Posted By:
JoannOK. I guess when I get mad, I get mad! lol. Max provided a link for suggestions and comments to ebay, and I just sent in the message below. Yes, it may be over the top and not particularly polite, but dang - who came up with this? (And ... I do know that the plural for forum is fora, not forums. Even considered using it but I decided it sounded too stuffy.)
Text of Message Below:
Wow. Who came up with masking bidder id's in bid history? That is the worst idea I've ever heard of, and will definitely lead me to sell items in non-ebay forums just as a protest if nothing else.
I WANT people to see who's bidding on my auctions. I WANT them to see no one is running up the price. I WANT them to see there is no shilling or anything else going on. I WANT them to see it is an open, honest and transparent auction.
As a buyer, I WANT to see that I'm not being shilled. You claim to be vigilant against shilling but it happens. Now you have taken the one, single and only way that buyers have to try to protect themselves where ebay cannot, and taken it away. You have provided complete cover for shills. Nice job.
Also, people that sell fake material and engage in other fraud routinely will use the Private Auction option. In fact, in the vintage baseball card arena it's one of a buyer's first red flags that something may be amiss. Now you've saved them the trouble and covered their auctions for them. Again, nice job protecting the dishonest.
Are bogus Second Chance offers really such a big problem that this was the ONLY way to combat that? Why do I doubt that? Shilling and fraudulent sales items are much bigger problems than fake SC offers - much bigger. Why throw the technical book at this supposed problem when it actually provides cover and assitance to two bigger problems?
Bottom line - the best speculation is that what ebay is really trying to prevent is sellers using bid lists to make offline offers to underbidders for similar items. You know - so ebay may not get a fee.
So under the guise of solving a minor problem, you make fraudlent activity easier as a side effect of what is really an attempt to make more money.
For a final time - nice job.
Joann Kline
Edited to add: The point of this post was to also say that people that object really should send that sentiment to ebay - flood them with complaints if it's something we really don't like.