eBay fraud on Oprah

On Friday, Oprah had a scam/fraud show and one of the segments featured eBay.  The segment covered a person that was bidding on a wedding dress, lost it, but got a fraudulent second-chance-offer.  She wired the 'seller' some $$ and of course never got the dress.

They had Rob Chestnut on who did a good job explaining why that wasn't eBay fraud and what they do to combat fraud.

Unfortunately it's never a positive when there's someone with Oprah's reach out there associating eBay+fraud so I think it was a net negative.

Comments

[George]

Watch out from eBay. I believe they set me up. An item I was selling was on various occasions attempted to be purchased by a fraudster (apparently!!). So, on each of these occasions I was notified by eBay and I relisted the item. eBay sent me a massive bill for the Final Value Fees (FVF). When I complaint they very promptly and nicely told me that the fees will be refunded. BUT and it is a big BUT, they told me that first I must follow some instructions to cancel a dispute. When I followed their instructions I somehow ended up cancelling the FVF's that were already refunded to me by eBay. You would think that my mistake would be reversed by eBay...no chance this was the set up by eBay to make it look like it was my fault so that they pocket the money from the FVF's. They are obviously desperate and all shareholders better ditch your certificates. eBay are acting like thieves, and people should close their accounts if they can. I would love to hear from others in who experienced the same.

Many thanks for reading.
Georgedx@hotmail.com

[Jooey]

I found this cool site today http://youspeltitwrong.com it lets you search ebay for spelling mistakes

I got STALKER for £0.99 because he spelt chernobyl wrong. LOL

Happy bidding :)

[HarleyGlasses]

Good picture of Rob. If it didn't draw enough ire on Oprah, it'l be on Dr Phil next month...

When is eBay going to do something about the FVF fraud being commited by eBay against sellers? Sellers are only getting their FVF back from TKO'd items if they notice that their items have been TKO'd and only if they write (must have item number)(deleted from system) or call (impossible) eBay and request a refund.

TKO is when an item is purchased by a fraudulent bidder with a hijacked account. Usually they purchase hundreds or thousands of items in a very short time, eBay finds out and knocks out the listing making it virtually disappear from all records. eBay refunds the listing fee but not the FVF for the sold item, you can't request a FVF refund because the item no longer exists. eBay has been pocketing these fees and not refunding them to the seller. Final Value Fees can be up to 10% of an items cost.

The fraud starts within eBay.

in other news today ebay smokesperson Handsie Dirtsie said that fraud on eBay ammounted to .0000000000000099 % and was nothing to be concerned about.

These little blurbs on tv about the moron who pays with an unsafe payment method, actually detract from addressing true fraud on eBay and allow eBay to respond with a positive advertisement about their payment service, Paypal. As always, a Credit Card is best method of payment for a buyer.