Ebay FRAUD LOOPHOLE

velissaria

CKhalvashi wrote: »

This is it; it was a few quid. Never let a buyer trick you into waiting more than 45 days.

Re the foreign characters thing; I've just logged into my personal one and got the following for my personal address:

Кристофер Николаевич Халваши
Квартира 4
2/6 Улица (removed)
Королев
Московская обл
141062 РОССИЯ

So foreign characters should show up. Whether Chinese will on their systems is a different story, however.

CK

Thanks for the constructive comment (nice to see some people actually taking the time to read before making comments and criticise).

You are right, I would expect foreign characters to show up too. But I have tried all kind of different browser encodings and they don't show the Chinese characters. I also wonder if you can see the cyrillic characters because it's your own account. I mean, if any other ebayer exchanged personal info, would they be able to see them as well?

I think that either ebay should standardise the use of Latin alphabet, or at least, when I contacted them and showed to them that I can't see his details, they should have sent them to me instead of telling me to go and find some Chinese software. That reply was pathetic.

emmbrook

So you think that a billion Chinese should learn Latin characters to use eBay. Hhhhmmmmm.

Your point about eBay providing it in a form you can read is however a fair point.

velissaria

RFW wrote: »

As for sellers only using Latin characters in their name/address that seems a little harsh on a global scale, you did, after all, choose to use a Chinese seller. What would you have done with the extra information anyway, paid the seller a visit? Written them a strong letter? Sent them a novella detailing your complaint?

If I had lost a substantial amount of money, I would have contacted the Met e-crime fraud unit here and the local Hong Kong Police. Of course, I am not going to waste police time for $1.98, but the people in here who call me "daft" or that I have written a "novel" to complain, don't realise that little dodgy sellers (like this one, with multiple IDs etc.) are sometimes connected to a lot more serious crimes.

I think that according to Ebay, having different selling IDs if you sell different categories of things is permitted. But what is the point of 4-5 different selling IDs if you sell the same items through all of them? That's certainly dodgy. I think that at least ebay should have investigated this seller with the multiple IDs and make sure that there is transparency re- information data.

RFW

emmbrook wrote: »

So you think that a billion Chinese should learn Latin characters to use eBay. Hhhhmmmmm.

Your point about eBay providing it in a form you can read is however a fair point.

I'm not sure why you'd need anything more than an, email address, a name and a phone number which appears to have been provided.

velissaria

emmbrook wrote: »

So you think that a billion Chinese should learn Latin characters to use eBay. Hhhhmmmmm.

Your point about eBay providing it in a form you can read is however a fair point.

Fair point. My view was kind of "western-centric".

velissaria

RFW wrote: »

I'm not sure why you'd need anything more than an, email address, a name and a phone number which appears to have been provided.

I disagree. When I registered with ebay as a buyer I had to give my full details and even home address. I expect the same info from the sellers I'm dealing with. Quid pro quo.

velissaria

sharpy2010 wrote: »

I wonder how long the story would have been if it had been ten quid, or in fact would we be looking at a War and Peace style novel had it been for a tenner!

nag nag nag!

Seriously now, I am very surprised that most of you commenting here don't seem to care about all these "details". Ebay made a name by reassuring the sellers and the buyers that it offers a protected environment for transactions. In my book this means paying attention to detail. I think there are a lot of people in here who are sellers, and think that this is a sellers vs buyers argument. Other people seem to think it is about the money, despite the fact that I have stated that it is about informing people about my bad experience and raising the issue of ebay Customer Service standards. This is also the reason why I have submitted so many details.

RFW

velissaria wrote: »

If I had lost a substantial amount of money, I would have contacted the Met e-crime fraud unit here and the local Hong Kong Police. Of course, I am not going to waste police time for $1.98, but the people in here who call me "daft" or that I have written a "novel" to complain, don't realise that little dodgy sellers (like this one, with multiple IDs etc.) are sometimes connected to a lot more serious crimes.

I'm sure the police here and in Hong Kong would be able to get the address from the Ebay information, even if you couldn't. As for being involved in serios crimes, that's a big assumption unless you have any information you'd like to share? I'd be surprised to learn that the international arms trade was flogging $2 rings on Ebay.

As for multiple accounts plenty of sellers have them for various reasons, they could be accounts set up in different countries and of course it could be for more underhand reasons.

As I said in my first post, with the star system Ebay is quite good at self regulating, sellers with a bad rating will inevitably get suspended, if they have several associated accounts they will all get closed down. If you had know Ebay's rules then by opening a dispute before 45 days were up you would have helped get the seller booted off.

RFW

velissaria wrote: »

I disagree. When I registered with ebay as a buyer I had to give my full details and even home address. I expect the same info from the sellers I'm dealing with. Quid pro quo.

I'll ask again, what were you going to do with details of their address in Chinese or Latin characters?

techspec

velissaria wrote: »

If I had lost a substantial amount of money, I would have contacted the Met e-crime fraud unit here and the local Hong Kong Police. Of course, I am not going to waste police time for $1.98, but the people in here who call me "daft" or that I have written a "novel" to complain, don't realise that little dodgy sellers (like this one, with multiple IDs etc.) are sometimes connected to a lot more serious crimes.

Are you for real. Its highly likely your item was lost in the post. As you stated - they had good feedback. I agree the seller should have then refunded you - but they probably get scammed all the time - and were just trying to allow for the post delays. Some companies prefer to wait for a claim to refund - some prefer to protect their account and just pay out. You had 45 days - more than enough time for an arrival from Hong Kong / China.

I have bought many items from China - and nearly ALL turned out to be the same seller. At no time did i think scammers. YOU ARE ALLOWED AS MANY EBAY ACCOUNTS AS YOU WANT!!!!!!