I have little confidence in ebay's supposed fraud controls.

Last year, I posted an ad on Astromart for an LX-90, with pictures of
the scope in our family room, along with a tale about its origins (an
Astronomy mag contest award!). Some time after, I was alerted by
several Astromarters that they had seen my ad on ebay, being run by
someone else. The ad was a verbatim rip-off and even included my
pictures and the Astronomy mag info!

It took several of us much time, several e-mails, etc. before ebay even
acknowledged we had concerns or that there was a problem. We met with
delay and then resistance even though there was clear evidence this was
an outright fraud.

They failed to follow their own policy of responding to "complainants"
within 12-36 hours. When they finally responded, all they sent were
canned, boiler plate, one size fits all, vague happy talk messages.

I kept pressing them and they eventually claimed to have taken some
action, but they refused to say what it was in order to --- now get this
--- protect the *seller's* privacy and rights! (I never asked for the
person to be ID'd, but to simply be informed what steps ebay actually
took!) It was insulting that a criminal was being given more
consideration than legitimate buyers and sellers---- and a wronged third
party.

Finally, after contacting different parts of ebay, and sending several
blunt (yet still polite) e-mails (it took them over 2 weeks to
respond!), they told me what they did: they *temporarily* suspended the
person! WOW! What incredible fraud protection that is. (Yes, I'm
being sarcastic!) They didn't let bidders know what was going on, and
all they posted was "not a registered user" rather than alerting people
that a defrauder was on the loose. They even admitted that the person
could readily re-register and that they couldn't or wouldn't do anything
about it.

I just can't see supporting a service that cares so little about the
welfare of its users.

Larry Stedman
Vestal