Time to take off the gloves

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Posted By: TBob

I love our hobby and enjoy collecting vintage cards. because of that and because of my distaste for what is going on on eBay, I have reported the whole situation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation this morning for their investigation. I have reported how eBay elects to not handle the entire affair and how these sellers are taking scans from the Library of Congress website to make reproductions and perpetrate fraud upon unknowing individuals. If it results in my being banned from ebay, a company which I have helped grow and supported the last 6 years through all the sales I have had, so be it. If I am not allowed to sue their subsidiary, payPal, because of this, so be it. I am damn sick and tired of these cretins getting away with this scamming. There are a ton of people using ebay, many new to the hobby, who don't read this board and have no idea what is happening. Once and for all someone needs to take a stand. I am not trying to be heroic or noble, just one guy doing his part. It's time to take off the gloves on these jackals.
"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

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Posted By: petecld

Bob,

I really hope you get somewhere with your efforts. I have complained and all I ever get is the form email ebay sends out which in effect means "go (bleep) yourself."

I'm all for a boycott. One week. . .one month. . . 3 months. . . whatever it takes.

$$$ speaks louder than emails.

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Posted By: Glen V

One problem with a boycott is that it will mostly hurt legitimate sellers that didn’t hear about it. Ebay probably won’t be fazed – what percentage of Ebay’s auctions do pre-30 baseball cards represent?

If a boycott does take place, it must be big and last a while. Ebay (everyone) can check bidders history. Tbob – you’ve bid on 400+ items the last 30 days – Ebay has to assume that Eagle hasn’t stopped you from using their site. A boycott would have to last 30 days to get people’s bid history down to 0. Also it would have to get other sectors involved – stamp collectors have similar problems – maybe they would take part?

Big news stories or legal actions would have a better result. Still, Ebay is just an auction web site. Anyone can set up one. If a better version was out there, people would leave Ebay. Maybe PSA or SGC could get into the auction business?

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Posted By: John(z28jd)

Tbob,you are a great man for the vintage card community
I am more than willing to boycott ebay for any amount of time or until they do something about this.

It is getting ridiculous and who knows how manypeople havewritten ebay with no responses.In the last couple weeks i wrote them at least 6 times

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Posted By: Hankron

Glenn, the point is to not boycott forever eBay, or to try and cripple their finances (obviously, not possible). It is to make a point and give them a chance to try and correct their problem. If we can remove $100,000 of sales in a brief period in conjunction with asking them to make one or two simple changes (restrict the use of private auctions in this area is my choice), they may listen.

The brief boycott is to make a point, and to say that this can happen again and be larger if the changes are not made. The changes that are being asked for are entirely reasonable and would take about 20 seconds for eBay to institute.

It should be pointed out that eBay is more than welcome to today or tomorrow or next Monday instutute better policies to prevent this fraud or at least address it in a reasonable manner, and everyone would be happy.

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Posted By: Hankron

I wish to add one point.

eBay has banned the use of certain autograph authenticators, and certain trading card graders (FGA??). Why is AAA, for one, allowed on eBay, when everyone knows they are a complete scam? And, if they are allowed to flourish, why under the protection of private auctions?

Undoubtedly, the defence of private auctions in this genre is on the order of "In theory, a private action can be used for the such and such legitimate purpose." The problem, is that the 'in theory' rarely if ever materializes on eBay, but the 'in scam' materializes 100 times a day.

I could leave my keys in my car when I park downtown at night, because 'in theory, someone could take the car, have it washed for free and return it leaving a hundred dollar bill on the dashboard.' However, 'in practice', if I left my keys in my car downtown at night, I would be really stupid.