Ive seen how people in this forum keep an eye out for people like this. In fact, Ive seen people in this forum post warnings about this very guy. Now its personal. The Guru Crono that he is “selling” is my friend’s bike. What I want to know is, does anyone have any evidence that eBay actually goes after crooks like this? He’s posting the same old stuff. Here’s the link. http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=dairyman88_xxl&include=0&since=-1&sort=3&rows=25
Please feel free to bombard him with as many stupid questions and insults as possible. I already have. Keep up the goodwork crimefighter527.
I might start to ramble, but I think Ebay does a pretty good job considering the enormity of the task we want them to perform. I have buddy who used to get the biggest kick out of writing some of the funniest, most offensive, yet slightly plausible book reviews on amazon.com. He got away with it for the longest time b/c there was just too much traffic going on on that site for the company to monitor all of it. They eventually got enough complaints (I’m sure of it) about these types of “reviews” that they changed their methods for posting reviews.
The same (traffic issues) is true of Ebay. They have millions of auctions going on at any one time. In order to be in a position to easily identify fraud, they would need to staff experts on all types of items sold. Hell, some of the auctions by this jag-off seem down right reasonable. The only reason people on this board catch them as fraud is because they are VERY knowledgeable about bikes and are very familiar with many of the available web resourses that this idiot poaches from. These “experts” then get pissed, notify ebay, and the auctions get pulled. Sure it doesn’t always happen, but it sure seems to happen alot. I think the system works.
I’m sure ebay could probably do more. And I’m sure they’re walking in that grey area that quickly turns into liability. But I think we all need to remember that ebay is nothing more than an online version of a flea market. You remember flea markets?? Those places where people trade/sell junk and the occasional valuable item. Those places where people often get screwed. You know… those places where some poor sap pays $5 for a Prarie Dog with the Monkey Virus and two days later wonders why they have all those damn itchy sores??
Keep policing. Keep complaining. I have a bunch of times, and Ebay is very good about being responsive. All I know is I’ve had way more (on the order of 15 to 1) good experiences with ebay than bad.
There are lots of things that are flagged by ebay (animals, pornography, etc.) and removed… how are they handled? The M.O. for the bike fraud is pretty much the same each time, and I just think that they could use some software to flag auctions that then require human intervention to check them out.
By the way, on www.Roadbikereview.com, the ad for the Merlin Cielo - I emailed the seller (Frank Reilly from Texas… yeah, right!) asking about the crank length (that always gets them) and he replied:
“Dear sir,as ive already told you in the last ,message,you should see the the complete bike specs on http://merlinbike.com/english/bikes/cielo.html.
Reply us as soon as you are sure that The Merlin Cielo Dura Ace is the bike
which you wish.
Regards!”
To be fair to Ebay–there is a ton of stuff to monitor. And they are not experts at each item–they do not know the difference between a Fuji and a Litespeed(is there one?)
Also, like the head guy from Ebay said on 60 MInutes the other day, we are the company and Ebay is somewhat set-up to police itself. I’d say just keep pointing out the fraud.
This is pretty cool… I went to www.visualroute.com and downloaded their software. With Outlook or Outlook Express it tracks an email from its headers and tells you geographically where it originated. I pulled up the emails from the three different Ebay auctions that I suspected were scammers and two of their email addresses originated in Romania and one in Spain, although they listed Canada as their location. I did the same with the emails from an ad on www.bicyclereview.com offering a Merlin Cielo for $2,400 and it too originated in Romania, although he lists Granbury, Texas as his location.