eBay (aka “the eBafia”) is a totally unscrupulous criminal organization!
How could that be, you ask? Well, with much effort and some multi-auction analysis, it can be very clearly demonstrated (see the following link) that shill bidding fraud by unscrupulous professional sellers on nominal-start auctions, is rampant on eBay auctions, and the executives “in the know” at eBay, unless they are actually even more naive than they apparently think all we simple consumers are, cannot but be aware of that criminal activity.
And, if they claim to be not so aware, then I am making them aware of it here and now. And, of course they will say they are not aware, because they do not want to be aware, because if they admit that they are aware of such criminal activity (which they cannot but be, and from which they are profiting), and they do nothing effective about it (which they don’t), then they are guilty of the crime of “criminal facilitation”. It’s as simple as that!
And, it can be demonstrated that, contrary to their claims, they do not do anything proactive nor truly effective to prevent such criminal activity. Indeed, they have done the very opposite, during the second half of 2008 eBay introduced anonymous non-unique masking of bidding IDs, which serve no logical purpose other than to deliberately further obscure such criminal activity and aid and abet said criminal shill-bidding sellers to maximize their sale prices, thus maximizing eBay’s final valuation fee (FVF).
It’s even worse in the UK, where the form of bidder masking makes it simply impossible for buyers to detect the unscrupulous, sophisticated shill-bidding professional sellers that undoubtedly now infest eBay UK auctions. Needless to say sales by auction on the UK site have collapsed to a fraction of what they used to be.
Is it any wonder then that, relatively speaking, buyers are staying away, and eBay’s marketplace business is still going down the toilet, the world over?
Then, don’t ever forget that to have any chance of understanding anything that eBay says you have to reverse the meaning of what they say a random number of times; only then might you have a still less than 50% chance of knowing what they actually mean by what they have said.
From a buyer’s point of view, the full ugly story of eBay, and the proof of eBay’s criminality, at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/fo...wtopic.php?p=6502877
It is about time that some competent authority in the US shone a really bright light under this slimy rock.
Then there is PayPal—about the only part of the eBay business that is not, relatively speaking, going backwards.
PayPal offers a banking-type service, a service that would be more appropriately and competently carried out under the auspices of the banking community via their credit card company partners.
The simple fact is that without the bankers’ knowledge of the entities involved in the transactions, PayPal will always be handicapped.
The head turkey at eBay, “Noise” Donahoe, has occasionally talked of the possibility of offloading PayPal because he is just barely smart enough to know that when the major credit card companies do get off their butts and introduce a like card/terminal-less payments system to complement their credit card system, they will do it properly, and the “clunky” PayPal will then sink like a stone—other than, possibly, on what is by then left of the Donahoe-ever-shrinking eBay marketplace.
If this turkey has any brain at all he will be actively trying to sell PayPal to the banks to complement their credit card system; but I doubt the banks would want to lower their image any further by associating themselves with the likes of PayPal; not even for a peppercorn consideration would the banks touch such an incompetent amateur operation as PayPal, I suspect.
But, does anyone think that the major credit card gougers are not watching this market segment with interest, and is it possible that it could well be having a negative effect on their credit card business? Why would “the banks” not be considering a like system to complement their cards? After all, every internet banking user is already set up to receive such a service directly, efficiently and securely, from their bank. The simple fact is that anything that PayPal can do “the banks” can do better.
Do we then need to offer the banks and the major credit card companies another such monopoly-type situation? Ideally not. But, having said that, within the credit card system the individual banks do compete with each other on interest rates, etc.
Regardless, it would be nice to have a card/terminal-less system that worked effectively—as does the banks’ credit card system. Regrettably (or thankfully, some might say), PayPal does not have such a partnership with all “the banks” and so PayPal can never offer that same effectiveness.
My only surprise is that “the banks” have not yet announced their own system. When they do it will be bye, bye, PayPal—you most ugly of children.
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