Are 48% of eBay listings Fraudulent???

kevinyork

Ive been following a thread on the eBay community boards HERE.

It started with a user discussing how eBay wont take any action on sellers who commit location fraud .i.e. the listing says the item is in the UK but its actually shipped from elsewhere, usually the far east. However another seller has listed a way of finding out how many possible listings there are which are committing location fraud. Looks like it can be as bad as 48% of listings in some categories where the sellers say the item is in the UK but in fact it isnt.

If this is true, this is deception on a major scale and the tone of the thread is that eBay dont deal with it. They make it so difficult and time consuming to report such listings and seemingly dont take action. However, if up to 48% of listings are fraudulent you can see why, they would loose up to 48% of their income!

It makes for interesting reading. Are eBay effectively supporting fraudulent activity by doing very little about it? Its not as if they cant know how bad the problem is. Moral seems to be, beware. That item you order may be about to be shipped from shanghai, not sheffield.

shelly

Maybe its just me but it doesn't bother me where my items come from as long as I get them.

soolin

If 48% of items in a few distinct categories are listed with incorrect locations that does not follow that 48% of all listings on ebay are fraudulent. Those categories, and I would guess ipods, MP3 players etc account for a small percentage of the categories overall, so the true percentage of items listed with wrong shipping location could actually be lower than 1%.

That's the great thing with statistics they can show anything you want them to show, as the saying goes, 'there are lies, damn lies and statistics'.

If we get that true figure in proportion to total listings it begins to look a lot better.

Then factor in the definition of fraudulent. You see an item and it is pretends to be in the uK but feedback, postage rates and sometimes even the item description itself says 'Hong Kong'. At that point if buyer does not want to buy from overseas he walks away, no harm done just maybe a minute or so of wasted time. So, let's remove those listings that are not fraudulent, but probably more correctly termed 'misleading', we are now probably down to such a small percentage of the listings overall that it is almost uncalculable.

Personally if ebay wanted to put their fees up to employ several thousand people to check listings (and remember that several million are listed on UK every day) then I think I owuld prefer them to concentrate their efforts on real criminals. The scammers selling £600 laptops on hijacked accounts etc.

I have bought from overseas by choice, although only if I cannot get that item in the UK for roughly the same price. If the buyer pays by paypal backed by a credit card they have full protection if the item doesn't arrive.

I see these mis listed items more as an inconvenience than outright fraud.

Soo

kevinyork

I can understand why some might think this isnt a problem, however let me explain:

You buy an item described as coming from then UK:

it could then take 2 to 3 weeks to arrive as its being shipped from the Far East;

if it doesnt turn up, how long will it take to sort out a replacement;

you might end up paying unexpected import duty as its being sent from abroad but the listing said it was in the UK

you get the item and its the wrong one or not as described-where do you post it back to and how much will it cost to send it back?;

you have NO rights under UK consumer law as you would if you had bought it from a UK seller.

Thats why people should be bothered about it. Fine, if you buy from a listing which clearly says it is coming from overseas then the buyer is fully aware but if it says its coming from the UK and it isnt then surely that is a problem?

soolin

I agree there is a problem, I just suggested that the headline title 'Are 48% of eBay listings Fraudulent??? ' was itself misleading with only a tiny number of items actually coming from a location other than that shown in the auction.

I was just on ebay looking at a category I sometimes buy from, there are 11,000+ items currently listed and I have never ever found one with the wrong location listed. As I said in my first post, it effects a very small number of categories.

Soo

abarthman

shelly wrote:

Maybe its just me but it doesn't bother me where my items come from as long as I get them.

Then you don't have to filter your searches by the sellers' location. That's your choice.

But many people, myself included, filter seraches by the sellers' location, and prefer to buy from UK based sellers for the reasons outlined by kevinyork.

Like soolin said, you can usually spot a foreign seller who has misrepresented their location when you look at the actual listings, but it can be a time-wasting exercise having to manually filter them out.

kevinyork

soolin wrote:

I agree there is a problem, I just suggested that the headline title 'Are 48% of eBay listings Fraudulent??? ' was itself misleading with only a tiny number of items actually coming from a location other than that shown in the auction.

I was just on ebay looking at a category I sometimes buy from, there are 11,000+ items currently listed and I have never ever found one with the wrong location listed. As I said in my first post, it effects a very small number of categories.

Soo

soolin, if you let me know the category then I will do the calculation discussed in the forum posting to see what the percentage of possible fraudulent locations comes out as.

Kev

kevinyork

soolin wrote:

I agree there is a problem, I just suggested that the headline title 'Are 48% of eBay listings Fraudulent??? ' was itself misleading with only a tiny number of items actually coming from a location other than that shown in the auction.

The title isnt misleading at all, its a question which poses a figure based on using eBays' own filters on their site in one category.

motorguy

kevinyork wrote:

The title isnt misleading at all, its a question which poses a figure based on using eBays' own filters on their site in one category.

Come on now, your title is misleading - you should work for The Sun!

Yes, there are some categories where this may be a big problem but relative to the total listing on ebay its very small - certainly a lot less than your '48% ebay listings fraudulent' headline claim

Also, your conclusions are a bit iffy 'if 48% if the listings are fraudulent then ebay would lose 48% of its income'.

realistically, if ebay could be bothered, they'd just insist people state where the item is coming from, thus they'd lose very little if anything.

Yes, its definitely a problem, however it falls way below extortionate fees, paypal not protecting the seller (https://www.paypalsucks.com), scammers and shill bidding on ebays 'to do list'.

Amazombie

kevinyork wrote:

it could then take 2 to 3 weeks to arrive as its being shipped from the Far East; if it doesnt turn up, how long will it take to sort out a replacement; you might end up paying unexpected import duty as its being sent from abroad but the listing said it was in the UK

In my experience most items arrive with a week and any of the above problems would show up in the sellers feedback so as long as you ensure you use a seller with excellent feedback there is no problem.

kevinyork

Amazombie wrote:

In my experience most items arrive with a week and any of the above problems would show up in the sellers feedback so as long as you ensure you use a seller with excellent feedback there is no problem.

Thats fine if you know you are buying from overseas and are happy to do so. However Im not talking about such purchases. Im talking about purchasing an item from a listing which says it is in the UK but then it turns out it is being shipped from overseas and the buyer is totally unaware of that at the time of purchase. The listing is therefore wrong.

Seems like Im flogging a dead horse here as everyone is happy to buy from fradulent listings apparently. Good luck to you all.