eBay in 1999. He became
ed with the fraud he saw on eBayMotors, and started a site called eBayMotorsSucks.com
(http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com). Koon said the problem of fraud on
eBay Motors gets worse each year. He began documenting eBay Motors
fraud on his Web site after feeling eBay was not listening to sellers'
concerns.
A page on Koon's Web site documents "BIN Bandit" scams. The site
points one case where ten IDs, all with the same root name:
oyewolelink, registered on November 16. By 10 am that day, four of the
accounts were suspended. By 5 pm, nine of the accounts were suspended.
All the accounts were used to purchase expensive items on eBay before
being suspended.
Another long-time eBay member who prefers to remain anonymous started
seeing a lot of similar posts about malicious bidding and did some
investigating. While she has no way of measuring the extent of the
problem, she said she has been able to find some occurrences of
malicious bidding on every day going back 2 weeks. She said the
bidders purchase expensive items in categories like furniture, bike,
laptops, cameras, Rolex watches, pianos, and cars, ATVs and
motorcycles.
Many users say 1-day auctions are ideal ways for fraudsters to quickly
target victims. eBay recently banned 1-day auctions from eBay Motors
vehicles listings. But Koon said fraudsters now use the Parts category
on eBay Motors, as well as the core site and the Salvage & Junk
category.
Koon said eBay needs to get back to basics and start requiring all
users be ID verified and have a credit card on file.
"I want to see eBay clean this place up," said Koon. "They are making
money hand-over-fist. I've been on eBay since 1999 and I can hardly do
business on there now. They need to take responsibility, they need to
have a phone line to report fraudsters."
Sellers have often complained about eBay's policy of allowing new
users with zero feedback and unverified contact information to bid on
an unlimited number of auctions. Some have urged eBay to allow them to
block bidders with zero feedback from bidding on their auctions, or at
least for listings with a Buy It Now option.
eBay's Durzy said sellers can use the Bidder Requirements tool in My
eBay to ban users from other countries; those with net negative fees;
or those with unpaid item strikes. He also said the site is poised to
make an announcement about other enhancements to the Bidder
Requirement tool.
eBay also announced Monday it was introducing a set of buyer activity
limits to reduce the problem of non-paying bidders (or unpaid items,
as eBay now calls the problem). "These limits will be applied in very
rare circumstances and only to new users or to members demonstrating a
highly unusual pattern of buying," the announcement stated.
http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.sh ... 1-22155621
eBay is not the only site targeted by fraudsters, but some of the
other auction sites have stricter user verification requirements.
Durzy said eBay has to balance keeping the site safe and not placing
so many restrictions that it negates the benefit that eBay provides.
Some users passionately disagree. Another user who also wished to
remain anonymous said eBay needs to verify contact information and
limit the number of bids that a new member can make, and the number of
auctions a new seller can list. She said, "There need to be stricter
guidelines, and they refuse!"
More examples of BIN Bandit scammers began loading onto Ed Koon's site
on Monday: http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/~ebayother/rb/
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