http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24411
Synopsis
11 April 2010
A synopsis? Better late than never. Well there is a lot of reading involved in the various linked articles. Not unreasonably, to convince anyone of the probable truth of the allegations that I make against eBay, it does require detailed analysis.
Let me then cut straight to the chase with a simple statement from one who has watched eBay very closely for a number of years and used to be a regular buyer on eBay auctions:
eBay (aka "the eBafia") is a criminal organization!
How could that be, you ask? Well, with a great deal of effort and some multi-auction analysis, it can be very clearly demonstrated 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.
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 also be demonstrated that, contrary to eBay's 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 serves 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 effectively impossible for buyers to analyse the patterns of bidding on sellers' auctions and thereby protect themselves from the unscrupulous, sophisticated shill-bidding professional sellers that undoubtedly now infest eBay auction sales in the UK. And this is undoubtedly why sale by auction on the eBay UK site is now a fraction of what it used to be. Apparently, the UK consumer is not as naive as this unscrupulous eBay management believes them to be.
eBay's seller-selected "private listing" auction format serves the same devious, totally obscuring effect.
The only difference between eBay and any local unscrupulous traditional auctioneer is that eBay is facilitating the defrauding of unsuspecting consumers on a world-wide scale. Unscrupulous buyers and (unverified) "Nigerians" are defrauding eBay sellers, the very many unscrupulous professional eBay sellers who use nominal-start auctions are habitually defrauding eBay buyers, and eBay is effectively—and knowingly—facilitating such criminal activity and both eBay and PayPal are taking a cut of every transaction—sounds a bit like the Mafia of old!
Supporting documents
A fuller introduction to the several documents offered in support of the before mentioned criticism of eBay, at:
Why is the "eBafia Don" trying to kill eBay?
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6502877
