

Now I read this **** and it pisses me off more that I, a legitimate business person gets unjustly picked on for no reason. Please tell me how this makes sense. **** 'em.

 

[wallypiper]

As much as I hate to say it, this isn't Ebay's fault and there is no solution. A market in which anybody can list anything for sale simply doesn't have the built-in protection of legitimate businesses that have a reputation to protect. No many crooks will go to the trouble to open up a brick and mortar store (well, except for the moto and car dealers) expressly for the purpose of ripping people off because it will only work for a brief period of time and then the word gets out. The investment is too high. There is no investment involved in opening a "store" on Ebay so there is nothing to keep the crooks away. All Ebay can do is peck away at it. The cost of actually providing security for all buyers and sellers would render the whole concept unworkable. The best they can do is investigate reports of fraud and remove the bad listings and close the accounts. The sheer number of people buying and selling there makes it impossible to do much else. You don't have to hijack an account - you can just open one, pack it with positive feedback, rip some people off and disappear, all for free. It is, in the long run, an unworkable model that is beginning to collapse under its own weight.

 

[slapnpop]

I'm not going to re-hash it all again.

Paypal and Ebay are the same company. They do NOT care about their customers in the slightest. At all. At any level.

I suggest every to remove their accounts, close them out, and never look back. When it first started, there were good deals abound on ebay. Now it's a trainwreck waiting to happen.

 

[mdisher]

Oh, good ol eBay... It's like herding cats.

I'm not a big fan either, it is seriously buyer (and seller) beware. You have to be careful, or you will get burned. I've had many a great exchanges via eBay, almost 200 and only once did I have a bad one, and if I had read better between the lines I'd have known better.

I did get stuck holding the bag once but it wasn't for much money $75 I think on a hi-jacked or closed account, but I turned that into PayPal. I was suspicious so I paid the extra $2.50 or what ever it was to insure the transaction at the time. No sweat and I got my money back.

They cannot protect us all just as the police cannot protect us all while we're walking down the street.

I know that's no excuse, and I'm not sticking up for them, but they do try really hard.

I will give you this example though...

About 3 weeks ago, we had a server get exploited at precisely 9:14am EST, some fine folks over seas compromised a flaw in some PHP knowledge base software that gave them access to a directory in said software.

What did they do? They put up an phishing ebay scam, a come reset your password type site within our site using a long obfuscated url.

How did I find out about it? I got an email at 9:50am from eBay security. I was amazed. I know it took them the better part of 15 minutes to track down my email through the server's IP (OK maybe 10, given the form letter/email the had and all that BS). But withing 30 minutes or so, someone had reported it, they had investigated, realized who not only had the server, who was responsible and emails were flying.

We shut it down before 10:00am and were digging through web and firewall syslogs.

We also sent them all of the code that was uploaded to the server as well as all activity from the 3 days prior.

They do try, but they also don't have unlimited resources. Much like the admins here don't either

-MD

 

[radman]

I understand the complexity etc, but this has been ongoing, for 2 weeks, same category, product, method, display. As of now (21:42 Central) the Garmins are still up for sale.

 

[mdisher]

I understand the complexity etc, but this has been ongoing, for 2 weeks, same category, product, method, display. As of now (21:42 Central) the Garmins are still up for sale.

They definately aren't good at everything. My paypal account still says I have open issues even though the issues is my resovled issue from the dispute where I actually got my money back. Who knows?

I just make sure (I) know what I'm doing,

If it looks too good to be true, it probalbly is.

 

[painman]

Looks like Ebay has an 05 for 5900.00 with real low mi. and an 06 with 19 hundred + some mi. for 11 grand with the Yami trunk and backpad set from someone on the board...sure you want to close your account? PM. <><