| Original Message: Re: New eBay Categorization for Collectible Beads |
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Elizabeth, I don't regard being educated about a particular chosen area of collectibles as necessarily being "academic". But I have always felt a certain responsibility toward educating my public about what I am selling. After eight years of buying, selling, and/or observing the eBay marketplace, it's evident to me that this is not the case with many sellers. Yet, many buyers look to eBay as a source of valid information in the marketplace, with a somehow unspoken acceptance that if it appears in print on their screen from an eBay seller, it is credible and reliable. We have a moral obligation to try and educate customers with correct information. Due to our consumer advocacy, we are no longer selling on eBay as of Dec. 2006. We have been authorized by eBay Trust and Safety to contact sellers with correct information re. their bead auctions. We provide the corrections to their text and point out instances of keyword spamming, miscategorization, etc...If revisions are not made in 24 hours, we submit the auction to our contacts in Trust and Safety for termination of the auction. We always initiate contact with the seller with the approach that they are simply mistaken or uninformed about their item. But all too often there is no response at all, or a combative one. Which tells me that the tendency is for the seller to represent their item with a specific agenda, not necessarily one that includes accurate representation. We are trying to help raise the standard. After it's first 12 years on the net, eBay is definitely popular and heavily used. The past two years is the first we can recall of an effort on the part of eBay to improve the quality of representation on their site. This is surely brought about by lawsuits from huge companies like Tiffany, Swarovski, etc....as well as Senate committee hearings with eBay re. internet fraud. The estimate was recently that over half of internet fraud is committed on eBay. We are sure that this is what prompted eBay to hire a former U.S. prosecutor as vice president of Trust and Safety. He is our original contact in eBay. Our concerns have been heard by this person and his staff. They are very real people indeed. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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