eBay Insanity

**Cardcop** · 02-05-2011, 04:04 AM

If anyone wonders why eBay killed off a good part of our hobby, here's a few points that are absolute fact that I'll stand up in court & testify to;

I used to volunteer helping eBay fight fraud in the sports/trading card area from 1997-2009 -for free of course. I'm a Forensic Document Examiner & trained Private Investigator so I used these skills to get rid of certain scum on eBay that others may not have had much luck trying to do something about. I was praised by eBay over & over again for over 10-years. I was credited for busting eBay's biggest autograph forgery ring to ever be online anywhere, plus I caused two card companies (big ones) to lose their baseball licenses for fraud -both starting in 2001.

Then in early 2010, eBay decided that OVERNIGHT they were suddenly good enough to police the site themselves. HAH! All they did was tick off another 25% of eBay trading card buyers that left for good.

As for me: I was suspended for 2-weeks (without any prior warning!) because I was fighting the sales of those FAKE dual game-used PATCH encased cards by NSA (from Tampa, FL). All I did was ask several of NSA's big eBay sellers to ask NSA to provide them with a Letter Of Authenticity (that comes with ALL REAL game-used FULL items) for ANY card they owned. NSA of course doesn't have any LOA's because NOT ONE NSA CARD has real sport/celebrity used items & they refused to answer any of my polite questions!

eBay's new way to report fraud is to click "REPORT ITEM" on any item page on the lower right & in less than (100) characters (15-20 words) which is not enough space to get eBay to understand nearly ANYTHING!

So I came across: jimmyskaraoke on eBay the other day who charges $19.99 S&H for one Marvel sketch card (USA TO USA- standard shipping) & he has many singles than will not even sell for more than the S&H fee!!! So I REPORT (3) ITEMS, wait 3-days. look again & nothing has changed. Now if I contact the seller & ask him to justify that OUTRAGIOUS fee- then eBay gives ME a POLICY VIOLATION! You see, eBay now has a spider program that seeks out keywords & phrases and if I ask the "wrong" question in eBay's eyes, I GET IN TROUBLE regardless of my intentions of integrity!!! So I ask the seller anyway & he says:

"Dear cardcop,
Just consider it part of the price of the item and bid accordingly. Thanks
for looking!
-jimmyskaraoke"

That's against eBay's rules! You cannot just charge whatever you feel like for S&H. eBay has what used to be quite strict EXCESSIVE SHIPPING & HANDLING, AND FEE AVOIDANCE RULES! You have to justify why you charge a certain fee & if it goes over eBay's rules they can end all of your auctions immediately & you can be suspended. I've seen it happen many times.

So if you think eBay is wrong about letting all kinds of problems slide now because they don't have the manpower or the brains to have their oqwn rules followed, complain to this e-mail: [email protected]
You just cannot find that e-mail addy either! Ever spend 30-minutes+ following one link after another trying to get customer service's contact e-mail? Now you won't have to anymore.

Hope I helped some of you!

James M.

**BigBerserker** · 02-05-2011, 04:15 AM

Hey thanks for the post. I like eBay because you can find pretty much anything on there but I don't always agree with how they handle/run things. It's too bad your hard volunteer work went out the window when they decided they didn't want your help.

**Jaded** · 02-05-2011, 04:25 AM

so you were a feebay police narc that work for free and got booted?? haha, thats pretty funny.

**~~SteakNchop~~** · 02-05-2011, 05:39 AM

Dang, man. eBay has really been going down the drain.

**Jesse011** · 02-05-2011, 08:39 AM

I don't know man...it's nice that you're looking out for people but why get so worked up over it? All he's really doing is putting his sale value in his shipping instead of the bid itself so he can avoid eBay fees (which is why they don't want excessive shipping!)-I really don't think he expects that a person wouldn't take this into account while bidding.

What he's doing obviously isn't right but it's eBay's problem so I would just click the report button if I really felt the need and then get on with my life. If somebody doesn't know to look at the shipping cost then they learned an important life lesson for only $20!