EBay absolutely, positively guaranteed almost safe
I have often been suspicious of EBay, largely because of the bad press they received a few years ago — for the most part having to do with disgruntled customers that did not receive their goods. But given their huge success I thought EBay must have achieved some degree of respectability by now.
Until, that is, I recently made a purchase on EBay. I bid and won an auction and have the emails to support it. I have emails from EBay urging me to make my payment promptly using PayPal, which I did. And then a few days later, I got this email from EBay:
7175456308 … was removed because the intellectual property rights owner notified eBay that the listing potentially infringes its copyright, trademark or other rights. Due to this claim, and the fact that the feedback system is no longer available, we strongly urge you not to complete this transaction.
Now, I have a serious problem with this. If I visit the EBay site there is absolutely no trace of the auction or my transaction. While they did conduct the auction and, through their subsidiary PayPal, accept my money, this makes it look like they are denying it. There is no record of the auction, the item I bid on or the fact that it has already been paid for. What’s more it appears that EBay is attempting to distance themselves from the matter by making it impossible to look up the auction.
EBay is, in essence, erasing any visible history that the auction took place. Had no money changed hands, I probably wouldn’t care — but it did and now the record of that transaction is apparently missing. I can’t believe that this is a fair or reasonable business practice.
Of course, as long as EBay maintains those records internally and supports their claims of preventing fraud (and guaranteeing reliable transactions), they will meet their fiduciary responsibilities. Nevertheless, the steps taken thus far look very shady, to say the least.
Doc Scott
on September 15th, 2005
This is not an infrequent happening with eBay & their Paypal. It is the sort of thing that needs to be reported to the Better Business Bureau; otherwise, no corrective action or sanction is applied to eBay. Most do not understand that eBay is a ’sovereign unto itself’, and they are called upon by no one to answer for what I choose to call ‘their crimes’. One can be assured that they answer to the BBB because they are members, and a high enough percentage of claims will jeopardize this. They are used to getting by with this because very, very few have reported anything about eBay & Paypal’s crimes to the BBB. Less than three thousand a year even think to do this, check for yourself. Good luck.
http://www.bbb.org