OT: Beware of this scam now rampant on eBay

[eBay_victims_anonymous]

Just a warning to all eBay users about a widespread scam that is going on 
there. eBay refuses to prevent sellers from bidding on their own items and thus 
driving the prices up. This tactic is called shilling and I recently found out 
that many sellers are doing this to fleece prospective buyers or to retain 
their goods if it they will otherwise sell to a real buyer at a lower price 
than what the user wanted. It is possible that in many auctions, most of the  
bidders are in fact just aliases being used by the seller.

eBay claims to be fighting shilling and that it rarely occurs. They are wrong 
on both counts. I recently caught a seller bidding on his own auction using a 
number of aliases to drive the price up. I emailed eBay the proof that the 
seller was doing this (he made a stupid mistake and was using his real email 
addresses in his aliases) and eBay claimed to have removed him from their site. 
I later found out it is possible to easily search eBay and find all auctions a 
particular member has been involved in. Doing searches of some suspicious 
bidders in auctions I was involved in showed me that many - if not most - of 
the auctions I checked had sellers bidding on their items using other aliases. 
I contacted eBay with more information about other fake aliases used by 
sellers, but now they claim they are unwilling to act because they do not have 
enough evidence.

It appears obvious that eBay is fully aware of the rampant abuse of their 
system, but they chose to pretend it is not occurring as they do not want 
members to become aware that they are being scammed. Since eBay choses to not 
protect members from unscrupulous sellers, I would suggest anyone who disagrees 
with their policy contact them at: address@hidden

If eBay realizes that members find the current refusal to enforce honesty 
unacceptable, they will make the necessary changes to prevent shilling. Until 
they do so, I will never use eBay again.

I apologize for this off-topic message, but I hope it is of some benefit to 
readers. If you know anyone who uses eBay and feel it may be helpful, please 
feel free to forward this warning on to them. I only wish I was aware of  this 
information six months ago. It is sad to see that eBay apparently does not care 
that thousands of their members are being swindled daily.

Sincerely,
                    a former eBay member