Philip Cohen

Cisco: Perfect Home for eBay's Skype?

"Current CEO John Donahoe has been clear that eBay is returning to its roots"

It's roots are "auctions" and that system has always been "clunky" in the extreme, and cheating buyers.

For eBay “watchers”, a detailed case study of shill bidding and the abuse of eBay’s proxy bidding system—all exacerbated by eBay’s introduction of “hidden bidders”—plus a detailed general criticism of eBay’s “clunky” auction platform and policies, at

<url>www.auctionbytes.com/f...;/url>

Buyers, and honest sellers, should read this case study so that they can become aware, if they are not already so aware, of just how primitive and open to abuse is the eBay auction system.

A synopsis thereof:

 very little of the auction system security, that eBay claims to offer buyers, exists in fact;

 contrary to their claim, it can be demonstrated that eBay has no “sophisticated” nor “proactive” system in place for the detection of undisclosed vendor (“shill”) bidding and indeed appears to do nothing about such criminal activity except as a reaction to a user’s report of suspicious bidding activity;

 eBay appears to have no effective matter-of-course verification of users; unscrupulous users can apparently have as many user IDs as they may have email addresses;

 many of eBay’s “rules”, concerning the retraction of bids, cancellation of auctions, etc, are nominal only and are no bar to the machinations of the unscrupulous seller;

 as a result, eBay’s “proxy” bidding system is so open to abuse by such unscrupulous sellers that to use it, as eBay intends it to be used, can be an invitation to pay your maximum;

 by the lack of any such effectual security, eBay effectively, and knowingly, “aids and abets” unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to defraud naïve buyers;

 the masking of bidding IDs with non-unique, absolutely anonymous aliases serves little other purpose than to obscure such shill bidding, and defeat any attempt at comprehensive analysis of individual bidding patterns to expose such activity;

 the quarterly changing of even these non-unique, absolutely anonymous, bidding aliases serves absolutely no other purpose than to stop even experienced eBay users from attempting to track suspicious bidding activity over time;

 the anonymous, individual bidder Bid History Detail pages, supposedly supplied to offset the absolute masking of bidding IDs, although better than nothing, can present an ambiguous view and, in such circumstances, are of dubious value;

 anyone naïve enough to “nibble” bid on a seller-elected “private” auction (ie, “User ID kept private”), on the balance of probability, is going to be defrauded;

 when suspected fraud [i]is[/i] reported, and is found by eBay to be proved to their satisfaction, eBay will conceal that fact from the victim of the fraud; this then is the concealing of a crime after the fact, surely, a crime in itself;

 eBay will never acknowledge to a victim that a fraud has been perpetrated, nor indeed will they acknowledge that such fraud is even a problem on eBay; eBay therefore sees no reason to provide any mechanism to aid in the recovery of any monies so defrauded;

 if eBay did have any truly sophisticated and proactive system in place for the detection and control of shill bidding, we would not now be having this debate; and

 for those buyers (and honest sellers) who do embrace eBay believing that eBay acts as an “honest broker” between buyer and seller, I can only say that there are fairies at the bottom of your garden too.