Thursday, July 16, 2009

E-Bay Is Broken Buyers & Sellers Beware

Yet another writer and blogger descibing thier selling experinaces on E-Bay it's nice to see that the fruad problem is still around although not with coins this time it's still the clasic ongoing scam. Below for you convenince is a copy of the article.

I expected selling my computer on eBay to be easy.

Attempt 1: I listed it. Within hours, someone bought it -- from a hacked account, as eBay notified me, canceling the sale.

Attempt 2: I listed it again. Within hours, someone bought it, and asked me to send it to her via FedEx overnight. The buyer sent payment via PayPal immediately, and then -- near as I could tell -- immediately opened a dispute with PayPal so that the funds were put on hold. And then she sent me an e-mail saying "I paid you, now send me the computer." But PayPal was faster than she expected, I think. At the same time, I received an e-mail from PayPal saying that I might have received a payment that the account holder did not authorize, and that I shouldn't ship the item until the investigation is complete.

I was willing to make Attempt 3, but someone on my blog bought it first. It looks like eBay is completely broken for items like this.

It's not just me.

http://consumerist.com/5007790/its-now-completely-impossible-to-sell-a-laptop-on-ebay or http://tinyurl.com/55hprp

A copy of this essay, with all embedded links, is here:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/fraud_on_ebay.html

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