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ebaY Debases Fraud Reporting
 

ebaY Makes it More Difficult to Report Fraud and Hijacked Accounts on Their Site
20 Mar 2007

There are different ways to approach a problem some that are considered healthy, and some not. The healthy way is to admit you have a problem, and then look for and implement a solution. The unhealthy way is to pretend you don't have a problem, blame everyone but yourself for the problem, lie about it, attempt to intimidate and punish anyone who brings the problem to notice, and limit the ways the problem can be reported. ebaY has chosen the unhealthy approach.

ebaY continually lies about the level of access the scammers and counterfeiters have to their site. They manipulate their listing numbers to try to hide what is going on, on their site. They remove threads from their boards that discuss the problems, and suspend the users who are doing the discussing. ebaY has tried intimidating off ebaY sites reporting on the ebaY problems, and has blamed everyone, from the ebaY users victimized by the scammers and hijackers to Yahoo and Microsoft for not doing enough to protect ebaY. ebaY has taken no responsibility for their own issues.

The route ebaY has taken lately is to limit the information users can see so the users can protect themselves from fraud. They are hiding bidder identities, so that users cannot tell is bid shilling is going on. They have removed fraud warnings from ebaY Motors that provided some limited alert notices to new users. Though ebaY did add a 'report this item' link to every listing a while back, they added it in the very fine print, at the very bottom of the listing page, where most users would not know of its existence, and would be unlikely to see it. But at least the button did exist, linking to a form by which a user could easily report a problem.

Though this button still exists and still works for some types of reporting, the ability to report an item a user did not bid on as fraudulent, has been removed from ebaY Motors and ebaY Core. This is the option that makes most sense to use to report a fraudulent listing

In contradiction to itself this is what you get when you try to use the above option. You can't proceed unless you input the information required by the following screen - rendering the above option useless.

Items can still be reported as counterfeit, or using other options that don't apply, or users can find and then wade through page after page of the ebaY help/contact forms and report hijacked accounts or fraudulent items in that manner. Unfortunately, even fewer users know about how to contact ebaY in this manner, than they do about the report this item button at the bottom of the listing page. ebaY continues to manage to hide contact information, discourage users from reporting problems, and makes it very hard for users to actually report serious issues, once they actually find a method to contact ebaY.