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Posted By: Hagar Henderson

James, the examples you gave are outright fraud. I'm not thinking along those lines because I doubt that someone who is going to steal $1000 worth of your cards is going to care about getting a negative feedback. If E-bay gives them the boot, they will come up with some other scam. As a seller, you are running a business. Unfortunately fraud is a cost of doing business. I think E-bay should have a completely separate behind the scenes fraud investigation department where buyers and sellers could report scammers. Obviously scammers are bad for E-bay whether they are a buyer or seller.

Honestly, how often do these fraudulent buyers strike you? Can some of you heavy volume sellers give me an estimated percentage of sales that are fraud?

Regardless, I do not think that feedback is going to stop the fraudsters. They are criminals that just don't care what feedback you give them. Fear of law enforcement is the only thing that these people fear.

Check Amazon.com's Marketplace policies. If you aren't familiar with Amazon's Marketplace, it's basically like E-bay with "buy it now" prices. If a buyer has a dispute with a seller, the buyer is first required to contact the seller to ask for resolution. The seller has 3 days to respond with a resolution. You communicate completely through the Amazon website and Amazon keeps records of both the buyers and sellers communication with each other. If the seller does not make things right, Amazon may step in and refund the buyer. In other cases, if Amazon finds the seller in the right, they rule in favor of the seller.

I guess no system is going to be perfect, but the old E-bay feedback system was just a joke.