Quote:
Originally Posted by thetruthisoutthere
Ken, I think the word is getting out among Ebay scammers that Ebay isn't doing much to remove fraudulent items listed on Ebay.
It has been extremely frustrating watching these scammers list their forgeries day after day with nothing being done.
Forgeries listed with "Banned COAs" aren't being removed these days.
Ebay deserves all of the criticism thrown their way.
For a couple years Ebay was doing a fantastic job removing forgeries, and then it just stopped.
Very frustrating!!!
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Chris,
Frustrating...Yes!
A surprise...No!
I don't think it's really hard to figure out why either.
Over the past several years, ebay has made the site less and less seller friendly. Higher fees, fees on shipping, no buyer negative feedback, and the list goes on and on. I know a lot of people have stopped selling on ebay because of this. It has dramatically affected many, from the collector, who buys and sells to fund their habit, up to probably the mid size dealer. It's kind of sad as I probably would've spent more on ebay, if I had kept selling there. So they lost my FVFs as well as the fees from the person I would've spent the money with. I'm sure this scenario is the same for a lot of the people on here.
The only sellers that seem to have benefited from the sum of the changes are the large volume fixed price sellers. Less stuff being available through auctions is good for the fixed price guys. So more stuff gets listed and less stuff gets sold. Cases in point would be all the museums of cards on now with fixed prices at multiples of VCP.
Why would they want to get rid of the fakes? A lot of the real stuff is listed with insanely high fixed prices, and never sells. The fake stuff may sell more cheaply, but at least it keeps the cash flow going. It seems they would have very little motivation to be as diligent now as they had been previously.
This made me think...I wonder if anyone has considered using ebay to house the pictures of their collection online. They can close their photobucket/Flickr/etc account and list all of the stuff in their collection on ebay with insane prices. They'll keep relisting without any fees forever. Hey, if someone wants to pay me $10k for a picture of Lou Gehrig walking with his wife, that is perfectly fine. I'll happily pay the 10% FVF and use the remaining $9K to buy a Conlon.
I know I am preaching to the choir, but it is frustrating watch this happen. I was really hopeful that GSB would've taken off and provided an alternative site for the hobby, that would've had oversight by people who actually cared about the hobby. Damn!
Mark