eBay hiding rogue seller problems?What happened to this that ended yesterday on £131?

peterbaker

I am concerned that eBay is becoming such a hotbed for fraud that eBay themselves are just hiding affected items without saying what's wrong.

I saw this item finish yesterday at £131 after quite active bidding and I remember the winner.

If I try to contact the winner via Community I get:
My Messages: Contact MemberThe form is not available at this time.
You are attempting to communicate about an invalid item.
I haven't even put an item number in any contact form, but it just so happens I have the offending "invalid auction" still open in another window.

Surely eBay are not trying to obstruct me from talking to someone who might know the truth?

Well anyway, luckily the winner has a current item for sale so I have contacted him by asking a question on that instead. Will be interesting to hear what he says.


Meanwhile what exactly is the usefulness of the following message to someone like me who yesterday was planning to follow this seller and perhaps bid on another item?

This Listing Is Unavailable
This listing (270139946455) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.
If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it cancelled. Note: Listings that have ended more than 90 days ago will no longer appear on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270139946455

frivolous_fay

Umm, yes, it's all terribly big brother. :rolleyes:

If the listing has been removed, the winner will have been notified. Ebay doesn't let you contact other users you're not trading with.

peterbaker

frivolous_fay wrote: »

Ebay doesn't let you contact other users you're not trading with.

That's not true.

They sometimes don't, and they go through periods when they often don't, but there is no sense to it.

I think mine is a very good example of eBay sweeping fraud under the carpet.

HelzBelz

What is there to suggest fraud?, all you've got is a couple of error messages

frivolous_fay

I'm really not sure what you're trying to achieve by contacting the winner. This isn't the X-files - it's a removed listing.

peterbaker wrote: »

Meanwhile what exactly is the usefulness of the following message to someone like me who yesterday was planning to follow this seller and perhaps bid on another item?

This Listing Is Unavailable
This listing (270139946455) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.

Would you prefer this?

This Listing Is Unavailable. Do please have a look at this guy's other auctions. Even though this one was dodgy and we had to remove it, I'm sure the others are ok. Here's his ID. Have a nice day!

peterbaker

Maybe I am just a better detective than you, HelzBelz and you frivolous_fay.

There's no smoke without fire ... ever heard that one?

What other reasonable explanation could you sensibly provide us with for twenty electronic goods auctions all due to end in the last 24 hours from the same seller who had never sold anything previously and required payments by bank transfer not PayPal all disappearing from the face of eBay in this manner?

I would be most interested to learn if it was a common occurrence (this sweeping under the carpet thing).

frivolous_fay

peterbaker wrote: »

Maybe I am just a better detective than you, HelzBelz and you frivolous_fay.

Perhaps, but then you're armed with the facts, and we only have your posts to go on

peterbaker wrote: »

What other reasonable explanation could you sensibly provide us with for twenty electronic goods auctions all due to end in the last 24 hours from the same seller who had never sold anything previously and required payments by bank transfer not PayPal all disappearing from the face of eBay in this manner?

Just a crazy guess... ebay removed them, in order to prevent people being ripped off. Don't you think that's a good thing?

And if the guy was a scammer then I'd say you were being a bit obtuse earlier:

'Meanwhile what exactly is the usefulness of the following message to someone like me who yesterday was planning to follow this seller and perhaps bid on another item?'

peterbaker

If eBay remove evidence of fraud, what are they doing with it?

Because no-one knows the name of the seller because it is erased, and eBay are obstructing us from talking to each other about it, the same seller could be ripping people off right now under several different names.

It is not at all useful for eBay to sweep the matter under the carpet.

Why not leave the auction up with "Seller suspended", and a link "if you have any information that would benefit the eBay community please follow this link" and another link specifically for the winner of the auction.

The details of the item should be left up as a warning to the rest of us not removed with no explanation and replaced with a link that suggests I have typed in the wrong link.

frivolous_fay

Well, I have no doubt that you're resourceful enough to find out the ID of the seller. Look it up - bet you a tenner he's NARU. Does that answer your question about what ebay are doing with it?

Ebay isn't a public institution; it's a profit-making company, and we can harp on about their policies until we're blue in the face, but unless you're a shareholder, they're not going to give a stuff about your opinion.

I'm really not sure why you're so worked up about this; it seems to me that you're stressing out about semantics, nothing more. Ebay are removing fraudulent auctions - I'd say that's a good thing, not a cause for argument about HOW they did it!

In fact, stop me if I'm out of line here, but this thread would have got to the point a lot faster if your OP had read as follows:

'yesterday I saw a scammer listing a lot of expensive electronics, bank transfer only, short duration listings. Ebay have now removed them, but I think they should have left a note explaining that instead of just a generic screen telling you that the item no. was no longer valid.'

iieee

I had an item 'bought' on BIN recently by an auction wrecker. I reported them to eBay and eBay credited my fees back and deleted the listing, although it had obviously finished. I was told this was to prevent the item showing as 'sold' when people do completed item searches, as that would obviously give a misleading representation of how much the item was worth. Could be the same/similar reason they deleted that auction?

uktim29

peterbaker wrote: »

Maybe I am just a better detective than you, HelzBelz and you frivolous_fay.

They are not covering anything up. The auction was reported and removed, sometimes it may get reported late therefore it's removed after it's ended.

The buyer will get an email from eBay saying the item has been removed and they now no longer are committed to paying the seller. They will be advised that they can continue if they want but it will be at their own risk.

peterbaker wrote: »

Why not leave the auction up with "Seller suspended", and a link "if you have any information that would benefit the eBay community please follow this link" and another link specifically for the winner of the auction.

The only person who would end up seeing that would be if someone added it to their watch list. It would be pointless keeping them in the market place, it would just clutter it up.

If someone had added it to their watch list and it might have been dodgy all they need to know is that it's been removed. The seller will only get suspended if they keep breaking the rules. A random person is very unlikely to be able to give any information that would be useful to eBay. If they know of other id's then all they need to do is report them as well via the report this item link at the bottom of the listing.