eBay's technical problems have caused me to lose business while selling and lose money while buying. On selling, due to improperly functioning indexing, which limits when my auctions show. On buying due to technical issues which show already paid items as paid..and then holds placed on multiple debits so refunds cannot be processed on duplicate payments. Also, as a buyer, many seller items don;t show, so I cannot bid. Luckily past sellers email me their auctions so I can bid. I am now boycotting eBay and urge all to do the same. Read below:

Are you aware that eBay has been having major technical problems that are driving customers away in mass? This isn't a recent problem; however, it is an ever-increasing problem that has become an international concern. I am pasting an article below about eBay Spain. Also, I am inserting a link so you can read about the concerns here.

We buy a lot on eBay and sell occasionally. We no longer will be buying or selling on eBay until the technical problems are addressed. I would be happy to detail the problems for you. Or you can just read about them on the bulletin board. We are finishing out bids we placed and then done. We have completed well over 500 transactions on eBay with 100% positive feedback. Now we are quitting, as are loads of others.

Since e-business is so popular, I thought this all may be of interest to you. My favorite site is now shopgoodwill.com I'm going to write to them and ask that they consider a Goodwill friends section wherein they allow users to post items with a feedback system and a percentage of proceeds benefiting Goodwill's mission. Listing fees and percentage of final value fees would significantly bring in revenue for SHOPGOODWILL.com. And, since people are so fed up, I think this is perfect timing.

There are other auction sites. I've only used one other ioffer. It is neat in that it allows prospective buyers to make offers and puts all correspondence between would-be buyers and sellers out in the open for all to read.

Anyway, here is the article and the link to the boards.

Sincerely,

The array of technical problems can be seen on eBay's community bulletin board under TECHNICAL ISSUES. Here's one link http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jsp?forum=87&thread=410025078&start=440&msRange=40

Spanish eBayers in open revolt Published Tuesday 23rd November 2004 16:37 GMT

Pity if you will poor old eBay, which has of late been taking some heavy flack about various aspects of its lucrative operation, not least the small matter of buyers being fleeced by dodgy vendors.

And it gets worse. Since 11 November, Spanish eBay users have been fomenting a strike aimed at attracting the company's attention. As lead agitator Vicente Font put it on an eBay Spain forum:

I invite you to participate in a general strike on eBay Spain in protest against all of the company's current inadequacies that they do nothing to resolve and that we are sick and tired of reading about in forums.

For my part I have not put anything up for sale (nor have I bought anything, naturally) and I'm going to continue until the 31 December (if they don't shut my account down) at which time I'll resume - if we manage between us to force a 180 degree turn on the part of the unspeakable powers that be at eBay Spain so that they really offer things like "customer service" and stop winding us up with their "pituforrobotines"* and other irritations. I ask that if you have stuff to sell you sell it somewhere other than on eBay Spain. We have to get them thinking. They pay no attention to the forums or to our complaints. A strike will surely grab their attention. I hope to get your support for the good of all of us. Well, it certainly did get eBay's attention, because on 12 November the "eBay team" wrote:

Dear users,

We'd like to thank you for your comments and suggestions which we read with interest.

Because of these, we have contacted some of you to try and identify more clearly what exactly provoked this. We understand that the matters which worry you most are: Customer services Searches in categories such as Stamps and Coins, Art and Antiques or Music Security, especially slow-paying buyers....

And so it goes on, with a few tips for punters as to how to improve their eBay experience. Sorted? Nope: It seems you have NOT taken this on board. This is ONLY three points which, while important, are not the most important.

First up, you should sort out a more secure registration system since EBay Spain is AWASH with fraud and piracy. By late on the 12 November, the wave of dissatisfaction had spread to Italy and France, with the latter offering a fraternal "SOLIDARITY!" By the 13th, Blighty and Belgium had joined the cause - quickly followed by a representative of aggrieved US users: I wish you the best in your strike.

In the US customers are also unhappy and many US Power Sellers are moving their business to their own web sites or moving to other auction sites because of all the problems and eBay's complete lack of response to them. US sellers, and sellers in many other countries have suffered through 9 months of billing problems with many sellers being overbilled by eBay, having their bank accounts overdrawn, etc. eBay is the only large corporation that does not provide a telephone number for sellers to call when they have problems, and eBay has ignored the emails of many who complained when they were overcharged. eBay has also suspended sellers who complained when they were overcharged. In July US sellers filed a Class Action lawsuit against eBay due to these billing problems.

The US site is also full of software bugs which eBay is unable to fix. There are some software bugs with the US eBay stores which have existed for over a year and have not been fixed.

eBay also does little to stop all of the fraud and fake merchandise that is sold on its US site. eBay's US customer service is also horrible and there are many complaints Australia manned the barricades on the 14th, as did Germany and then... well, by this time it was all starting to look a little like a full-scale insurrection as the International Brigades flooded into the forum.

eBay's last comment came on the 22 November, offering: We at eBay are listening to your suggestions and, as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the platform, want to speak to you to let you know about the improvements we're working on and discuss openly all of your suggested improvements We do not believe that a forum is the best way to conduct this dialogue and formulate proposals in a democratic and serious manner, and for that reason we have invited two of you to our offices.

We ask that you respect the suggested solution and assure you that, once the meeting has taken place, we will reopen the debate to include ideas to improve eBay, without getting into non-constructive criticisms.

The response to this olive branch was predictable: "WHY DON'T YOU KICK OFF BY TELLING US HERE WHAT THESE 'IMPROVEMENTS' YOU'RE WORKING ON ARE?" huffed another disgruntled user. And so the agitation continues - currently 800+ posts over 57 pages. God alone knows how this will end, but one thing is certain - the eBayers of Spain are revolting and it may take more than a friendly head-to-head at the company HQ to quell the uprising. ® *We have no idea what "pituforrobotines" means, although our Spanish readers have offered the following: "Pitufo" = Smurf; "robotines" = robots. Therefore, we now have "robot Smurfs" or thereabouts, leading us to: Relative your doubt about the translation of "pituforrobotines" I can tell you that this is an expression invented by one of the eBay users in Spain. It comes from "Pitufo" and "robotines" "Pitufos" are the small blue TV personages called "the smurfs" in English "robotines" mean "little robots" So "pituforrobotines" refers to those "small blue robots" which are living inside eBay computers & servers and are controlling everything what is happening inside eBay then sending non sense automated messages to the users, canceling accounts, etc. The reason of double "r" is due to Spanish grammatical rules. Cheers

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As I stated on this website, because of scam sellers ability to run unlimited numbers of auctions and their ability to get multiple i.d.'s, you and me will have to go through ALL those auctions just to find a legitimate seller (who may or may not be misrepresenting his junk.) The "community" of ebay forum sellers can't police ALL those auctions!! THIS IS EFFECTIVELY LIKE TRYING TO BUY EXPENSIVE CHINA IN A HUGE SLUM-RIDDEN, THIEVES AND PICKPOCKET-RIDDEN, DRUG-INFESTED PART OF TOWN with only 1 or 2 non-deputized sherrifs. HOW SAFE DO YOU FEEL KNOWING THAT?? Makes me feel creepy and scared!! Ebay will instantly stop a VERO violation auction because ebay is afraid of being sued for big $$$'s by the other companies' big $$$ lawyers and ebay will instantly work with the police because they don't want to be in violation with the government BUT EBAY WON'T DO ANYTHING FOR THE LITTLE JOE because the little joe doesn't have big $$$ lawyers, big deep $$$ pockets to pursue a fraud case, and big governmental connections. In addition, ebay MAKES IT HARDER TO FERRET OUT SCAMMERS e.g. It's regarded as "auction interference" to email a former bidder of a seller you want to check up BEFORE you place your bid. e.g. You can't email bidders directly to find out about a scammer. You have to go thru ebay's email system in order to contact other bidders. In fact, ebay won't allow you to use your own email address as a user name. Then when you and other bidders have problems with the scam seller, ebay won't give out any more info about the scammer until you're able to force the police off their duffs.

As one poster posted, "Ebay IS THE SCAM ITSELF!!! Ebay has thousands upon thousands of compalint with the BBB and the CA State Attorneys Office. These scams happen because Ebay lets them happen! Lets all report ebay now so Ebay will stop!!! They only will help you if you complain!!! It's a proven fact.

LOOK WHAT WE FOUND TODAY!!!

WOW! -EBAY HAS OVER 1,700 COMPLAINTS ON FILE WITH JUST THE BBB ALONE!!!!

EBAY WILL ONLY RESPOND AFTER YOU FILE THESE COMPLAINTS!"

Ebay could easily warn people about money transferrng services UPFRONT in every one of their auction ads and include a link to the T&Safety board on all the auctions in big red letters but they choose not to do so, so that they can keep new ebayers "in the dark" and keep them bidding. Lots of ebayers once scammed don't complain to ebay because they're afraid, embarrassed, or just sick of it. About half of the victims never officially report Internet Fraud. They don't want to let others know they have been tricked into it. So ebay just made money off them.

In the case of Stolen CC's being used by scammers, the CC account holders probably won't detect the frauds on their statements (since many people don't look at their statements) or won't detect it until MUCH LATER ON so ebay basically makes money off the fees and/or the FLOAT or bank interest from having the fees off the stolen CC's even if ebay has to return the original amounts later.

So ebay always shrugs off the amount of fraud to the various media organizations by saying there are less than 1%, FRAUDULENT TRANSACTIONS, RIGHT??!! This is a RIDICULOUS STATISTIC TO MANY OF US WHO HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF. LET'S LOOK AT THIS "LESS THAN 1%" STATISTIC CLOSELY. HOW DOES IT COME ABOUT??

• Ebay only counts it a fraud ONLY IF EBAY AGREES IT'S A FRAUD dispute and you already know that ebay doesn't get itself involved with seller-buyer disputes and certainly doesn't want to lose too many $$$'s with their illusionary "buyer protection," so they'll keep saying "they're only a venue." Many ebayers think the percentage is more like 10% or more.
• Ebay can avoid calling transactions frauds if they can delete them soon enough. Everytime members report fraud to ebay, esp. regarding 0 feedback or incorrect "contact info," they instantly NARU the user so obviously no fraud report ever FORMALLY has to be made. Meanwhile, the NARU'd i.d. just goes ahead to scamming with its 149 other fake i.d.'s.
• Is SHILLING and COUNTERFEIT FRAUDS and MATRIX SCHEMES and AUCTION TRICK SCHEMES(like info auctions only) included in this percentage of less than 1%? They are so ubiquitous on ebay it makes most experienced ebayers laugh with impunity at this ridiculously low statistic of less than 1%.
• Many ebayers don't report fraud because of embarassment of getting suckered
• Many ebayers don't report fraud because of hassle/lack of ebay & law enforcement cooperation. In fact, about 40% of ripped off buyers NEVER report it to the police. People have busy lives of their own to lead.
• 1% of millions of transactions per day on ebay is still a HUGE NUMBER. What's 1% of 1,000,000?? a PRETTY BIG NUMBER!! And remember, as stated above, many ebayers think the %age is more like 10% or more. so 10% of 1,000,000??? a VERY HUGE NUMBER!! Especially if you also count in the fraudulent transactions of fraud bidders with honest sellers as well as SHILLING AND COUNTERFEIT FRAUDS and MATRIX SCHEMES and AUCTION TRICK SCHEMES.

There have been many suggestions from other ebayers to ebay:

• Ebay could put a LARGE RED link to the latest scams on every auction ad to inform new ebayers as to the latest scams.
• Ebay could easily block I.P. addresses and countries where fraud is rampant like Craigslist.org does, but ebay doesn't do this.
• Ebay could easily design a quiz first that new ebayers must first pass before bidding.
• Ebay could easily design software that stops auctions from going over a certain limit.
• Ebay could easily demand higher verification standards for sellers.
• Ebay could put a 30-day wait before any new ebayers can sell so that the original holder of the CC can be alerted that their CC is being used by a scammer.
• Ebay could demand that a seller with 0 feedback must accept CC only with ebay/paypal processing the CC payment.

  All of these suggestions have been made to ebay throuout the years and ebay ignores them!!

  I don't post on the forum boards because most of the sellers there are pro-ebay and ebay will just delete any threads that are critical of their reputation and/or security. A few things i mention on here were on threads that were quickly deleted by ebay like the one about the ebay insiders deleting feedback or the sellers using auction software to delete negative feedback.

  i have no ulterior motivation to help you or any other ripped off buyer other than a sense of comaraderie for getting ripped off. I'm not an owner of any company on or off the web or know anyone personally on any of the websites i posted on this website nor do i know a friend or relative of anyone on these URL's. I read and post on slashdot, but i have no personal, family, business or friendship ties to slashdot. If I refer you to software I've used, that's as far as my connection is to these URL's.

  I've already detailed ootUS sellers who scam U.S. Citizens, the worst type of scamming. Well, guess what?? THAT MONEY goes OUTSIDE the U.S. instead of going back into the U.S. economy to fund jobs, taxes, etc. So THAT MONEY goes to support other countries, not ours.

  In addition, the fact that ebay coopts its volunteers to tell ebay buyers to go to the authorities for their problems with the addition that ebay is one of the biggest marketplaces now means every citizen in the U.S. (as well as those specific countries' governments affected) whether a citizen deals with ebay or not is paying their local(police, small claims court), state(attorney generals), and federal governments(e.g. FBI, USPS) thru their taxes to handle enforcement of a lot of the criminality coming out of ebay. Ebay pays no fees when criminals abscond with your money, but citizens(like you and me) and the government does, all of that enforcement money which could be used to handle other matters (like helping the poor or building freeways or local firefighters or whatever). All of which is why I endorse government regulating ebay.

  Now posting all this, i've had people ask me, "would you recommend ebay to your family and friends???" NEVER! I have told them to stay away from ebay. A family member of mine who had never used ebay before heard about how popular ebay was and heard about ebay from a friend and wanted to buy a car on ebay and asked me to bid for him. I told him i knew about ebay and was a frequent buyer in the past, but that didn't mean i was an expert on EVERY ebay scam. Even if I were to use all the prevention measures here and used only escrow.com OR only paid once the car was personally seen and approved by us and our chosen mechanic, it still didn't strike out the possibilities that the seller was fencing the car in one form or another and/or even worse, that the seller was going to commit violence against us once we showed up at his place to get the thousands of $$$. He could even just come by our house to rob us of the car again later on to resell to another sucker. I told him that he would just lose his thousands of $$$ that he had spent so much time, energy, & sweat, working and saving and instead told him to buy locally from a dealer with a solid reputation even if the price was a lot higher. I told him the extra he was paying was for the COMFORT & SAFETY of not buying a lemon, not having to deal with scammers or bad sellers, and not having to deal with any possible criminality (fencing, triangulation) or violence connected with a scammer. I tell EVERY ONE of my friends and family to avoid ebay because i don't want them being easily taken by these scammers and then afterwards crying on my lap with all their money stolen when there's not much I can do to help them.

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