With the Christmas shopping season upon us, one great place to shop is the Internet auction powerhouse eBay. This time of the year, great deals abound. If you take the proper precautions, eBay shopping can be a lot of fun.
I like eBay. I just bought a new guitar on eBay, sort of my Christmas present to myself, and got a crazy good deal. Over the years, I've bought and sold many items there without any problems. Once, though, about six or seven years ago, I got stung by a con man seller. In my zeal to get a good deal, I committed the cardinal eBay sin of not paying close attention to the seller's "feedback" rating.
In its own way, eBay works on the honor system. Buying and selling is, after all, taking place between complete strangers who never meet face to face. What glues the whole concept together is eBay's feedback ratings system, where a record of individual transactions is kept. Buyers and sellers rate each other by leaving publicly viewable feedback comments that describe their transaction experiences, either positive or negative. The rule of thumb is that people with a large number of positive "feedbacks" are considered safe dealers. People with very few positives, or with negative feedback, can be viewed as too risky.
My seller had a feedback rating of "zero," meaning that he had not even completed one eBay transaction. Sadly, in my haste, I did not notice this fact until I had already become involved in the bidding process. As time passed, I realized that I had been ripped off, and I began the process of attempting to recover my money.
First, I did some investigation. I learned that my con man had held about 15 other auctions in the recent past, so I contacted the buyers listed for those auctions, and discovered that they, too, had been defrauded. At that point, we formed a "victims group," and began filing complaints with eBay en masse, because, if you can provide the right information about a transaction gone bad, eBay will cover your loss. We made sure to mention each other's losses in our complaints, demonstrating that there had been a pattern of abuse by our con man.
We also filed complaints with the U.S. Postal Service, the FBI, and the Attorneys General of our respective states and the state in which the con man was located. It was a long, drawn out process, but we eventually recovered our money. I have no idea what happened to the con man.
The moral of this story is that eBay can be wonderful, if you take the proper precautions. Never use checks or money orders to pay for an eBay auction. You are safer if you use eBay's PayPal system tied to a credit card, rather than a bank account. eBay has many suggestions for safe transactions, which you should study and follow. Happy shopping.
Dave Moore has been repairing computers in Norman since 1984, when he borrowed $1,200 to buy a Commodore 64 system. He can be reached at 919-9901 or www.davemoorecomputers.com.
