Posted By:
MWThe first would be Chief Nip-a-Way from Wee Forest Folk, a mouse dressed up as an American Indian.
The second would be resource allocation. According to the article, eBay "employs a team of about 20 fraud investigators."
I don't have exact statistics as to the number of auctions (or average number) per day, but it seems to me that eBay's fraud-investigating resources might be spread just a bit too thin. With annual revenues of $749 million (last year's figures), surely a fraud-prevention task force of 100 or so would not be excessive. I'm no business expert, but surely the added costs could be defrayed by increased revenues brought about by a safer trading environment.
Third, the seller, Mr. Richardson, had 6,185 positive feedbacks but he also had garnered 58 negative and 56 neutral ratings. Hello? Red flag? Sure, that's quite a few positives, but to me, that's also an excessive amount of non-positive feedback. Is there any way that I would have bid on this gentleman's auctions -- even if he had a Chief Nip-a-Way available for $200? Nope.