[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

I read the article too and like everyone else a lot of things crossed my mind. First, it is apparent that most of the board members buy and sell on ebay, and by the impassioned responses on this thread we all have a host of complaints about how it functions. We would all like ebay to better police its site but the article stated that at any given time 60 million objects are up for sale, in thousands of different categories from collectibles to cars to clothing, jewelry, etc. How can they ever police that many items, and how could they become expert in everything? It would be impossible. Most of us can spot a fake T206 in about two seconds; but could you look at pictures of a classic car and know whether all the interior parts are original as stated by the seller? No possible way. I think we can all thank our lucky stars that most vintage cards are slabbed; good or bad, that gives us all the peace of mind to buy items from a seller we may not know. Nevertheless, we find countless examples of sellers stealing images- such as the ones recently hijacked from the T206 museum- so no transaction is foolproof. I think in the end we all have to exercise really good judgment because for every scam exposed two new ones are being hatched.
Ebay allows all of us to give and receive feedback but we all agree that system is deeply flawed. Quite frankly, I would be afraid to give even the worst customer negative feedback because I have a 100% rating and I fear retaliation. There needs to be improvement in that area so that if say a buyer is scammed he can leave a negative and then the seller is locked out until he can state his case to ebay. But it seems this behemoth company just wants to present itself as an impartial middleman that brings buyer and seller together. I can understand their position, but the fact is ebay is both the best marketplace ever created and at the same time a dangerous place to shop. The vast majority of one's experiences are good, but when you deal with some unknown quantity operating in cyberspace you do in fact take a chance.