Is This Another Ebay Scam?

Dave, do you mind if I add my Two Cents?

I personally think there's a big difference between tattle-taleing ("You're selling a holed IHC worth two bucks before holing as an "error" for ten dollars! BOO ON YOU!!" most people are not going to fall for this, and if they do, they're out "sock money," not life savings) and actively protecting people (e.g. "That Morgan is counterfeit AND the real version is only worth $30 AND you are claiming it's an 'error' to hide the fact that it's cast AND you are selling it for $400?!" That is something that might easily slip past a new collector, if the ad is convincing enough). Sure, the former should probably also be reported, but the latter is outright dangerous, especially if it's being done en masse. Someone has to protect the ignorant and unwary from themselves.

ebay isn't the only website that allows people to "break the rules" to do this kind of thing, either--before Neopets was purchased by Viacom, I used to do the same thing with child Internet safety (the number of ten-year-olds who want their new friend to know where they go to school and what their teacher's name is would scare the crap out of you). Safety volunteers were allowed up to twenty accounts we could cycle through so our names wouldn't become readily known, while regular players were only allowed two. As long as the site knows and sanctions the action, and it's not just rogue vigilante work, I don't see a problem with it. Like I say at work when someone walks in on me scrubbing the drains or arm-deep in coffee grounds hunting for someone's lost wedding ring--"It's a glamourous job, but somebody's got to do it."

Scubu,i actually provided proof on that aussie thread that "you" had removed,obviously you did'nt bother to read & investigate the proof postitive I provided before you had the thread removed.
I did not sit back & whinge as you put it I provided ebay with item numbers for 4 listings that had been previously bought by 1 buyer & were relisted only to be shill bidded by the same buyer again.
I applaud your efforts to bring down the shonky traders but why come into an australian thread & try to belittle those who were trying to make the naive & unsuspecting buyers aware of problem sellers on ebay australia ?
No need to reply as I will not give you my time or reply to you ever again.

Actually here is the links to one of the australian sellers item current & previous listings which we were discussing in that thread,do us aussie's the courtsey of looking properly before you judge us wrongly in future please.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-1923-H...t_481wt_1417

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1923-HALF-P...t_481wt_1186

There are more examples but it is quite easy to establish that if you take the time to look through their feedback,completed listings & current listing,another member here & I have been watching this shonk & his shiller do this for 3 to 4 weeks,i really think if you do take the time to look into it properly I think you will agree that you indeed owe a few aussie's an apology but with your attitude on that thread I'm sure none of us will be holding our breaths waiting for that.

Appleangel, please relax. You're throwing accusations around willy-nilly (how is scubu even supposed to remove threads? He's not a moderator), and apparently being angry because . . . he took down a scammer? Why is that anything to be angry about?

Take a deep breath and realise we're all in this together.

Basebal, yes it is.

It's "reportable," but not provable by someone outside the ebay system, and only provable by ebay if they can confirm the seller and bidder are one and the same. And no intelligent shill operation colocates the buyer and seller. A successful shill operation is two different persons in collusion, and if they're smart nobody can ever prove they're doing it. There's just too many reasons why such a pattern might be appropriate behavior, too many possible explanations.

Quite a difference exists between acting based on known fact, and acting based on something you can never call more than supposition because you haven't access to physical proof. The former is why scubu can be decisive in the pursuit of a known troll with a known pattern. The latter is why we had to disappear a group of statements so patently unprovable as to leave us liable to accusations of slander.

And both are forms of bigger-picture thinking, which I wish were more prevalent.

That's pretty much the long and short of it, basebal21. And in the litigious atmosphere present in the U.S.:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/c.../m05/i18/s01

Correct or not, the defendant in this case (the one who made the allegations of shilling) is in trouble unless they have deep pockets indeed. The only way they'll recover their costs is to not only risk moving forward to a full trial, but they also have to win. And then successfully prosecute a counter-suit for the damages, which in our system allows whole highways of mitigation/extenuation even in the face of a conviction.

They don't have to win for you to lose; in most cases, all they have to do is successfully file. The cost of a defense would exceed 5 figures within a nanosecond of entering the office of your prospective representation, and if a full-on fight to the finish is in the offing (as lawyers are wont to do), the losing party is likely looking at a six-figure settlement just to cover the winner's costs.

And those costs, in such a case, are not likely to be on a contingency. Were I to successfully sue some random ebay shill, my costs are locked-in regardless of the losing party's ability to pay.

They don't have to win, for you to lose.

I've been Moderating across various fora for more than a decade, since the earliest days of any sizable online communities and prior to any real body of precedent regarding hosted-community owner liability. The direction things were going to go was established quite early - don't allow a whiff of non-provable hearsay, like any other form of exposure to slander - and as much as we might dislike having to hold such a hard line on "reasonable" conclusions based on available evidence, I can't in good conscience allow CCF to stand a remote chance of falling afoul of the alternatives.

Regardless of the merits of what we've suppressed in the case mentioned above, we'd be doing you a disservice to allow them to remain. We're not serving you if CCF is driven from the Internet by litigation.

It s that I have to handle things this way (and yes, I deliberately invoked the bad word filter to quantify my feelings). Never once in the time I've been doing this have I had to invoke this argument against someone whose intent was not honorable (and I can't count the number of times I've used it), and this case is no exception.

But it's the reality we gotta face.