NY Times article today about Ebay counterfeiting problem

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Posted By: martin dalziel

Cat,
Excellent post and some good ideas. My thoughts on your suggestions.

1. Do not allow private listings. It is so easy to help fellow buyers out if you have a mechanism to contact them. But when you do not know who the bidder is, the system falls apart and there is no way to inform an uninformed bidder/purchaser that the card is a fake.

MD - 1) Ebay forbids contacting bidders, so theres no basis for Ebay to make this happen 2) I think there are legitimate reasons for private listings - eg. there are legal but controversial things on ebay, along with high dollar items, where bidders prefer to remain annonomous - a suggestion may be for the bidders themselves to be able to choose to be visible or not

3. Stop retaliatory feedback.
MD - I don't see how, without a tremendous amount of administration, that this could be put in place. I should have the right to respond to feedback and offer my side of the story. It doesn't follow that the first one to leave feedback is the one who is right.

I agree 100% on your other suggestions.

Theres really not a lot I'd change about Ebay - like many others on here, i've used it for years (9+ for me) and have had few problems, and the two that i have had were of my own making (didn't ask questions) and thus my own fault. I don't think Ebay has any obligation but to ensure that their site stays up and functions - its up to the rest of us to figure out whats good and what isn't.

I do think that allowing people to contact bidders is fraught with risks - theres enough concern about bidders contacting sellers to end auctions early, how much better if you can now legitimately scare off the competing bidders. You'd hope that people wouldn't/don't do that, but you know it will. No different than wishing people didn't knowingly sell fake crap.