Yesterday, I attended a worthwhile PowerSeller-only session presented by eBay Trust & Safety senior management. Rob Chesnut, Vice President, Trust & Safety kicked off the session with an overview of the Trust & Safety organization. As Meg stated earlier in her keynote, eBay has made an $11M investment in Trust & Safety with around 1,000 employees dedicated to safe trading. Clearly, fostering trust in the community is an eBay priority.

Rob provided a brief high level overview, refreshingly without PowerPoint, of his organization. Supporting Rob, were senior managers responsible for feedback, policies, and unpaid items (formerly known as NPB). Rob’s organization includes the following functions:

• Fraud Engine - Automatically flags suspected fraudulent buying/selling transactions to operations staff.
• Operations Support
• Rules & Policies
• Item Authentication
• Dispute Resolution
• Feedback
• Unpaid Items
• Law Enforcement
• Merchant Fraud

Most of the session time was spent responding to questions from the 75 or so PowerSellers in attendance. Some of the issues expressed by attendees included photo copyrights, grey market transactions, retaliatory negative feedback, feedback extortion, shilling, private User ID’s, private feedback, key word spamming, fee avoidance, account hijacking, counterfeit items, and more. The “dark side” of eBay caused by people that fall outside of the category “mostly good” or as Rob calls them, the “bad guys.”

The Trust & Safety group was only formed 2.5 years ago. Initial focus was on fraud and feedback. This year, Rob's team will launch a new unpaid item policy incorporating dispute resolution. The next priorities will be keyword spamming and fee avoidance. Rob also stressed that community involvement is key to making eBay safe.