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Ebay is as bad as it has ever been

In the last week ebay has stopped responding to reports from their own EMR (enhanced member reporting) team. This team would report bogus items and items with COA's from banned authenticators. Usually the reports were acted on, sometimes very promptly, sometimes slowly, but usually the reports were being used by ebay. Though there were some very large ebay autograph sellers that seemed to have immunity to these reports.

Now ebay is not even listening to the EMR reports. Ebay is flooded with crap and more is on the way.

BEWARE of buying autographs on ebay. It is a cesspool now and unless things change it will only get worse.

3 members like this

Comment by Fuddjcal on March 17, 2013 at 11:02am: I sold a Mickey Mantle 8 x 10 photo last week for $315.00 with NO COA, I did notice that there were not too many nice items listed for auction at the same time, so the price for this one went up I guess...

I agree with everyone that this is sickening news and it will no hurt the value of legitimate collections. Just pathetic. If they don't police it, I'm going to stop using them for buying and selling things. They would be no better than Proxibid, Autionzip and platforms like that.

Comment by Jorge Marin on March 17, 2013 at 6:40pm: It is quite obvious that Ebay will not do anything to remove many dishonest dealers and fake autographs that are up for bid. The reason is b/c Ebay would lose millions of dollars per year in auction's fees and paypal transactions. It's that simple.

Comment by Steve Zarelli on March 18, 2013 at 6:34am: Here are some examples of obvious forgeries that eBay used to remove under the EMR program. Now, forgeries like this are mushrooming as it appears eBay has turned a blind eye toward counterfeits.

I wonder if they are still removing items that fail PSA Quick Opinion.

Comment by Steve Zarelli on March 18, 2013 at 7:45am: More junk coming out of the woodwork that eBay will not remove. Someone will "only" lose a few hundred bucks on this one. :-(

Comment by Steve Zarelli on March 18, 2013 at 10:03am: The reason is b/c Ebay would lose millions of dollars per year in auction's fees and paypal transactions. It's that simple.

If this indeed the case, it is very unwise and short-sighted. You could make a business case that many of the bad autographs will result in returns, refunds, ebay disputes, Paypal Buyer protection cases, etc. How much does this type of post-sale refund and mediation cost eBay/Paypal in money and resources? Maybe the person directing the collectibles area will see a bump in revenue and sales, but it's coming at the cost of the person responsible for the case resolution and refund area.

Further, if true, what will the long term effects be on eBay sales when it becomes general knowledge that eBay deliberately deactivated internal fraud prevention measures? Bad ethics, bad PR and decreased confidence in the platform... just so some unwise department manager can bump his or her numbers.

When it all washes out, there could be a very high cost for a minuscule increase in revenue.

I wonder if eBay has any sort of ethics training as part of their professional training program?

Comment by Null on March 18, 2013 at 12:33pm: Gentlemen for posting forgeries, should I post them as a blog/discussion or what? I noticed Christopher is doing blogs, but when I do them they have to be "approved" which I'm not sure how long that process takes and it is wasting valuable time. Especially when some of these are listed as SUPER CHEAP BIN.

Comment by Beatleworld on March 18, 2013 at 2:42pm: bay has a lot of crap fake autographs listed, however I have found some amazing items on there, I'm very happy with the items I buy, I think it should be policed better however these fakes and their stupid owners will never stop me from buying.... I feel people need to do better homework before laying out their hard earned money, earlier today someone sent me a scan of a full set of beatles autographs bought over the weekend for £350, now come on !....if these crappy fakes didnt sell on there then the sellers would soon dissapear....as long as people keep buying them they will always be fakes on there !....its in everyones interest to name and shame the items....it's a big issue almost everywhere and not just on ebay.

Comment by Sterling Sheppard on March 20, 2013 at 12:29am: I saw 2 separate items that I noticed were fishy and when I scrolled down BOTH had c.o.a.'s from autographs network! I also can't understand how that company hasn't been demolished to the ground for how many hundreds of thousands of people that they have ripped off!I understand maybe if they can't catch every single fake but there is no system incorporated that allows them to check every auction and they have lost total control in the mass numbers flooding the site !I'm afraid they only see dollar signs!

Comment by Steve Zarelli on March 20, 2013 at 4:06am: There are reports that this was caused by an IT glitch. Apparently items are being removed again.

Comment by Richard S. Simon on March 20, 2013 at 6:04am: Ebay has sent out e mails to EMR members blaming a technical issue for this problem. It seems that whether or not it was a technical issue bogus items are now being removed once again.