PS3’s, eBay’s Mandate and Well Intentioned Greed

Responding to the internet’s latest tulip mania, Sony’s PS3, eBay announced today that it was imposing limits on sellers:

Only established eBay vendors - those who have racked up comments from at least 50 previous customers and have positive ratings of at least 98 out of 100 points - can list PS3s before Friday. Each vendor can list only one PS3 per eBay account.

The listing must include a photo of the pre-order receipt, and the seller must guarantee shipment within 30 days from the date of purchase. Before Friday, PS3s can be listed on eBay only in auction formats - not as “buy it now” items.

This is all well and good, addressing a number of lessons learned from previous problems the site has experienced with ultra-hot items and actually going a step or two further by setting the 50 previous customer standard, positive feedback threshold, limit of one PS3 per account, etc..

However, as was discussed in my previous post regarding site security, the 50 comment and 98/100 comment thresholds are easily circumvented by working the penny auction/auto-feedback daisy-chain whereby virtually cost-free sales are exchanged for immediate and positive feedback; 50 purchases or so = 50 positive feedbacks, cost: 1/2 a buck, if that.
The photo of the receipt requirement can be easily side-stepped by either hijacking a receipt photo from a legitimate auction or simply PhotoShopping a facsimile. Seeing is believing on the internet, only never believe what you see.
The guarantee requirement is irrelevant, at least from a scammer’s point of view.

This brings us to the auction only limit, which has some merit but then expires on Friday,thus opening up the scammer’s favorite format; the one day auction.

By avoiding the elephant in the room, namely eBay requiring buyers to register credit card info and other common sense hurdles, eBay has chosen to write rules on a barn door that is still wide open. Overstock eliminated 1 day auctions in March , a move that addresses the cut and run tactic and a move that at least ensures that there is time for the community and management to get wind of suspicious listings and do something about them. The likelihood of eBay following suit is remote.

And so it goes.

A couple of thoughts, apart from the scamming, occur to me.

One is that this fill-in-the-blank item madness on eBay has joined the canon of Yuletide chestnuts along with Macy’s parade, Bing’s White Christmas and Christmas Story.

Another is that in eBay’s announcement, this was stated:

“With the Xbox, we saw a high number of well-intentioned sellers unable to meet obligations due to restricted supply.”

And thus eBay has ever-so-lightly announced that apart from evil-doers, it is now a guardian - protecting us so it seems - from our “well-intentioned” but nevertheless avaricious Yuletide selves.

Good luck…or as Ralphie (as an adult) says in Christmas Story:

“Life is like that. Sometimes at the height of our reveries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”