The following is about eBay RULES. It, hopefully will help eBayers understand a little better.

These are my opinions and understandings of just a few of eBay's rules, prohibitions, and definitions in the "help" guide. And, included is my suggestion for reporting fraud.

1.

eBay prohibits sellers from over - charging for shipping & handling.  Check out the electronics category. It appears overcharging and starting auction minimum bids very very low is the way to do business in this category. I peruse this category quite rarely but I know someone who does frequently look at it.

2.

eBay prohibits a practice they call "keywording." Keywording is misrepresenting an item by inserting words, names, brandnames, manufacturer names, etc. This practice is fraud by misrepresentation and forces eBay users to look at nonsense or bad listings when doing an earnest search.

3.

eBay prohibits the use of words like "style", "similar to", "like", etc. along with the keyword as eBay strictly sees this as misrepresenting especially in the search engine result.  My understanding is that if you use these descriptive terms in your description, as opposed to in the title, it may not be against the rules. Art and creations do in fact follow each other. This is especially true in fashion, jewelry, furniture, and many other areas.

Of course,  if a person has no eye for design, then they will say anything and also for sake of selling may say anything. This is the danger leading to fraud & misrepresentation. Two different people may look at a triangle. One may say it is a triangle. The other may say it is a square. The fact is, that it is, a triangle. Misrepresenting it as a square is the prohibited behavior.

4.

eBay also has buried language in their rules that prohibits an eBayer from doing anything to go against a sale/auction. For example, if you recognized an item or listing as being counterfeit then if you directly sent an email to the bidder on the item giving your opinion that it was counterfeit; then I understand the rule to disallow your doing this.

However, in contradiction to the above rule, I once received an email from a an eBay staff or computer robot (who knows). This email stated that they (eBay) encourages members to directly inform sellers that the seller is doing something wrong. I, as a matter of fact, have done this notification to sellers (mostly prior to learning of rule #4) many times. Once, I did receive a kind reply. The seller said they were not aware of the rule against such a practice. For example, the practice of calling and titling your zircon ring a "tiffany ring" is the hypothetical violation.

5.

eBay has two allowances that I do not think were in the eBay system at the beginning of eBay. I believe these allowances totally contradict what eBay upholds as their great "honesty" helper: the feedback system. It is a fact that eBay makes it very difficult to remove or modify feedback, the red negative feedback. They developed a procedure to block and make "private" feedback scores,  comments, and item numbers. User IDs may also be blocked. Both can be done any time the bidder or seller opts for it, I believe.

It is called PRIVATE AND BOTH SELLERS AND BIDDERS ARE ABLE TO OPT FOR THIS "SECRET" AND "PRIVATE FEEDBACK". I do think this erodes the system of Feedback being a good way to see who you buy from and who you sell to.

A few times I tried to see what showed as far as the feedback chart. When the user ID is blocked or kept private; absolutly nothing shows up. When feedback score is kept private, it appears the feedblock block shows the chart at the top but no individual comments and item #'s. There are so many reasons behind wanting to hide your feedback but the most devestating is SELLERS WHO HAVE ONE TOO MANY DISGRACEFUL AND HORRIBLE COMMENTS & they think by hiding it would help business. I, myself have never bid on an item from a seller who blocked their feedback.

In my early days on ebay, I very rarely checked feedback. If there is something glaring like 2 + negatives in the past month or 6 months, then I definetly try to read the details of the negatives. Fairly often, the seller is a seemingly fair & innocent party to the negative situation.

Here again, eBay makes it difficult to read just the negatives. It is quite a timely task to have to surf through pages and pages of feedback to read 3 negatives that are buried within 500 feedbacks.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

Now, I am an earnest if occasional reporter to eBay Authorities of "keywording".  I have not kept track of all the listings in jewelry that I see that are obviously misrepresenting. Just in the past 2 weeks I saw about 5-7 in the category of a certain metallic vintage jewelry. I did one today (1/21/06) but usually I do not report very often due to my lack of confidence in eBay security.  I almost reported one seller who had more than one violation this past week.

I will explain briefly how I recognize fraud. I have a certain amount of expertise in a certain area of jewelry. When I see a necklace (or any other piece) identified as a big maker, when it clearly is not, then I know the seller just added the name. EBay also prohibits the words "style", like, etc. in the listings. This is # 3 above. The use of  "style" and a new one I recently saw is adding "esque" to the famous name, are rampant on eBay, (eg. Tiffanyesque). There is a lot of jewelry that is not signed but experts or collectors can recognize these pieces, if photos are good. 

One time, as a seller, one of my listings was removed by eBay with a note that the jewelry item was not what I described in the title & the text. This particular type of jewelry made by a famous company is never signed. Consequently, I figured that a fellow eBayer saw my photo and they did not think it looked like the famous maker.  I was very ticked off but since I was not an expert in that particular kind of jewelry, I did nothing further. I have never sold that pretty bracelet to this day.

Regarding reporting fraud / misreprensentaion / keywording on eBay, it is very difficult and I have never had positive results, except for 1 out of about 30 times. Case in point, this big power seller selling a great array of items, this past Mon. 7-13-07 sold a copper enamel bracelet (likely homemade kit-mde jewelry form the '50's) that he/she labeled as the famous Maker Matisse. The bidding ended at about $63, very, very high for a non famous maker bracelet. I reported the item as a LISTING VIOLATION WITH INTENTIONAL MISLEADING TITLE the day before the auction ended. eBay failed to protect innocent bidders and failed to remove the listing. I also reported another copper item the same seller identifies as Matisse, which I know is defintely not Matisse.  eBay has not removed this listing & the listing continues to run. Because the seller has a store, the listing will likely run for months. I also reported 10 or more misleading listings by this same seller. He/she does not use the term gold tone or silver tone for costume jewelry but sells  with just the words "gold" & "silver" which is against eBay rules. eBay has yet to remove and quite a few sold with the misleading titles. I am extremely frustrated especially after receiving an email that something would be done by eBay but NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE BY EBAY.

Unlike Yahoo Auctions, [NOTE YAHOO AUCTIONS COMPLETELY CLOSED ABOUT 7-1-07; I guess free auctions for sellers was not a profitable thing for Yahoo] .  which allows a few sentences to be sent with the item number, eBay "Security Center" disallows any added information. It is a "tree" if choices and an item number, nothing else. However, I just made a report of keywording moments ago & the system has changed. When you branch down to Customer Support from the tree, then you are allowed the email space with the problem automatically filled in at the top. What a surprise; there is an improvement!

Anyways, you can get to both [secuirty system & customer support email] by clicking on  "REPORT ITEM" AT BOTTOM OF THE AUCTION PAGE OR click on"Security Center" at the bottom of a site map screen page or bottom of any page. There are only a few  chart items that seem to allow extra information. To say the least, the process is very frustrating.

your fellow eBayer jaguara77, "I SAY BUY SAFE & SELL SAFE" & we're all better off. GOOD LUCK!

ddp, Master of Science in Criminal Justice

p.s. I have found the great majority of jewelry & watches sellers & pottery & glass sellers to be VERY honest , over the past 12-13 years of eBaying.  Although, I just read a guide which mentions lots of repros and fakes in Roseville, Weller, etc. pottery. f.y.i. Including my old USER ID [which was an email name & which eBay prohibited emails as user IDs some years ago] , I think I have combined 1250 +  buying and selling feedback. Sorry to say, more buying than selling!