[Atrocities]

No offense, I like ebay, but have been ripped off too many times over the last five or so years. Hell I warned my bother not to do business over ebay and he lost hundreds in the last couple of months. Ebay does nothing to prevent these scams, and paypal is little or no help. Most people don't trust PayPal given its checkered past and the knowledge of the kind, no offense, of employees they have hired in the past. (The mob kind, ex-con kind, id theft kind)

While 20% of the things I did buy on Ebay I did get, only 10% of those were what they were advertised. The rest were not. I would sell items on Ebay and the people would say they never got them, yet I have a return reciept saying they did.

If we had tougher laws and could go after people for mail and wire fraud when they scam folks then perhaps some of this would improve. If Ebay would inforce seller/buyer contracts and require PROOF of identity prior to granting bidding and selling rights then this fraud might not be a big problem. If Ebay would require sellers to post pictures and accurate information and require all buyers to have a "bond" in escrow before bidding on any item, then perhaps fruad could be avoided. IF there were a set standard for sale and transfer of goods. IE the item sold goes through a third party who insures the item is what was sold, and that the sellor gets their money and the bidder gets what they bid upon then ya, I would do business with ebay again even if it cost a bit more to do so.

But hey, if ebay is making money, why change a thing. The more people who get burned each day and leave are replaced by twice as many new people so there is no real incentive to fix or address the problem. Eventually it will catch up to ebay but buy then it won't matter.