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Guestbook / Blogs
God Bless
America
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We run a store on
eBay at
http://stores.ebay.com/PhoenixStore/
We run a store on EasyBid at
http://www.PhoenixStore.EasyBid.biz
We also have
Internet Shopping malls at:
www.TelsonStore.com and
www.TelsonUSA.com
We own
Online Pharmacies are at:
www.USAPharmacyWarehouse.com
(main site) and
www.USPharmacyWarehouse.com
(larger print for visually impaired)
eBay /
PayPal™
Security Concerns
eBay and
PayPal
have serious security problems that fail to be addressed
They also have problems with digital delivery and their
feedback rating system.
They
"Strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel".
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Just in case some of you have been victims of a false or
vindictive
RipOffReport.com
report, know that you CAN remove a false Ripoff Report entry:
RipoffReportRemoval.com
specializes in removing listings on
RipOffReport.com from the top of a search engines results page.
Although the idea of a Ripoff Report seems good on the surface,
it is a two-edged sword that
can be
used for extortion. The fact that eBay never responded to or
acknowledged this article or the
RipOffReport.com
report - BOTH of which they were informed of in MULTIPLE emails
- illustrates that the following article and report are
empirically true. |
We have worked hard to provide
a safe and secure environment for our online customers across our entire enterprise
platform. This effort consumes
inordinate amounts of time, and
we routinely report all
cases of attempted fraud against any of our Web enterprises to law enforcement
and the FBI.
Sometimes these efforts adversely affect the level of service we can reasonably
provide to our legitimate customers because necessary and automatic security
precautions occasionally cause customer satisfaction issues such as shipment delays, and we
apologize to our valued customers for any delays or inconveniences - but as a merchant, it is better to be safe than sorry,
because ONE fraudulent transaction could mean the end of your eBay / Internet business
enterprise.
As a legitimate customer, you must also take steps to ensure trouble-free
transactions, and protect your identity online.
Any law enforcement agency
will tell you that
a thief will expend more energy and employ more ingenuity in
perpetrating a theft than he would to legitimately earn what he sought to steal.
This is part of the criminal mentality,
and there is precious little anyone can do to change it. At the same time, a
thief wants to expend as little effort as possible, but still accomplish the
theft, and so he seeks the "easy marks". I believe what you will see in this
article will flag eBay's account sign-up process as such an "easy mark".
PayPal's
security and their interface to an eBay merchant's account
"items sold" page, also has serious programming flaws that need to be addressed.
This article describes the flaws, and how they impact an eBay merchant, in the
hope that until the "glitches" in the system get fixed, eBay store owners and
sellers on eBay will be made aware of what to look for in order to spot thieves
before they ship valuable merchandise to them, and end up "eating" the cost and
perhaps going out of business as a result.
As of this writing (Nov.
23, 2007), eBay and
PayPal™
have NOT addressed the issue I am about to describe.
As a merchant, we employ
outside payment agencies such as
PayPal™
and
Clickbank™,
so WE
never see
a buyer's credit card or other important personal financial information.
eBay or
PayPal™
will never ask you for this information in an email, or
send you via link in an email to a screen which requires you to "log in" to your
account.
If you shop
in any of our stores, please be advised that we value our customers, and we take
extraordinary
steps to protect your online transactions. If you order anything from
PhoenixStore
and you are NOT
a verified buyer / seller or we suspect that someone has "hacked" or "phished"
your account information, we will request your contact information from eBay,
and you will receive an email and a phone call from us, eBay trust & safety, or
PayPal™ security.
If you are an Internet thief, you can expect to be
arrested and vigorously
prosecuted.
There is only so much that
a merchant can do to protect himself and his customers - at some point, honest
people have a responsibility to themselves to protect their financial assets
from thieves... and the best way we have found to do this is by employment of a
payment processor who is on the cutting-edge of Identity Theft Prevention and
Online Fraud Prevention....
PayPal™.
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By
far, the best way I have found to prevent thieves from accessing your eBay
/ PayPal
account or eBay store is to get a PayPal™
security key. This small, football-shaped key fob looks
like a small car door opener remote. The device generates a six-digit
random number which has to be used in conjunction with your password in
order to access your PayPal™
and / or eBay accounts. However, a security key does
NOT prevent attempted
fraudulent orders to a merchant or store by someone using a stolen credit card,
as the following will illustrate: |
On November 14, and
15, 2007 someone using a
stolen identity
or stolen payment instrument (credit card or PayPal™
account) attempted to purchase three high-ticket
items from our eBay store.
Immediately suspicious was that these transactions came
from two separate eBay accounts that had common domain-name email addresses:
alla33@cathyplc.com
and
furonise@cathyplc.com
and were executed on the
same day the eBay accounts were opened (see screen shot
#5). (Oh yeah... if we find you
are a thief, we will post YOUR "identity" everywhere). The following
are actual screen shots from my computer:
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SCREEN SHOT #1
eBay's "Sold Items" screen showing the
fraudulent transactions as being "PAID" by PayPal.
(Note: The ($) icon is supposed to indicate
that the item has been paid for,
and the money is in the seller's PayPal
account)
The seller viewing this screen would NATURALLY assume that a verified
payment has been posted to his account, since when he
rolls his mouse over the ($)
icon, a pop-up balloon appears which reads:
This item was paid for via PayPal. Payment
was sent to: name@server.com
on Nov-15-07. |
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SCREEN SHOT #2
PayPal's transaction screen shows that the payments are
withheld - and the
money is not actually in the seller's account.
(Note: The amount field is different than the amounts above, because
these amounts include the S&H charges)
You will also note that there is no easy way to
correlate these items, since there are no common "tracking" numbers
between them. |
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SCREEN SHOT #3
This is eBay's
"sold items" screen AFTER I reversed another fraudulent
transaction by refunding the money to the credit card owner whose card was used to
fraudulently attempt to purchase the item. You will note that the e-Mail
for this buyer comes from the same domain address as the above two purchases. Being previously "lit", prior to my issuing the refund, the
($) icon on THIS particular transaction went off when the refund via
PayPal was made - PROVING that there is indeed a two-way "connection"
between this screen and my PayPal
account. The questions are:
"Why have the
PAID indicators been turned on (screen shot #1) and REMAINED on - even
though the money NEVER made it into my PayPal
account?", and "Why is it not
obvious to PayPal
that ALL these (3) transactions were fraudulent?".
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SCREEN SHOT #4
This is what happened when I checked the domain
address serving the "nnnn@cathyplc.com"
email addresses. It seems that the email addresses used belong to this
(personal) Yahoo! account (www.cathyplc.com).
This is a bit mysterious, since email addresses can be obtained free by
anyone, and are, by their nature, completely anonymous; they do not
require setting up a domain-name Web site. Why a thief would use the
addresses associated with this unfinished Web site, is a question that
remains to be answered - you will note that that I'm NOT holding my
breath. (Screen shot was taken from Maxthon browser; autosurf programs
were running in the other tabs). |
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I then checked to see how
long these two eBay accounts have been in existence:
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SCREEN SHOT #5
This is what I found when I investigated how long
these eBay accounts have been in existence. You do this from the "sold
items" screen by clicking on the member's ID number. Notice
that these two accounts were opened on November 14
and 15, respectively, and whoever opened
these accounts IMMEDIATELY (on the same day) came to my eBay store (and
no doubt a dozen others) and placed orders for
expensive and popular equipment which could easily
be "fenced". The negative comments were
added by ME - which, effectively BANS these two accounts from trading on
eBay (so they will just open a few more accounts - which seems easy
enough!). |
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SCREEN SHOT #6
In contrast to the above, this is what you
would see when you view the eBay profile screen for me:
You will note that I have had this store (red
door icon) since June 2006, and am not a
novice buyer / seller.
The same photo of me appears on all my other
Enterprise Web sites. |
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We requested contact
information from eBay
(advanced search / members / find contact information)
and did a reverse phone number search via
www.yellowbook.com , which yielded phone number listings. We then tried to
call the customer with the result that the
phone number given to eBay when the eBay account was opened, was a
non-working number. The fact that both of these
thieves (or one thief using two email accounts on the same domain) also
had NO feedback from other buyers or sellers is almost conclusive proof that the
transactions were attempted theft. We contacted
PayPal™
and eBay, and we had the transactions reversed
(the funds stolen from someone's credit card or
PayPal™ account
were returned to the rightful owner). We also tried to bring up
www.cathyplc.com (see
screen shot #4) and discovered it was a
shill [personal] domain account (with nothing on it) hosted by Yahoo!. However,
the hosting was paid for, and the payee could possibly be the wannabe thief (or
the thief who used (perhaps) used a stolen credit card to also pay for the domain hosting).
We contacted Yahoo!
and notified them that the two email addresses at
www.cathyplc.com were being used for the
perpetration of Internet identity theft / fraud, and put them in touch with
PayPal™
security. We have not heard a peep
from Yahoo and the
shill
Web site is still "under construction" (why am I not
surprised?). We also contacted the Fraud unit of the NY State Attorney General's
Office (In 2006 I worked for NYS-AG Medicaid Fraud Unit as an undercover Confidential
Informant and busted some "Psychiatrists"). PayPal™
also reports these incidents to the FBI, and assists law enforcement pursue
fraud investigations.
Although in this particular incident, the
thieves appeared to have set up a completely fraudulent eBay account for the sole
purpose of stealing products from eBay merchants, this is by far not the ONLY
Internet fraud being perpetrated (this is not to imply that the Internet is
rampant with fraud, but the evidence speaks for itself). Examples of various and sundry scams and "phishing"
attempts (some of them so pathetic they are laughable) can be viewed on:
www.AssholesAmongUs.com/phishersofmen.htm.
While eBay and
PayPal™
have their own protocols and guidelines, and have "suggestions" for buyers and
sellers, in light of the fact that these three transactions probably would have
made it to the point where a novice eBay merchant would have shipped the items
to the "customer", we have developed our own set of guidelines and a "red flag"
checklist. EBay merchants, feel free to use this:
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eBay Merchant "RED
FLAG" Checklist |
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RED FLAG |
MEANING |
ACTION |
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Ebayer has ZERO (0) Feedback |
This is a new account and could either
be because member is new to eBay or could be a new account set up by a
thief. |
The "0" feedback - while not an indicator in itself
that something may be amiss, means that this person has had NO
experience - either as buyer or seller. If the attempted purchase is a
high-ticket item, BEWARE! |
|
Ebayer has ZERO (0) Feedback
AND
bid / order is for expensive item |
Could be a new shopper looking for a
bargain on eBay - OR - could be a thief looking to rip you off. |
It is highly unlikely that a new eBayer with no
experience buying on eBay, would open an account and immediately
purchase expensive items. |
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Buyer has purchased a "BUY IT NOW" item
rather than bid on it. |
The buyer has selected "buy it now" when
the bid price is substantially lower than the current bid price. Thieves
don't want to wait to see if they won an item on a bid - this is why
they frequently go for the "buy it now" items or for the "buy
it now" button on auction listings. |
If the buyer has selected "buy it now" either from
your "buy it now" listing, or from an auction where the bid price was
substantially lower at the time than the BIN price, it COULD be that the buyer wants
it at ANY price - which possibly means that he is NOT the one paying for the
item - and the payment instrument is stolen or compromised. |
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The buyer has opened an eBay account and
IMMEDIATELY attempted to buy popular high-ticket items. |
Buying high-ticket items is not in
itself suspicious, but when it is done on the SAME DAY that an eBay account
is opened, it IS cause for further inquiry. (see
Screen Shot #5) |
Popular game items and automotive GPS equipment
apparently have an easy black market market for thieves. AVOID shipping to anyone
without a verified address, and to any eBayer with ZERO (0) feedback. |
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Address not Verified.
Identity not
Verified. |
This person has not taken steps to
verify that the address / identity information given to open his / her
eBay account is actually valid. This could be either ignorance,
negligence, or attempted deception. |
This and "0" feedback may just
indicate a new eBayer. It can also be a thief. Request contact
information from eBay - This is done from the "MY EBAY" screen. Click
ADVANCED SEARCH / and under the "members" tab on the left, click "FIND
CONTACT INFORMATION". eBay will email you AND the member information to
contact each other. Search
www.Yellowbook.com for the member's phone number using the address
provided. If they do NOT match, the member is most probably a thief. DO
NOT ship any merchandise to this person REGARDLESS of payment status.
Contact PayPal security
800-830-8574 to report what you have found. |
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"Ship to" address different from billing
address / request to ship to another address other than the one
registered on the eBay account. |
This person could just be wanting to
send a gift, or traveling and wanting to ship item to destination, or
could be a thief taking advantage of your attempt to please your
customers. |
As a policy,
PhoenixStore and
TelsonStore does NOT ship to
unverified addresses, or send "gifts" to other people on behalf of the
buyer. There are NO EXCEPTIONS. As per PayPal
seller protection policy, as a merchant, you ship to unverified
addresses entirely at your own risk. |
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None of the
above "red flags" is in and of itself an indication of potential
thievery, but when taken together; when two or more of these indications
are evident, both
PhoenixStore and TelsonStore
suspend any shipment of merchandise, and immediately initiate further
investigation.
PhoenixStore and TelsonStore
have ZERO TOLERANCE and NO COMPASSION or FORGIVENESS for thieves. If and when such a thief is caught, we will supply the
prosecution with any and all evidence at our disposal, and
we will also
bring civil charges against the thief to recover loss of time to pursue
him at the rate of $120 / hour plus attorney fees and court costs. Upon
conviction, we will vigorously appeal to the court in an
Amicus Curiae
brief, to have State sentences run consecutively, and to also bring Federal
Mail Fraud charges against the thief.
. We will also follow the convict
throughout his incarceration, and write letters
to the parole board supporting denial of parole for anyone attempting
fraud on any of our Enterprise sites.
If you get
caught thieving here, as the Bible says
"Verily I say
unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence
[from prison],
till thou hast paid the uttermost
farthing".
Matthew
5:26
As you can see,
the biggest flaw in the system is the ability for ANYONE to open an eBay
account without having to validate their identity, and to then
IMMEDIATELY on the SAME DAY, use a fraudulent payment instrument (either
a stolen credit card or compromised PayPal
account) to place orders on the system, and to have those payments
actually flagged as "PAID" in the seller's eBay "sold items" screen, AND
the PayPal transaction screen.
A merchant who is unaware of this, could easily be fleeced for his
merchandise, and neither eBay nor PayPal's
buyer protection would cover the losses.
I have made it
clear to both eBay and PayPal's
security teams that this is an issue that desperately needs to be
resolved. Both eBay and PayPal
have been notified by email and by phone of this posting here. |
Having determined
beyond a reasonable doubt that the transactions attempted on
PhoenixStore
were indeed fraudulent, the following eMail was sent in
response to the eBay thieves who attempted the three fraudulent transactions in
our eBay store:
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NOTICE TO EBAY ACCOUNT OWNER
Following your
recent order on eBay at
http://stores.ebay.com/PhoenixStore/
An investigation by our company in cooperation with eBay
and PayPal has determined one or more of the following:
1. The phone number
provided to eBay when you opened your eBay account is invalid.
We request customer contact information from eBay and check phone numbers
against the address using
http://www.bigyellow.com a "not found" or mismatch to
the "ship to" address is assumed as fraud, unless subsequently determined
otherwise.
2. Your address is UN-verified, or does not match the billing address of the
payer's PayPal™
account or credit instrument.
3. Payment to us has been flagged as suspicious or suspended / reversed by
PayPal™.
PayPal™ has its
own set of parameters to flag suspicious transactions.
4. You have little (or no) trading history on eBay ("0" feedback is an IMMEDIATE
RED FLAG).
The overwhelming preponderance of evidence leads us to conclude that this
transaction is ATTEMPTED FRAUD against our company. As a result of this
determination, shipment of the ordered merchandise has been suspended pending
resolution of this matter. Any funds transferred to our
PayPal™ account
will be refunded to the rightful owner of the account.
PhoenixStore
has ZERO TOLERANCE for Internet fraud. We report you to your Internet Service
Provider (ISP), Your Internet Presence Provider (IPP), your email provider, and
to State and Federal law enforcement agencies. You CAN and WILL be tracked and
located, and you WILL be arrested. Upon your apprehension, we WILL press
criminal charges against you.
Please be advised that we have been doing mail-order on the Internet since 1994.
We run multiple commercial Web sites, and are not novices at this by any stretch
of the imagination (but we are relatively new to eBay). If we receive a
suspected fraudulent order we WILL have it investigated. If found to be
fraudulent, when the police catch the thief, we will make sure that the thief
will spend some SERIOUS time in BOTH State and Federal prisons.
Fraud on eBay is a SERIOUS FELONY - State penalties can be up to 12 years in
prison (Grand Larceny / Identity theft), and FEDERAL penalties (Mail Fraud) can
be up to 20 years in prison. If you attempt fraud in our store, we will petition
the court and see to it that your State and Federal sentences are run
CONSECUTIVELY, and we WILL be in communication with your parole boards to see to
it that you spend the MAXIMUM amount of time eating stale peanut butter
sandwiches and beets behind those prison bars. You will NOT attempt to steal our
money and waste our valuable time and get away with it.
LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS TAKE NOTE:
If you are the legitimate owner of the eBay /
PayPal™ account
in question, and someone is using your account fraudulently, you may be a victim
of identity theft. It would be prudent for you to check your bank, credit card,
and stock accounts, and also change the account numbers (transfer funds)
passwords, and access parameters to those as well.
It is our company policy to comply with eBay and
PayPal™ buyer /
seller protection guidelines. If you are the rightful owner of an eBay /
PayPal™ account
that has been compromised, change BOTH account passwords and contact
PayPal™ and eBay
IMMEDIATELY. You will be well-advised to obtain a
PayPal™
security key if you don't have one.
If you are the lawful owner of this eBay account and wish to do business in our
store, please ensure that the contact and address information you provided to
eBay can be verified. We use a number of different methods at
PhoenixStore
to verify that the rightful owner of an eBay /
PayPal™ account
has indeed made a LEGITIMATE purchase with us prior to shipping the item(s) out
to them. This is done to protect us from fraudulent transactions, and the
rightful owner of an eBay / PayPal™
/ Credit Card account from theft of his or her money.
Please do NOT answer any emails you get from
PayPal™ or eBay
unless they address you by your first and last name. eBay and
PayPal™
will NEVER ask you to enter your password in an email, and if a click-link in an
email APPEARS to go to eBay, chances are it is a SPOOF web site. Forward any
suspicious emails from eBay to
spoof@ebay.com and forward suspicious emails from
PayPal™ to
spoof@paypal.com. If
you have answered one of these emails by mistake, you MUST change your password,
or risk having fraudulent transactions conducted with your account.
Internet thieves devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to their
"craft". It would be easier for them - you would think - to just WORK for a
living. Their efforts waste OUR time, and our time is worth more than just
money; it is time that could have been spent in productive and constructive
pursuits. So you will understand the frustration it causes us to have to do this
- We had spent HOURS on the phone with
PayPal™ recently,
trying to come up with a solution to three ATTEMPTED fraudulent purchases made
in our store.
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Of course, there has been no response to
these emails - if there were a response, the IP addresses could be used to track
the thieves to the location used to send the email.
On the morning of November
22, 2007 (Thanksgiving), I called eBay's "Trust & Safety" department, and
explained this situation anew to someone else. When my explanation at what had
occurred elicited no response from the person at the other end, I asked to speak
with a supervisor. After listening to "elevator music" for 5 minutes while I was
on hold, the supervisor answered. He also seemed dumbfounded, and blamed the
problem on
PayPal™. I also
gave him the URL for this page, and sent the URL for this page in emails to eBay
and
PayPal™ in
reference to this problem.
I expressed the concern
that as a merchant, I pay
PayPal™
to ensure the security of
transactions. eBay is also coming up short in the security department
(obviously), because this person was able to open up TWO eBay accounts and place
orders for items totaling over $3,000 without ever having to verify their
identity, and ONE of the payments actually went through, and was temporarily
posted into my
PayPal™ account,
until I personally
refunded the money (by refund via
PayPal™) to
whoever* it had been
stolen from.
*
As an eBay merchant, I cannot
see the credit card or payment instrument information, and
PayPal™ will not
disclose it - which is a good
thing.
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My
suggestions to eBay and
PayPal™ |
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Currently, anyone can
open an eBay account without verifying his identity, and immediately buy
or bid on items from any eBay store or from anyone selling on eBay. It
is prudent to require that anyone opening such an account be required to
prove he or she is who they say they are. This "proof" can be done in a
variety of ways such as temporarily posting two "micro-deposits" (less
than a dollar) into the applicant's bank account and have the applicant
validate the deposit amounts, and the Social Security number on the bank
account (as
PayPal™ does), or requiring that the
applicant have a verified
PayPal™ account before he is allowed to
buy or bid.
Since bank account
numbers and access codes are easily "phished" with spoof emails and
spoof Web sites (see my posting titled "phishers
of men"), in ADDITION to the bank account verification, the phone
number registered to the account pending activation should be checked
(this is done easily via online phone directories).
Since more than 90% of
people on eBay (according to
PayPal™) have
PayPal™ accounts, and being that
account verification to a bank account where you, as an applicant must
have access to the account in "real time" in order to verify
"micro-deposits" seems to be an effective (but not iron-clad) means of
verifying a person's identity, the pre-existence of a verified
PayPal™ account would speed the sign-up
process for new eBay users, and make it more difficult for thieves to
even open an account.
In addition to BOTH eBay
and
PayPal's security measures as they
stand, in order to open either an eBay account or a
PayPal™ account, the applicant should
be required to provide the number and verification code of any credit
card or debit card issued by a bank that has been issued at least 90
days previously.
The applicant should also
be required to verify his email address, and the IP number of the
response to a "verification email" should be secretly recorded to the
account information. Since most thieves "work" from their home
computers, this would provide additional information to track a
potential thief should he be able to circumvent all the other
requirements for validation.
In short, the identity
verification process should include ALL of the following:
-
Validation of mailing address via normal postal mail (fraud would
then ALSO be a FEDERAL OFFENSE and the FBI / Postmaster could then
be recruited in efforts to find and prosecute thieves).
-
Validation of bank account registered to applicant's name / address
/ SSN
-
Validation of credit instrument registered to applicant.
-
Validation of e-mail and recording of respondent's IP address.
It would also be a good idea
if eBay and
PayPal™ had what
I would call "common tracking numbers"
- clickable links that would take the seller back and forth between the
eBay "sold items" screen and the
PayPal™
transaction screen for that particular purchase. As it is now, there is
no "one-click" means by which to do this.
Although
PayPal™ does require all but the last
in this short list, eBay requires NONE of this information to
"register". Merchants can require
PayPal™ as the payment instrument of
choice, but the payer does NOT have to have a
PayPal™ account to make the purchase,
as
PayPal™ accepts major credit cards as
payment, and deposits these credit card purchases to the seller's
PayPal™ account - the seller has no
means of knowing what instrument was used in the payment. Payments are
posted as "completed" to the seller's eBay screen (see
screen shot #1 where the
($) icon is lit
indicating that payment was made and (the seller would naturally assume)
that the money has been deposited to his
PayPal™ account) The mouse-over
pop-up caption on the ($)
icon reads:
This item was paid for via PayPal. Payment
was sent to: name@server.com
on Nov-15-07.
It turns out that once this
($)
icon is turned on, if
PayPal™ later
investigates the payment and decides the payment may be fraudulent, this
($)
icon is NOT turned off. Unless the seller
monitors his email and gets a message from
PayPal™ that
funds are being withheld pending investigation, he may ship the
merchandise to the thief - AND - when the payment is finally reversed,
the merchant would NOT be covered under
PayPal's "seller protection".
Also, since
PayPal's
communication with the buyer about such issues are made ONLY to the
seller's email address, and NOT to his eBay "sold items" screen, it
probably would be a great idea to have such messages posted as ALERTs to
the seller's eBay sign-in screen, so that when a seller logs into his
account and there is a buyer validity or other payment issue on his
PayPal™ account,
immediately upon log-in, the eBay merchant would see a message like
this:
ATTENTION!
PayPal has suspended / reversed
a payment to your account.
This matter requires your immediate attention. Please log in to
your
PayPal™
account to resolve this matter prior to shipping
any items recently ordered from your store.
It would also be a good idea
for eBay to incorporate an icon or some sort of indication on the
member's profile page (see screen shot #5 and
screen shot #6) to indicate whether or not
the eBay member has validated their identity. However, this suggestion
seems to be a
non-sequitur
being that I previously suggested that activation of eBay accounts be
conditional upon either previous identity validation by
PayPal™ or by
eBay employing the same methodology. This suggestion therefore, would be
a stop-gap measure requiring all eBay accounts to be verified by one
method or the other by a certain date, or be deleted from the system. At
that point in time, no new eBay accounts would be able to buy or sell
unless the identity of the person owning the account could be verified
"beyond a reasonable doubt".
As of
this writing (Nov 23, 07) the fraudulent purchases # 273 and # 274 made
on Nov 15 07 are STILL showing as "Paid"
($)
icon lit on my eBay
"sold items" screen (screen shot #1), and
the "paid for via PayPal" message on the mouse-over on this icon is
STILL there - despite REPEATED calls to both eBay and
PayPal™. This is
a SOFTWARE problem with the eBay / PayPal Enterprise Solution, and
it needs to be fixed post-haste.
I have REPEATEDLY attempted
to get a resolution of this matter from eBay and
PayPal™ to no
avail. If this problem is not addressed to my satisfaction by Nov 30
2007, I will put
PhoenixStore in "on vacation" mode, in consideration of closing it
permanently, and since the attempt to resolve this nonsense has cost me
fully a WEEK of my valuable time, I will post this page on every Enterprise
Web site we own, and I will post it to
www.RipoffReport.com where it
will remain FOREVER (not even I will be
able to delete it) for millions of viewers
to see - eBay and
PayPal™ will have
to respond to the complaint, and will have to take RipOff Report to
court to have the posting removed, and
Rip Off
report has never lost a case (see the following):
Communications Decency Act or "CDA", 47 U.S.C. § 230)
Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018,
1027–28 (9th Cir. 2003)
See
Doe v. America Online, Inc., 783
So.2d 1010 (Fl. 2001)
Green v.
America Online, 318 F.3d 465, 470 (3rd Cir. 2003)
Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc.,
339 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2003)
Schneider v. Amazon.com, Inc.,
31 P.3d 37 (Wash.App. 2001)
Doe v. GTE Corp., 347 F.3d 655
(7th Cir. 2003)
Zeran v. America Online, Inc.,
129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997)
Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F.
Supp. 44 (D. D.C. 1998)
NOTICE:
If you play games with my valuable time or my money, you will pay
DEARLY!
In the
meantime, the theme of the message here is:
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Another slap
in the face to eBay Sellers - Adding Insult to Injury |
February 5, 2008 5:32 PM PST
eBay sellers to be banned from
criticizing buyers
In move to curtail retaliation
by vengeful sellers in its
feedback system, eBay plans to
prohibit sellers from posting
negative feedback about their
customers.
Beginning in May, sellers
will not be able to leave
negative or even neutral
comments about their customers,
only positive feedback, said
spokesman Usher Lieberman.
(Credit:
eBay)
Sellers are crying foul, saying
the policy change isn't fair.
But Lieberman says some
sellers have been abusing the
system, retaliating against
customers who leave them
negative feedback. And that has
left many buyers afraid to leave
honest comments, or even use the
site, period, he says.
"The No. 1 reason buyers
cited for decreasing or ceasing
their activity on eBay was
negative unwarranted retaliatory
feedback they received from
sellers," Lieberman says. "There
has been a four-fold increase in
this over the last several
years. It's cited as a bigger
problem than even not receiving
shipment."
Meanwhile, eBay is offering
more solutions to protect
sellers when customers don't
pay.
The move is the latest in a
series of changes that involves
how search results on the site
will be displayed and fees for
listing items announced
recently.
For the record, I have
nothing but good things to say
about the person I bought a
white embroidered linen shower
curtain from last month on eBay.
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PhoenixStore
is an affiliate of Net4Truth / Telson USA Web Enterprises.
We are a PayPal™
VERIFIED seller / buyer
What it Means to be Verified
To become Verified, a PayPal member in the United States must provide us
(PayPal) with
proof that he or she has opened an account at a bank or other financial
institution. Because these institutions are required by law to screen account
holders, PayPal's verification process increases security when you pay parties
you do not know. Please note that PayPal's verification system does not
constitute an endorsement of a member, nor a guarantee of a member's business
practices. You should always consider other indicators when evaluating members,
including length of PayPal membership and reputation scores (on eBay or other
auction sites, if applicable).
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Unique Visitors
to this page |
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|
ENTERPRISE WEB SITES
http://stores.ebay.com/PhoenixStore/
http://www.Net4TruthUSA.com
http://www.telsonusa.com
http://www.TelsonUSA.com
http://www.USAPharmacyWarehouse.com
http://www.USPharmacyWarehouse.com
http://www.VFCLL.com
http://www.AwesomeLasers.com
http://www.AssholesAmongUs.com
http://www.Net4TruthUSA.com/DPD/
http://www.MakeALotOfDough.com
http://plottoseizethewhitehouse.Net4TruthUSA.com
http://ProvocativeVideos.com
http://www.LuLu.com/Net4TruthUSA/
http://www.LuLu.com/TelsonUSA/
UPDATE :
As of Jan 24, 2008, there has been NO RESPONSE by eBay management about the
issues addressed above - issues that would have bankrupted my eBay business, and
negated all my profits for the two years or more that I have been doing business
on eBay. In addition, eBay's system failed to deliver the URL for several
software purchases made by customers on my eBay store. These were $1.00 and
$4.00 items, and as a merchant, I assumed that the delivery system was working,
because it worked for all of the previous customers who bought these products.
After a few days, the customers (who were not eBayers), without contacting me
about the problem, decided to leave negative feedback instead. As a result, I
responded and tried to resolve the issue with eBay - no response. I cannot
afford to waste my valuable time tracking down one-dollar sales (of which I net
about 70 cents) to make sure the customer received them. After further research,
it turns out that eBay was at fault. The customers saw the problem, and
attempted to remove the negative feedback, but were locked out of the system. It
is at this point that I decided to no longer do business on eBay.
It turns out that there is an alternative to eBay -
http://www.easybid.biz
- you can join for free, and there are no "final value fees" or other recurring
costs for operation. There IS a ONE-TIME member fee to set up a store, but this
is easily recovered in one or two months by the fact that there are no fees
associated with the sale of items on that site. We are in an evaluation process,
and we will post our findings here - in the meantime, you can purchase all of
the digital items we formerly offered for sale on eBay for the same prices (OUR
DELIVERY SYSTEM WORKS 100% of the time) on:
http://digital.Net4TruthUSA.com
The following is a copy
of an eMail I sent to the CEO of EasyBid.com
I have just joined EasyBid as a free member, and will be upgrading to stores /
pro shortly - this after a potentially business-ruining experience with an
unresponsive eBay staff that refuses to answer my emails with anything but a
form letter, and allows thieves to run rampant on their site, preying on honest
merchants. I have documented all of this on
www.Net4TruthUSA.com/ebaystore.htm and you should have a look at it, along
with numerous complaints of the same nature filed by disenchanted merchants and
buyers on www.RipOffReport.com - I
tell you, only the fact that I have been doing Internet business since 1994
saved me from the thieves, and my losses would NOT have been covered had I
shipped the expensive merchandise to the thieves who ordered it via my store. My
post and complaint with RipOffReport spells it out with screen shots - and THEN
they have the NERVE to blame ME for their failure to deliver download links for
digitally-delivered items that resulted in a few customer complaints for $1.00
and $3.00 items. That was the last straw!
I am writing to you as a businessman, and I
can tell you that when you get as big as eBay, you start to lose focus on the
needs of people who keep you in business. Those matters were easily resolved,
but after WEEKS of wasting my time with these idiots, I decided that I was
"pissing up a rope" as they say in the military. LATER for eBay.
I'm doing a few test pages on your site,
and if it works well, the "PhoenixStore" link from all the sites (and their
mirror sites) represented by the logos below, will be changed to
{my store} on EasyBid.
Thanks
David Todeschini
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