Emmy Advanced Media – Television Business News: Can eBay be Saved? Shelly Palmer says of the last 10 items he purchased on eBay two turned out to be scams and he lost his money. Both of the two items where under $50.
With eBay accounts being hijacked left and right I wonder if this will lead to a larger problem for the company. If the credibility of eBay’s system is challenged their lofty stock price could be challenged as well.
In my own case I haven’t bought anything from eBay in the past few years. Prior to that I bought and sold hundreds of items on eBay. I think the only thing I ever got ripped off on once was a bootleg Sheryl Crow CD I tried to buy (opps, probably shouldn’t have said that).
My wife still uses eBay quite a bit but frankly I find that I don’t have the time to deal with the back and forth communication and payments with the whole process. I was selling some out of print CDs on there for good money but then I’d get 10 or so transactions going at once and lose track of where I was. It just wasn’t’ worth it for me to deal with the hassle to sell and the companies that do it for you take too big a cut.
In terms of buying something usually I want it yesterday not in 5 days when an auction ended. I’d much rather find what I want through Yahoo! Shopping or PriceGrabber and then just give my credit card and buy it. With a credit card too I have more protection than with Pay Pal. I might pay a little more but I guess my experience with eBay has been that it’s more hassle than it’s worth.
The authorities should really go after some of these folks hijacking accounts though. If they really stuck it to some of them, say sent them to jail for five years or something, then we might see some of this die down.