Crime and EBay

Lets face it, the $14.99 + postage + handling was not a lot of money to lose, but I pursued this matter, if only for research purposes for this article.

Upon further investigation – the seller, prior to closing his accounts, had a great deal of excellent feedback – Or did he ?
Lots of people responded saying wonderful, stellar things like “Great Ebayer”, “Reliable Guy” etc. When I looked down the list, now with a more critical eye, I realized it stated that some of them too have closed their accounts. Could the 58 responses by people have been faked by getting multiple accounts and posting your own feedback? It appears that this could be true.

I moved up to PayPal complaints department – its like the lost and found department at a railway station – things end up there at the very end of the line. Apparently PayPal investigate and reimburse for fraudulent sales of this type, but they have a large list of conditions that must be satisfied – which appear to be written to disqualify pretty much anyone – but I placed the complaint anyway. It takes a whopping 30 days for them to even respond on these kind of complaints and there is no guarantee of reimbursement – To be be honest, I didn’t even want my money back, I really want to know how Ebay and PayPal stop this activity. Of course emails to PayPal and Ebay support go unanswered, which I should not be too surprised at as they are now both the same company.

Anyway, after another couple of weeks – with no CD delivered and no response eBay or Paypal – I still want the CD (Carly Simon is a great singer you know” – So back to eBay.com I trot.
I do a similar search to and I see the craziest thing – the exact same advertisement by a different Ebay user.
Its the same words, same photo, same font – everything in the ad is the same – So I think thia has be the same guy, but under a different name (we shall call this guy Fred557)
So I contact him asking why he is using so many pseudonyms on Ebay and would he consider either sending me the cd or refunding my money.
He responds with a flame by calling me a “physco” and bans me from all his auctions and from emailing him.
This did make me smile, because I realized I must have stumbled upon part of his little empire of fraud – like a tip of a criminal iceberg as it were – except I have seen more of this iceberg than he wants me to see and certainly more than PayPal should ever know. But he does not need to worry, with the “30 days before we do anything” PayPal policy and the lack of interest on the part of Ebay and PayPal to combat this problem his secret is safe, for now anyway.

So who owns Fred557’s web site ? Well its our dear old friend Clive in the Houston double wide again, I just didn’t have the heart to call him again, pretty soon he wont even have the money for a phone.