Justin H.

Here are ten new signs the auction bully is dying...

No matter what ingenious new tricks eBay comes up with to manipulate their users, the Internet giant continues to fall behind in the race to outrun its avalanche of angry users. The site is now experiencing its lowest rating of trust since a series of aftershocks that continue to rock eBay ever since their disastrous facelift of 2008. And here's how they're doing it.

For years, they naively hoped the fallout from that self-inflicted gunshot would have blown east and been forgotten, but the hits from those catastrophic decisions just keep on a-comin'. Here are the latest Top Ten on eBay's "Hit Parade of Self-Destructive Mistakes".

1. Following on the heels of stratospheric fee increases that drove hundreds of thousands of sellers off the site, this latest round of bad decisions began when they masked all users' ID's from the listings. After February, 2008, eBay buyers and sellers would only see scrambled anagrams where user's screen names used to be.

2. Next, they compromised the Feedback scoring system. The misleading way it works today is that all of a seller's complaints are automatically laundered from the mathematics after twelve months. That means as far as eBay is concerned, any prolific thief with a despicable track record only needs to wait twelve months and all is forgiven. What may have been a 62% score due to excessive complaints suddenly becomes a 100% score - or a false reading of fresh cleanliness - after 12 months when the timer is reset.

3. Then, they removed the bidder's search feature. That kept the growing wave of users who were suspicious of fraudulent activity, from tracking and identifying illegal bidding activity. 'Shill' bidding is an age-old, unethical and highly illegal auction trick which eBay only flaccidly discouraged, but which they now aggressively promote (since it can no longer be traced) as a way of injecting revenue into sagging profits. The way it works is, the seller gets his family and friends to place fake bids. Then, when the high bid reaches what the seller wants for the item, the fake bidders step back and let legitimate bidders take over. The winning bidder never knows who was bidding, or if they were even legitimate, and he ends up paying many times what the item would have sold for without the fake (shill) bids.

4. Next, they launched a nebulous program to phase out all contact between buyers and sellers. The ''Ask a Question" button disappeared from the main body of the listing, and ended up buried toward the bottom of the page, among the fine print and legalese. Buyers can still make contact, but their inquiries (and sellers' replies) are audited and users' emails scrambled. And these Mafiosos are dead serious: if a conversation goes past two emails, the buyer will usually get a threatening email warning from eBay, often followed by a telephone call with bullying and more threats. The bewildered buyer is then drop-kicked from the site "for abusing" the 'Ask a Question' feature.

5. The Item Number identifying the listing has also disappeared from plain view, and can only be found, literally, by using a high-intensity magnifying glass.

6. Frustrated they could no longer make casual contact with sellers, buyers began relying more and more on the seller's feedback score rating, which included how often complaints are logged, dates of entries and how long the seller has been active. But now all those revealing features have been removed - either buried in more off-page 'drill-down' or eliminated altogether.

7. Another compromise reflects eBay's seductive efforts to keep buyers from looking at the listing, once the item has been paid for. On every reference after the sale, from emails to Leave Feedback to the My eBay page, all links to the item's description have been removed. Apparently, eBay concluded, bidders might get "buyer's remorse", so not only is the listing software scrambled so the listing won't print once the sale has ended, buyers are further discouraged from even referring back to it. This is an especially effective way to keep buyers from comparing the listing details against the item, when it doesn't look right after it's been received.

8. Finally, watch out for eBay's new "fake opinion link". This button usually appears somewhere around the Feedback pages and asks how you like the new changes. If you fall for this trick, you click on it and up pops a dialog box for comments. But - surprise! - there's no 'submit' button. It's a hoax page that can't be submitted to anyone, and it will remain on your screen until you cancel it, unsent.

9. The cumulative results of all this finally had a whiplash effect: the loss of all personal communication has turned users into nameless, faceless robots who feel no obligation for truth, honesty or courtesy. And that isn't boding well for their folksy "thank you for being part of the eBay family".

10. A 19-year eBay employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said eBay's eventual goal is to scrub all identifying data about buyers and sellers, leaving only the item being sold and eBay's own profit-driven payment software. That means names, locations, complaints, dates, feedback, seller ratings and questions will gradually disappear from the site, leaving the buyer-victim alone on a dark, slippery slope with the anonymous person he's about to deal with.

"The plan launched in 2008 was to implement these changes slowly, so as not to create another stampede from the site," the source said, drawing on the analogy of putting a frog into a pot of water and letting it come to a gradual boil. "It was structured to be a ten-year plan, but it appears that may be extended," he said, declining to explain further.

When questioned about increasing complaints of eBay sellers making deliberately false representations about everything from toys, antiques, electronics and auto parts, to sellers mailing a paper picture of an expensive item the bidder believed he was actually buying, the source deflected the question saying only, "Buyers always have the option of returning something if they aren't happy." Predictably, eBay's own recent polls reflect the lowest level of seller trust in the site's twenty-year history.

He then made a reference to the eBay Buyer Protection Program. But hundreds of thousands of bidders aren't happy with that protection, citing fine print that excludes virtually everything, which fact only comes to light when there's a problem. If something ever does qualify, it's usually an inexpensive item, and then it's only covered under a narrowly defined, highly irregular set of circumstances.

As for eBay, it doesn't appear there's any turning back. Jiminy Cricket said it best: "You buttered your bread, now sleep in it," meaning, you've made your own mess, take care of it yourself.

NOTE: Ockie Ditchbank (user ID 'skippy') is eBay's Public Enemy # 1.

"Ripoff Report.com" is an amalgam of disguised corruption run by a man named Ed Magedson. There is no staff, no secretary; nor is there any "panel of arbitrators".

In the social vernacular Ed Magedson is an Internet Loser, a self-styled egotist who is outspoken about his grandiose accomplishments, yet doesn't possess so much as a high school diploma.

In clinical terms Ed Magedson is a sociopath. He cares nothing for his fellow human beings, seeing in others only how deep he can stick his plumbing in them financially. When he moved from the streets of New York to Mesa, Arizona, it was for the sole purpose of being at the ready when his parents died, so he could mine their estate. He goads his adversaries into legal confrontations with the enthusiasm of a child anticipating a trip to Disneyland. His only friends are his enemies, especially those who dare sue him in court.

Magedson, a balding, overweight, 62-year-old admitted pedophile, runs the highly successful website "ripoffreport.com". In reality it's a slickly-disguised, strong-arm confidence game that solicits complaints from legitimate consumers, and then blackmails the subject of those complaints - usually companies with deep pockets - into paying large sums of money to have the derogatory information suppressed. The lesser problem with his website is he spends way too many pages waxing poetic about his lifetime of highly improbable accomplishments, while giving barely a nod to his real victims. To describe Magedson as full of himself would be an understatement. Indeed, his ability to interact positively with his peers leaves much to be desired.

Magedson claims he never edits comments that have been submitted. That would be good if it were true, because his literary skills are typically 5th grade: he writes in fragmented sentences, doesn't know how to make paragraphs, can't differentiate between fact and innuendo and has so aggravated his webmaster, that he is now charged for any editing services he needs. In fact, Magedson is so illiterate, he cannot even restructure the paragraphs he lost when he edited a single submission into one large monolog. The result? Ripoffreport is a slovenly, tabloid attempt to create something that could have been useful, were it done with any degree of skill, professionalism and moral fiber.

His egotistical attitude, along with his 60's throwback hippie appearance, haven't exactly endeared him to the locals in Maricopa County, Arizona, where he ekes out a living selling nebulous publications and questionable services on his ripoffreport website. Magedson claims negative reports cannot be "bought" away, yet companies that want negative information removed can in fact, do so simply by sending this con anywhere from $2,000.00 to $100,000.00 (Magedson calls it his ''sliding scale'') along with a monthly "maintenance fee" to keep the negative comments suppressed (as opposed to removing them entirely, as legitimate websites do). Then Magedson, posing as an imaginary panel of anonymous arbitrators, places a disclaimer by the negative comments. Despite claims to the contrary on his website, Magedson is drawn to legal confrontations - where he is usually the loser - like a moth to a candle, ever confident this, finally, is going to be his big winner of a case. It hasn't happened of course, but in Magedson's sadistic mind, hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, he rambles about freedom of speech but, somehow, can't get it through his concrete coconut that defamation, specifically libel and slander, are still against public policy - whether in real life or on the Internet. Meanwhile, he relies entirely on the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which absolves websites of liability whenever false statements are placed by their users. And that's where he derives his income: blackmailing legitimate companies into paying for his "protection" against further negative comments visitors place on his website.

Magedson redefines all that is evil about the depravity to which mankind can sink.

Livid emails he sends indicate a clear need for a psychiatric evaluation; indeed, Magedson freely admits he "hides" because he believes "people are out to get him" - presumably from his legal troubles, ranging from litigation entanglements with local authorities to the victims of his corporate extortion schemes. His Mafia-style version of cyber blackmail is a creative new skill he honed on the streets of New York, and has cleverly applied to his Internet victims, usually businesses and large corporations, that would rather pay to keep Magedson's pockets greased, than to spend money on lawyers and protracted litigation.

To see a sharper profile of the Internet's most dangerous egomaniac, see:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-02-01/news/the-real-rip-off-report/

The brutal antics of this mentally impaired bully make an even more compelling argument that industrial-strength regulation of the Internet is long overdue.