eBay is knowingly “aiding and abetting” fraudsters!

[PhilipCohen]

8 November 2008; last revised 11 September 2009

eBay is knowingly “aiding and abetting” fraudsters!

First of all, I am not “anti” eBay. As predominantly a buyer of collectible items and occasionally a seller, I love eBay. What I do not like is the totally unscrupulous and disingenuous actions of the people currently in control of eBay: executives whose only consideration appears to be the “bottom line” result that triggers their performance bonuses; you know, those bonuses that they are not currently receiving (unlike at Amazon) because they are not “performing” because their devious and/or incompetent decisions of the last couple of years are running this company into the ground.

So, do you think there is a problem with “shill bidding” on eBay? Do you think that eBay is doing anything to protect you from such fraud? Well, actually, in what will undoubtedly be a counterproductive attempt to improve their “bottom line”, eBay is now knowingly “aiding and abetting” shill-bidding fraudsters to prey on everyone buying on eBay.

For eBay to claim that the complete anonymizing of auction bidding (ie, “Bidder x” or “a***b”) has been introduced to “protect” buyers and, in particular, that such anonymizing will not make shill bidding any easier would have to be one of the most grossly absurd and disingenuous statements ever made by mankind. Clearly, just the very opposite is the case—it will indeed allow sophisticated shill bidders to run rampant: only a fool or a knave could believe or suggest otherwise. Can eBay management possibly be that stupid that they actually believe their own spin? Unlikely. Therefore it has to be a case of disingenuousness in the extreme, and they also must believe that their customer base (of buyers, at least) is comprised totally of gullible fools.

Regardless of who pays the fees, or who is now abusing the (broken) feedback system, or DSRs, or eBay’s latest “restraint on competition” attempt: the mandating of the offering of PayPal by sellers, or their failed naïve attempt in Australia to mandate the use of PayPal exclusively, etc, etc, etc, the fact is neither eBay nor its sellers can survive without the confidence of buyers, and the recent application, generally, of “hidden bidders” (particularly in the form of the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder x”) still suffered by users in the UK, Ireland and the Philippines), which serves no other purpose that to hide from view the shill bidding that eBay simply does not want to know about (because that creates work for them), is not going to improve that confidence anytime in the near future.

In the meantime, the bunch of unscrupulous incompetents currently in control of eBay are desperately trying to do every thing possible to stop eBay’s “bottom line” from deteriorating further in what will undoubtedly be a futile attempt to salvage their “performance” bonuses for the year 2009, having, quite justifiably, missed out on such bonuses for the year 2008.

The below links lead to detailed analyses of what this devious management team is up to with respect to this anonymizing of all bidding information (except for the “winning” bidder in the UK, until May 2009) that eBay claims is for the security of users but, I suspect, was deliberately planned to be applied in graduated stages (analogous to slowly bringing the frog to the boil) to enable eBay to then make redundant much of that “unproductive” customer support staff (ie, the 1600 redundancies announced in late 2008) that would otherwise have been wasting valuable eBay resources fielding buyer reports of suspicious bidding activity, which buyers can now no longer report, because eBay is now deliberately hiding from view any indication of all but the most naïve and blatant examples of such criminal activity.

It cannot even be said that this outrageous situation is an unintended consequence of some other necessary action: the excuse of stopping fraudulent “second chance offers” was always a disingenuous one: that problem being solved by the blocking of access to users’ direct email addresses. No, “hidden bidders” never had any other purpose than to obscure shill bidding: an action by eBay that is reprehensible in the extreme, if not criminal!

Then, of course, there is eBay’s seller-selected “User ID kept private” mechanism, what I call eBay’s classic “shill-bidders’ tool”, still available to the unscrupulous seller, even though all bidding IDs are now anonymised. Frankly, anyone who buys from a seller using this device is simply asking to be taken to the cleaners; when this device is used there is absolutely no way of knowing if any other bidders are genuine or not; the only ones who know are the seller and eBay, and eBay is not going to tell you …

And, don’t let eBay kid you that they have “sophisticated processes” in place to detect shill bidding: it can be demonstrated beyond any doubt that, contrary to those claims, they don’t have any proactive system in place; their only system is totally re-active: they rely wholly on user reports of suspicious patterns of bidding. The problem then is that, since the introduction of “hidden bidders”, users can no longer detect any but the most naïve examples of shill bidding, so how are users supposed to report the more sophisticated examples? Well, the conclusion can only be that they are not expected to do so. And then, of course, if you do spot some suspicious bidding activity, there is the convoluted process one has to go through to report same …

eBay does nothing proactive about shill bidding because undetected shill bidding has no detrimental effect on eBay’s “bottom line”, indeed in the short term it may actually increase final value fees (FVF). Having said that, I have no doubt that in the long term such an unscrupulous attitude to shill bidding will have a serious, continuing, detrimental effect on eBay’s bottom line; by then, of course, when the actual damage becomes more measurable, the good captain, “Noise” Donahoe, will undoubtedly have taken his golden parachute and bailed out.

I apologize in advance for any repetition (or errors of fact) in these below-linked “rants” as each was written at a different time, each prompted by the introduction by eBay of yet another devious (or at the least, stupid) change to the auction platform. And, if anyone can find any flaws in the facts or the conclusions that I draw therefrom, do please do let me know (if you prefer, email me directly: Philip Cohen at formset@exemail.com.au). Conversely, if you agree with my summation of the situation, please, do feel free to use any of these comments as a basis for your own submission to your local Office of Fair Trading or parliamentary/congressional representative. It is clear that eBay will only respond to direct government pressure or regulation …

Shill Bidding on eBay: Case Study #2 (9 September 2009):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24296
A study that shines some light on the more sophisticated and therefore harder to detect shill bidding activity by “professional” sellers that is now, and probably always has been, rampant on eBay auctions. These shillers cannot be detected via a single auction’s Bid History; a multi-auction analysis is required (and a link to a pre-formed spreadsheet for such purpose is supplied).

Shill Bidding on eBay: a Case Study (30 March 2009):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033
A case study of a blatant shill bidder that demonstrates beyond any doubt that, contrary to eBay’s claims, eBay has no active system in place for the detection and control of such criminal activity, and indeed that, with the introduction of “hidden bidders,” eBay is knowingly and deliberately obscuring same.

The ACCC’s latest response to eBay “hidden bidders” (17 March 2009):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23994
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s latest (disappointing) response, to further prodding, to my detailed submission to government regarding eBay’s deliberate facilitating of fraud upon consumers.

eBay “winning bidder” not yet hidden in the UK! (19 November 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23751
What is the need for the anonymising of the “winning” bidder also; and, if there ever was any valid need, why is that need not manifest in the UK also?

eBay now also hiding “winning” bidder IDs (29 October 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6499691
A debunking of the disingenuous reasons given by eBay for this action. Once again, the only purpose this action serves is to stop a more alert user from keeping track of suspicious bidding activity or promptly warning a less alert buyer that they have been “taken to the cleaners” by a shill-bidding seller.

The facilitating of fraud by eBay: a submission to government (23 September 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23585
A lengthy, detailed submission to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission regarding the deviousness of eBay’s anonymising of bidder IDs.

eBay disingenuousness (some classic examples) (26 July 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23458
The most blatant examples of the most absurdly disingenuous (some might say comical) eBay statements are here summarized and commented thereon.

Absolute anonymity of bidding: help bring eBay to heel (26 May 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23355

eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders (14 March 2008):
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23227
My first attempt at a criticism of eBay’s introduction of “hidden bidders”.
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.