Upcoming Licensing Hearing Could Impact Many eBay Sellers

[crymeariver]

I wonder how this will affect the other sites. Makes me wonder since i do sell for this one person but it is to raise money for her craft classes.

[PhilipCohen]

What on Earth is this post supposed to be about? How about some links, or something? Dah!
_________________
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.

[dsteiner]

I believe the OP is referring to this article:

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y208/m05/abu214/s02

[PhilipCohen]

Thanks, now I understand. What a totally ridiculous situation: they are trying to “control” someone who would appear to be simply acting as an “agent” for someone else wanting to list a good on eBay. I would have thought that if anyone needed to be “controlled” it was eBay, not its members.

A number of recent decisions by eBay are of concern: in particular the recent introduction of absolute anonymity of bidding to Australia and even more recently to the UK, but not yet to the US; the current attempt in Australia to introduce “exclusive dealing” for PayPal which, if successful, will undoubtedly embolden them to try it on elsewhere; and the proposed farcical revisions to feedback for buyers from sellers.

The current eBay management team are clearly only interested in lowering their costs and increasing their revenues, and they don’t appear to be concerned about who they tread on in the process, nor are they apparently concerned about any ethical considerations.

Anonymity of bidders was introduced supposedly to stop fraudulent “second chance offers” being sent to underbidders. The “second chance offer” problem—if it ever really existed—could have been solved in several far less drastic ways, bearing in mind that the situation was always that if the “second chance offer” was not also received via the eBay website then it was not genuine:

 Access to underbidders’ direct email addresses could have been blocked; and indeed they have been so blocked (let’s not go into the nonsensical eBay claim that fraudsters were “guessing” email addresses from user IDs).
 The system-generated email that advises an underbidder of a (genuine) “second chance offer” could have been re-structured to contain little more information than a hyperlink back to the eBay website.
 If any anonymity was required then the bidder-specific anonymity that was until very recently in use in the U.K. and is still in use in the U.S. was quite sufficient to protect underbidders, but did still allow bidders the opportunity to watch for suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding by particular individuals on a seller’s other items.
 The “second chance offer” could have been done away with.

We in Australia got the extreme of absolute anonymity; a form of anonymity that serves no other purpose than to obscure shill bidding. eBay’s reasoning is disingenuous in the extreme (they have even made the absurd statement: “… this initiative has no impact on shill bidding [and] there is no correlation between hidden IDs and shill bidding.”). Indeed, whether intentional or not, eBay is effectively now “aiding and abetting” shill bidding.

Please, understand this: absolute anonymity of bidders (undoubtedly coming soon to the US) has got absolutely nothing to do with fraudulent second chance offers; it is all about shill bidding, which is a real problem and causes alert buyers much annoyance and wastes eBay’s valuable time investigating reports of such activity. Something had to be done and the simple answer that this disingenuous mob of cowboys came up with was to further obscure bidding IDs to the point that a genuine bidder cannot detect shill bidding with any degree of (even) probability, ergo shill bidding is no longer a problem—for eBay. But for buyers, beware!

PS I would love to see the minutes of the eBay management team meeting wherein this disingenuous gaggle of turkeys decided that the level of anonymity of bidding should be increased from bidder-specific anonymity to absolute anonymity. Should make interesting reading. Maybe someone from eBay would like to post a copy of those minutes here, absolutely anonymously of course.
_________________
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.

[PhilipCohen]

It is clear that the law has not kept pace with commerce on the internet. With respect to eBay’s blatant obscuring of (shill) bidding on their Australian site by the introduction of absolute anonymity of bidding, the NSW state government Office of Fair Trading has advised that eBay is simply a “notice board” on which others place notices.

If you follow that line of reasoning then indeed all sellers—not only those agents who act for others—who list on eBay and choose to offer goods for sale by the auction process must be auctioneers! Surely, someone has to be the auctioneer. My logic says eBay is the auctioneer, after all it is they who set all the rules by which everyone else must play. But, then, I always had a strange sense of logic.

Unfortunately, it is generally accepted that the Office of Fair Trading in NSW is pretty useless but I would not be surprised if they did not at least ask eBay for a comment, and eBay responded with "we are only a notice board". Dah! Of course, that is a nonsensical understatement: it is eBay who set all the parameters and it is eBay who have now given all the shill bidders free reign to rip off buyers.

If one wants to get anywhere with a complaint one has to go one step further to the Consumer Tribunal ... maybe, further down the track.

It would appear that it is about time users wrote to their local member of parliament and asked for some regulation of such “facilitators” to ensure that a satisfactory level of security and fairness is maintained.
_________________
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.