Wall Street Journal had a good story about Ebay fraud a week or so ago (sorry can't find a link). The story involved buying name brand clothing, jewelry and accessories (purses, wallets) and taking the "name brand" stuff to an expert for authentication. Turns out that about 90% of name brand stuff on Ebay is fake. The funny part is that we are talking $2000 purses going on Ebay for $260, and someone somewhere is shocked when it turns out to be a cheap knockoff?
Also funny was the WSJ's reporters efforts to go through Ebay/paypal to get refunds, they typically were out lots of money and time at the end, and I'm thinking "Just call your freaking credit card company and reverse the charge" but then realize they probably want to avoid offending Ebay since Ebay/paypal heavily discourages charging back because it has no benefit to them. Plus, I think a lot of these merchants only took checks or money orders (another red flag for the buyer).
Most fraud can be avoided by carefully checking the seller's feedback. No, 95% feedback is typically NOT very good. I'm always surprised when a friend or relative has a bad deal on ebay and wants me to check into it, I log onto the seller's id and find lots of red flag negatives here and there, when I confront the friend or relative they confess they didn't even look at the feedback before they jumped willy nilly into bidding. Most everyone here is more sophisticated than that I think.
Mike B.
