I received a spam message to my ebay account yesterday, advertising some rubbishing electrical web site. The member is obviously dodgy, and when you trace his feedback, there are loads of 'members', all with 1 feedback, all selling '????' and leaving 'aaaaaaaaaaa' feedback. so ive decided, like an idiot, to report it to ebay. let's see what happens. lol. if they reply and ask me to tell them what was in the e-mail header i'll bloody kill them! last time this happened they couldn't grasp the fact that it wasn't an e-mail sent to me, it was another member using the internal messaging service to contact me, so the e-mail was genuinely from ebay (but the message contents were phishing).

 

 

this is the message I sent to ebay:

 

I received this message (below), via "My Messages" on ebay, from another ebay user. It was in response to an item I am selling, although it is obviously spam and has nothing to do with the car I'm selling. The user YIMIBALO has 1 feedback for item number 300066828002 which, when viewed, is just 4 question marks. When you see what the 'seller's other items are, they are all just question marks, and there are several user names there, all with just one feedback, all for non-existant items, and all leave feedback 'aaaaaaaaa' for eachother. These members all need to be removed as they clearly are the source of spam messages to genuine members which is against eBay's policy. Please can you let me know what action you are going to take. Thanks. Dave.

 

 

And this is the spam message, which I included with my above complaint to fleabuy:

 

Hi, we are a large wholesaler who mainly sell electronic productsYou can visit our online shop:

http://www.netshop188.com and http://www.toyroom.cn

you can contact us by our business MSN : netshop188@hotmail.com,we have many good products,such as.digital cameras, mobile phones, LCD TV, Laptops ,Notebooks, Digital Video, Mp4, GPS, ps3; There are shoes and handbags too. The quality of our products is the best,our service is perfect, and our price is the lowest.The speed of our shipping is fast.

 

(1) 2~3 items 95% on all shipping;

 

(2) 3~5 items 90% on all shipping;

 

(3) 6 or more items 80% on all shipping.

 

Please see the details on our website:

http://www.netshop188.com and http://www.toyroom.cn

Our business MSN :netshop188@hotmail.com

E-mail :toyroom168@yahoo.com.cn

I accept the following forms of payment :

1. Paypal

2.Western Union

3.Bank Accounts Transfer

Give my best wishes to you!

Probably nothing Dave I got ripped off on ebay for £700 and they were not interested :xxx:

The tosser that tried to rip me off thought he could get away with it because he lived 400 miles away how wrong he was :)

pmsl, here's the response i just got:

 

 

Hello Dave,

 

Thank you for taking the time to let us know about unsolicited

commercial message you received from member "yimibalo" via ask seller a

question. I understand how annoying such type of message can be and I am

more than anxious to resolve this case for you.

 

I've checked the information you sent us and I can confirm that the

email was not sent by eBay, and is not endorsed by eBay in any way.

However, it appears to have been sent by another eBay member. no shit Sherlock!

 

What will we do now?

 

We'll take appropriate action against this member to ensure eBay remains

a fun, safe place to shop. However, as it's important that eBay

maintains member privacy, we can't share details of the action we take. cos you'll do f**k all

 

How to cut down on spam emails

 

Make sure you take advantage of the junk email filters in your email

program to eliminate unwanted emails from your inbox. You may want to

consider adding the sender of the email you reported to your "blocked"

list. how about remove all the accounts i told you about

 

Yours sincerely,

$random_name_generator$

Exactly the same shit I got from them last year. Total waste of time bothering to report anything to them, they don't give a shit!! Solong as you pay your bill that's all they are bothered about.

i dont believe it!!!!!!! :shock: :shock: theyve actually done what i told them! maybe it was a special new year party thing - to draw a complaint out of the hat and deal with it!

Anyone get one of these from them today?

 

 

 

 

 

As eBay has grown, we've seen an increase in the bad experiences members face due to two factors: increased fraud across the internet and a very small proportion of sellers who fail to deliver a positive buyer experience. At the same time, there are many more online shopping choices, and our buyers' expectations are growing.

 

Therefore, we're stepping up our efforts to stop bad experiences on the site and are excited about the positive impact this will have. Read on for more details about what this will mean for eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie.

 

Regards,

Garreth Griffith,

Head of Trust & Safety, UK & Ireland

 

 

 

Taking an even more proactive approach to Trust & Safety

 

 

Safeguarding Member IDs - Before Christmas, we introduced a major change to auction-style listings in the UK by making bidder IDs anonymous in certain circumstances. We did this to protect buyers from potential fraudsters and early results show it's working. This change will take place on eBay.ie at the end of January.

 

Preventing the Trade of Counterfeits - Counterfeits are a global problem. On eBay they result in negative experiences for buyers who unwittingly bid on them. The sale of counterfeits is illegal and buyers who knowingly purchase counterfeits are supporting an illegal industry. As a result, we will require additional verification requirements and restrictions for certain types of items.

 

Re-enforcing our Policies - We're taking a stronger stance on reinforcing our policies in areas that provide bad buyer experiences, such as when sellers charge excessive postage or when sellers lie about where they or their items are based.

 

Enhanced Buyer Protection - Later this year we are going to strengthen and simplify our purchase protection programme, so that more of the items you buy are covered.

 

Read about the details of these improvements here.

 

 

 

 

Holding sellers to higher minimum standards

 

 

Private Feedback - Last autumn we removed the ability for sellers to make their feedback private. This was important, as it means sellers with poor track records can no longer hide their bad reputations from buyers.

 

International Trade Requirements - We've also implemented new registration requirements for sellers who want to list outside of their registered country. This should lead to a reduction in the number of suspended sellers and cancelled listings on the site.

 

Feedback 2.0 - This is a new approach to feedback that will give good sellers a real chance to shine, and buyers the opportunity to choose between sellers, based on the level of service they provide. We will launch a test of this in the UK and Ireland in February.

Find out more.

 

Eliminate Pre-Approved Bidder (PAB) - Also coming later this year, we're going to remove the PAB feature for the vast majority of our sellers. Experience has shown that sellers who use this feature are often less reliable, and it is often used to support off-eBay trade, which is not safe.

 

Consequences for Seller Non-Performance - A very small proportion of sellers provide the majority of bad buyer experiences, so we will enforce strict consequences on these sellers going forward. This will level the playing field for our best sellers, who provide consistently high levels of customer service.

 

Read about the details of these improvements here.

yeah i got one this morning. seems that you can rate sellers on four different categories and from 1* to 5*. i think that ebay's rating system was a little over-simple, but this has just gone completely the other way and is too complicated.

at least there are some improvements there - the removal of 'private feedback' - why would someone want to hide their feedback, unless it was all negative!