Liar Buyer Fraud Article

[mbselections00]

For those who haven't seen this, thought you may find it interesting reading :  http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m02/i23/s01

• PayPal Researchers Say Buyer Fraud Is Common

• They also said it was quite conceivable that increased awareness of the liar buyer problem among the public might cause losses to increase

• That means a site like eBay has reasons to keep silent about the problem. And while the researchers don't mention it, it seems worth noting here that even though buyer fraud is such a common problem, eBay doesn't allow sellers to warn their colleagues about buyers who commit fraud - sellers are only allowed to leave positive feedback for buyers, whether or not those buyers are liars.

[casbit33]

Thanks for that,  very interesting reading.

[i-love-my-sheep]

I read that yesterday, it's quite disturbing, isn't it? Especially the bit about eBay being quite happy to cover it up. I guess they don't care because they are still making their money.

[digital*ghost]

It's interesting reading, but coming only from people who have worked for PayPal (two of which are listed as computer science....dudes), I don't know how much stock I put in the paper. Those guys would have their own bias, and conducting a social experiment (after interviewing only 5 self-confessed fraudsters) and then showing us exactly how they (effectively) manipulated them into certain dispositions, then gauged reactions / decisions - all working from the responses of those 5 people - kinda compromises the results. 

What I mean is, the problem is obviously very real, and the results would seem so too, but that also seems like a bit of a narrow scope on it all told (particularly as the study was conducted on people who were doing it kind of as a job - Amazon mechanical turk workers are basically people for hire). 

[herveybaybloke]

No its true digital ghost. I am the victim of buyer fraud. A refund has been enforced on me and I have no way to defend myself. Ebay puts up a wall. I even had proof within the ebay messages where the buyer stated that the item was working and thanked me. Days later ebay demanded I refund the buyer. I also had to pay for return postage! When the parcel arrived, it was empty! I cannot leave a negative warning to other sellers. There is no way now to complain to ebay as they have shut down the listing as soon as the tracking number was scanned by the postal service! I am in the process now to warn as many people as possible via social media to boycott ebay.

[digital*ghost]

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@herveybaybloke wrote:
No its true digital ghost. I am the victim of buyer fraud. A refund has been enforced on me and I have no way to defend myself. Ebay puts up a wall. I even had proof within the ebay messages where the buyer stated that the item was working and thanked me. Days later ebay demanded I refund the buyer. I also had to pay for return postage! When the parcel arrived, it was empty! I cannot leave a negative warning to other sellers. There is no way now to complain to ebay as they have shut down the listing as soon as the tracking number was scanned by the postal service! I am in the process now to warn as many people as possible via social media to boycott ebay.

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Sorry to hear that - I don't doubt that there are instances of this kind of behaviour, sadly I've witnessed it occurring on more than one occasion I was more wondering about the merits of this particular report.

For example, in the report they mention how they recruited participants, and how they culled them, saying that anyone who seemed to be lying about their actual location from the start were removed from the study  - sounds fair enough, you want to be able to trust the responses you get, but what that also ends up doing is removing people who have a pre-disposition to lie about details in order to acheive something....hence, the results are automatically narrowed to a smaller section of the general online community who might participate in this kind of behaviour. Plus the scenarios - and therefore responses - were controlled, so ultimately the results are somewhat selective and biased. 

[mbselections00]

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@herveybaybloke wrote:
No its true digital ghost. I am the victim of buyer fraud. A refund has been enforced on me and I have no way to defend myself.Ebay puts up a wall. I even had proof within theebay messages where the buyer stated that the item was working and thanked me. Days laterebay demanded I refund the buyer. I also had to pay for return postage! When the parcel arrived, it was empty! I cannot leave a negative warning to other sellers. There is no way now to complain toebay as they have shut down the listing as soon as the tracking number was scanned by the postal service! I am in the process now to warn as many people as possible via social media to boycottebay.

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That is really sad to hear and unfortunately these scenarios seem to be happening more frequently - yours is not the first such story I've read here.

I understand what digi is saying & don't disagree, but when all is said & done, I still think the article sums up pretty well what a lot of us have felt for a while now & sadly many have experienced - and that is that eBay are aware it is happening and yet do not take appropriate action against the offenders and appear to have absolutely no regard for the sellers in these situations - they do not even have the courtesy to hear both sides of the story before passing judgement & that is the part I find so unfair,  insulting & rude

I cannot leave a negative warning to other sellers   That depends how you look at it - I was in hervey bay recently and I met this bloke at the pub but there was no space . . . . .

[saarzi]

I agree - its a really dodgy report.  So dodgy in fact, that its likely to discredit any complaints about a very serious issue that is happening more and more frequently. 5 test subjects is just ridiculous. Their methods are poor. The people doing it arent appropriately educated.

Anyone worth their salt is going to look at it and laugh.

Looks a lot like that last article that sounded like it was written by en Ebay employee trying to take the heat off the serious issues and giving easily fixed issues all the attention... HERE.

Are the people writing these things really that stupid.... or brilliant?   lol