I’m selling a phone on eBay for a friend, but since the last time I used eBay it seems to have been taken over by Nigerian scammers. The winning bid on my item was a scammer, and after many emails (mostly automated) from eBay and PayPal regarding this situation, here’s my response:

Hello,

I appreciate the support I’ve received so far regarding my sale of this item, however I find it lacking and I think you could do better. I feel as though I’m discussing this issue with three different entities: two branches of eBay and PayPal (which is now an eBay company). Therefore my experience is quite fragmented and, unfortunately, could be quite confusing if I didn’t already have a fairly firm grasp on what’s going on. I’d appreciate if you could deliver some of the following comments and suggestions to the appropriate person.

First I sent an email, to which yours was the reply, stating that the buyer had violated the listing terms. At this time I was relatively new to 419 scams and was under the impression that as long as the money had showed up in my account, all was good. It’s a good thing I am naturally skeptical and that I searched google for information about these scams - it was much more informative than reading the eBay support pages (particularly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud). Perhaps you could have a fairly straightforward help section titled “What to do if you believe you may be the victim of a scam”. After all, the whole reason that I didn’t notify eBay of any fraud is because I didn’t know about the possibility of this sort of scam. So I chose the next one down that made sense: violation of listing terms.

PayPal then contacted me to notify me that the payment I’d received was made with fraudulent funds. While it cautioned me to not deliver the goods or services related to those funds, it seems to me that PayPal should be able to determine what the funds were for. After all, my PayPal and eBay accounts are linked. I believe doing so would provide a more cohesive experience for the user.

Days later I received an Administrative Bid Cancellation notice regarding the item, which was, of course, a form letter and took into account neither my previous inquiry nor PayPal’s reversal of payment. I understand that machines are much cheaper than people and that it is infeasible to attach a person to every fraud case, but you should strive to make your software act with some degree of intelligence - a little effort in this area could go a long way.

Finally I received a response to my initial inquiry. This response took none of the other factors into account. It would have been very quick to look up the status of the item and see that there had been an Administrative Bid Cancellation and that, therefore, it is ill-advised to offer instructions on how to accept the bid. Again, I understand that you can’t have people spending lots of time on these things, but slightly smarter software could help a lot here.

Overall eBay has the feeling of a big company with all the good and bad that statement entails. Dealing with phishing, stolen credit cards, unauthorized bids, etc is a hard problem and I don’t envy your position. The one thing you do have under your control is your customer service, and that has lots of room for improvement. Thank you for taking the time to read this email. Feel free to contact me if you’d like any clarifications.

-bd