Boy! I try to close down for two weeks and enjoy a very RARE vacation, and eBay pulls yet another of its major blunders!
Here is the story: The auctions in question were all won by a single buyer. That person is a very major collector of memorabilia of all kinds, and literally buys hundreds of items many weeks. Someone who this person bought from did not get any reply from that person, likely because their e-mails were filtered out by a spam filter (anyone who sends lots of e-mails knows this is a growing problem). So they panicked and requested the buyer's phone number, and when they could not reach them that way, they reported them to eBay. Now, had this happened during the week, the person at eBay receiving the report would have had the brains and the experience to know that this meant nothing bad, and they would have made an effort to contact the major collector themselves, and, at the very worst, they would have suspended the account, to make sure the collector would notice it, and contact eBay to get reinstated. But because this happened on the weekend (coincidentally, the day after I closed for two weeks), the report went to some weekend employee of eBay, likely an ex-burger flipper. This person read what had happened, and put two and two together and got 22, and decided this was a classic "hijack". They cancelled ALL the major collector's current bids, and, for good measure, cancelled ALL the major collector's bids from the past thirty days, which meant EVERY auction that collector had bid in was now wiped from the eBay system (55 of my recently closed auctions, and hundreds more from other sellers)! This triggers the e-mail EVERY single person bidding on any of those auctions received (including many MoPo members). The e-mail states that the auction was cancelled and gives the impression that the buyer or the seller did something wrong, when actually the ONLY one who did anything wrong was eBay itself! Now one wonders what senior person at eBay made the decision to give a person in this position THIS MUCH POWER! They did not have to consult anyone, they did not have to verify anything, and, this is not at all out of the ordinary, for, as senior eBay employees have told me in the past, eBay's Trust & Safety Department likes to "shoot first and ask questions later"! What will happen now? Well, since the person IS a completely legitimate buyer, and since all the auctions have been paid for, and the items sent, there is nothing needs to be done there. But the only way for eBay to reach those bidders is to reinstate the closed auctions, for they no longer have a record of the bidders and can only get them back by reinstating the auctions. So they will reinstate the auctions and send out very carefully worded e-mails to those who got the first one that basically say, "Sorry, move on, nothing to see here" without in any way admitting they did anything wrong, and without in any way admitting that the buyer and sellers did nothing wrong. So I will have to waste a bunch of my time answering e-mails and letters, telling this same story over and over, and likely there will be a few wacky people who think there is a cover-up of some kind. All the more reason I eagerly look forward to the day when I am no longer an eBay seller. Thanks, eBay, for allowing one of your employees to mes up my vacation! Now I will return to the rest of my two week vacation. I will be adding new items to eBay on the 29th and on October 1st (both as ten day auctions) so that they end on the Tuesday and Thursday after I return (the 9th and the 11th). Currently, I have just ONE auction on each of my accounts, telling people that I am on vacation, and the winners of those auctions get a set of my 27 books. One ends in two days and is at $102.50, and the other ends in four days and is at 80 cents! In case any of you want to bid on that one, it is at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=60315&item=130156642727 I shouldn't be posting to MoPo again until I list the first group of items on the 29th. Hopefully I won't have my vacation interrupted again, especially for such a silly reason! Bruce Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
