eBay shenanigans
This ain't good. Looks like a guy sold a million bucks worth of stuff on eBay, and screwed about a thousand people out of their money.
Since I'm somewhat of an eBay enthusiast, I was curious as to how this guy pulled it off. Outright frauds usually don't get very far on eBay, for one simple reason: feedback. If you make it a pattern to screw people over, you'll get a reputation for it, quick. Honest sellers, on the other hand, make make their customers happy, and in turn, get positive comments to bolster their image as a trustworthy dealer. It isn't a perfect system (it would only be so if there were only "perfect" people), but it works very well.
Thanks to the feedback system, you have to be awfully crafty if you want to defraud people of thousands of dollars again and again. For example, recently there was a teenager who sold a lot of cheap old laptops, inflating their specs in his ads, and thereby getting a lot more for them than they were worth. Most people don't know how to check their computer's processor speed or RAM, so he got away with it most of the time. When he did get caught by someone computer-savvy enough to figure it out, he was quick to offer a refund, saying that there must have been a mix-up in processing. He largely got away with it for a while; most of his customers thought they were getting what they paid for, so his feedback didn't suffer. (He still was eventually caught.)
So I did a little investigating to see what this guy's feedback said. I was surprised to see that nearly 1000 people had left positive feedback, and only 44 negatives. If this guy was ripping people off left and right, how did he get so many people to praise his "excellent customer service"?
You don't have to read far to notice a pattern. It seems that very few people appear to have received their computers. But what's striking is that over half the people who left positive feedback seem to have received a full refund plus an additional $100 for their trouble. (I don't know of any reputable business where this is a common practice.) Even further, it's also interesting to note how many of the positive responses mention how "honest" and "reputable" and "trustworthy" the seller is -- something you usually take for granted in feedback. (Me be thinkething these guys doth protest too much.)
How far do you have to dig to find the truth? How's a mere three pages for ya? Here's the money quote:
Praise: Great service, laptop unavailable but gave Full Refund + $100 for Pos. Feedback!Quid pro quo. Plain and simple. (I highly doubt the seller was pleased about the buyer being so explicit about the exchange.) Sell enough phantom laptops, pocket most of the money, and for those who complain loudly enough, send them their cash back and a $100 bribe in exchange for a lie about how well things went. Depending on how many people this guy defrauded, he could have easily turned several thousand dollars a week in this scheme.
Any person could have read this feedback and known that something fishy was going on. Only those naive enough to let their desire for a cheap computer cloud their reason were fooled. Everything comes at a price. There's no such thing as a free lunch. And there's no such thing as $3000 computers being sold on eBay, legally, for $1000. This is the lesson: Caveat emptor. Each person has to rationally assess the situation -- the seller's integrity being one of many factors -- and then act according to his best judgment of whether he'll actually get what he's paying for. My money's down that each of these people have far better judgment than they did before they got bilked.
Of course I don't sanction fraud; it should be punished as any other serious crime. This guy should be made to pay full restitution, plus interest, to his victims, no matter how long it takes him. It seems, though, that if individuals exercised better judgment as a whole, it would be a lot harder for people like this to flourish.
Posted by Matt at June 13, 2003 9:26 PM
