The eBay Sting Operation

Well the battle is on between me and eBay and today was the call to war!

You see I had been reading these horror stories about the way eBay customer service responds to customers that particularly have problems with their accounts when it comes to the bill for using eBay. I had visited sites that interestingly enough had been shutdown probably by eBay like www.ebaysucks.com.

Well this reporter is not one of those that plans to roll over and play dead! I have already been to battle for particularly seniors that were being scammed by the former incarnation of Ammco Transmission when they were telling little old ladies they needed a new transmission. We stopped that then and we will get eBay now! By the way the current owners of Ammco seemed to have learned the lessons from the previous ones as there are few complaints about them.

The eBay Sting as I like to call it began when I received an email from eBay saying that I needed to take action according to the headline. Do you think that I opened that email? NOT on your life!

eBay is the most "phished" company on the Net! If you don't know what "phishing" is then you need to learn right now. This is when you receive an email from a supposedly legitimate company like eBay saying that you must OPEN this email and do as the email says to do which in 99% of the time is to STEAL your identity! That's right steal your identity which happens every day especially again to senior citizens of which I'm proudly one!

So I continued to ignore these emails like I would encourage anyone to do and eBay should KNOW too. Finally I decided to open up my eBay account to see if there was any truth to these emails. This is the SAFEST way to check to see the validity of an email. If you receive an email from some company that you are associated with like eBay then check your company web site like I did.

Well sure enough there was a problem. Yes, I owed eBay exactly $9.95 for previous sales on eBay which was also done for a reason - to see how smoothly eBay worked and to see if there were other scams being run on people. I will say that I have been very lucky in that respect and that is for another story.

I learned also that they had tried to get the $9.95 out of my bank account that was NO longer even active as I had already explained to them several years ago. This is another problem that seems to happen on eBay often - they don't pay attention to your communications to THEM!

So I immediately tried to find how to respond to the charges which you too may have learned is more difficult than getting into the CIA! I searched and searched for a way to get in touch! Finally after a good 10 minutes of searching I found it. Of course there was NO way to communicate by phone! They wanted you to use their form. So I filled out the form and sent it in.

A couple of days later I get my answer back from eBay which is really just a cold form letter with NO reference to my particular situation which I learned through research happens to many others.

Well let's get to the bottom line of the story. They kept emailing me after I told them I would be glad to pay the $9.95 but not the late fees or bank fees. I waited for a REAL reply - no luck just more form letters in email saying that they would have to suspend my account and then saying it was suspended.

Today I get a call on my cell from a toll free number that says in this recorded voice message that I must call this number ASAP and that this is not a telemarketing call. Another example of cold customer service. This time it is from NCO in Columbus, Ohio which turns out to be eBay's collection agency! Collection agency for $9.95!

Well as a consumer investigative reporter I turned the tables on the agency that also expects you to cower before them. April comes on the line and begins her rehearsed spiel which I put an immediate halt to by telling her that I'm a consultant to the Networks on Consumer Affairs and that I would first like to have her full name and the name of the company she works for. She gets all flustered and puts her supervisor or STUPIDvisor as a friend of mine likes to call them named Chris on the line. I guess he thought he could do the job! WRONG! I turned the tables on him also asking his full name and where NCO is located which is Columbus, Ohio.

I tell him what we are doing and that this is basically a sting operation on eBay. Dead silence on the other end! Then I tell him about "phishing" regarding eBay and that 99% of the time the email is NOT from eBay but someone wishing to steal your identity! Again dead silence.

As I live in the mountains Verizon cell many times loses the call and it happened again. I fully expected them to call me back but as of the time I write this they have not.

I relish going up against eBay and I think one of my Network TV contacts will too.

eBay has gotten too big for their britches as the saying goes here in the South and it is time for a change just like we experienced in Washington this week!

Well if the Buzzle folks let this article go up then you will be able to follow my adventures with the eBay Sting!

Hugh Simpson is a former consumer investigative reporter for Post Newsweek TV and now owns a very successful public relations consulting business working with authors and entrepreneurs.