Richard J Kinch writes:

Sam Goldwasser writes:

Comments welcome!

I'm sorry to hear you're having these problems. I assumed you had some
tale of a fraudster victimizing you, but apparently your problem is
eBay's fraud detection false-positive'izing you.

All I can say is the eBay as an service and as a corporation has been
degrading significantly for years. It started with things like
"protecting" us by censoring email addresses, and then things like
hiding bidder IDs, and now the recent feedback changes. Bah.

I agree 100 percent about all these.

No one I've talked to thinks any of these are for the better, except possibly
limiting email address exposure.

My pet peeve is hiding of bidder IDs. First of all, everyone seems to
agree that if anything, this makes it easier for shill bidding and other
similar practices. And the way they do it is only half-hearted in any
case. With a bit of effort, it's generally possible to identify the
actual bidder from the 4 character masked ID and the Feedback rating.

With the system in place now, I can end up bidding against friends of
mine. eBay may consider agreements among friends not to outbid one-another
to be against the rules. But with all due respect, that is none of their
business, just as if a bunch of friends sends one persno to a real auction
to bid on their behalf.

As bad as the Feedback system was, the "improved" arrangment could be
simply ridiculous. Maybe I missed something but no feedback direct
from sellers anymore? How about this as an alternative:
The seller should be *required* to issue the first
feedback when they have been paid and ship the item. Then, the buyer
can respond with their own feedback once the item arrives. If that is
negative or neutral, the seller can respond and a dialog is allowed
until any issues are resolved.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/
Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/
+Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm
| Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html

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