posted on February 3, 2001 08:55:56 PM new
Just a question as I have been curious as to if their fees got rid of all the spam. I do a search on Airline Tickets occasionally now to see how many show up. Every night there are hundreds. A lot by new sellers who either use the exact same format (ie starting time, ending time, bulk loaded a couple into each category for a total of 143 listings, with the same description with the same link and false price, only a different e-mail address listed) as the other sellers that all the sudden quit listing or more likely keep dumping and picking up new ID's. I thought now that you had to register with a credit card, you couldn't keep picking up new ID's? It's a good thing these fees got rid of a lot of the good listings so you can find this junk so easily now. It's also nice to see how little they enforce the input given from neighborhood watch now, it seems like since they got these new fees they are more interested in keeping their listing numbers up than cleaning up the site.
posted on February 3, 2001 09:48:41 PM new
That's not fair, I am not listing for personal problems, I will be back. I am sure I am not the only one, this little down time came at a good time for us, the holidays were tiring. Not all sellers in Yahoo are bad>
All auctions have problems, we were unaware that registering with a credit card was new.
So you are saying people are getting accounts without a proof of address in Yahoo? No wonder there was spam. I wouldn't buy from someone who could not prove they existed. You used to be able to choose the option to only accept bids from those who were registed with a cc. a few years back. What happened to that? been gone too long I guess.
Nothing personal to anyone, I am glad you brought this up, I have always proved who I was so buyers felt comfortable, screw the rest who hide.
posted on February 4, 2001 07:47:03 AM new
Regarding Credit Card Verification
This is rather pointless, in my opinion, because many folks have 8 or 10 credit cards. Now, consider a wife with 5 different cards in her name, and her husband with 5 in his name, that gives them 10, in 2 different names and 5 different companies. Of course someone could also borrow a friends credit card, a parents credit card, etc., and the list goes on.
Can’t verify via e-mail address, since AOL folks can have 6, and many others have 3 or 4 by using the freebee services of Yahoo, Excite, Hotmail, etc. etc.
Regarding the Neighborhood Watch, this is a joke – what it creates is a Flea Market mentality. (A Flea Market Mentality, is where you bad mouth, another vendor to customers and to the Market Owner in order to have them thrown out of the market and remove competition). NOW, Lets assume that our hypothetical couple above have at least 4 accounts between them. Now assume they are selling Digital Cameras, and all of the sudden a major competitor moves on to the auction. Via Auction Watch all they have to do is report their competitor often enough, the competitor is removed, and they can again dominate the market.
That is how just one couple can twist this NW system. If one has friends on Yahoo, with special convictions, for example they are all anti-smoking. Then they just alternately, continually report any one selling smoking items which this “click” group deems unacceptable. If you scrutinize an ad close enough you can find something to complain to Neighborhood Watch about.
Physical address verification won’t work if the person really wants to acquire multiple identities – they can use a friend’s addresses, relatives addresses, etc. Yahoo could write for verification, the friend gives it to the Yahoo user, the Yahoo user merely signs it and sends it back and now they have a new physical address verification.
The bottom line is – there are too many ways to twist and misuse the NW system – and too many people have multiple credit cards, multiple addresses, so that multiple ID’s are very easy.
Buyers, don’t panic – I am sure 95% of sellers are as honest as the day is long – just like the general public, but the above example is also very feasible for the dishonest.
posted on February 4, 2001 08:21:21 AM new
Yahoo did actually answer an email once. Or maybe the canned email response I got answered my question so I assumed it was a real email. As I run around 700 auctions I wanted to know how many ID's I could use so I could break my stuff down into smaller groups. Crafts under one ID. Clothes, etc under one ID. etc
The response was this: You can have one ID for each verified valid credit card.
As all my ID's were linked to the same email I don't think that they were too worried about that part of it.
posted on February 4, 2001 03:36:38 PM newMcelhinn001
This guy has been spamming Yahoo for 2 years. You think 143 ads is bad, before the 1,000 ad limit he was running 2,800 ads a day. He has had over 40 ID's deleted and has more than that still active. He used to use AW's bulk loader, regardless of Yahoo ID and alleged seller location (he has claimed a dozen diff states) all you had to do was click page source on an ad to show it was bulk listed by the same AW user ID.
He has posted to this board in very snide tones (posts which later got deleted by the moderators.) The gist of what he's had to say was 'I make a ton of dough with this scam so I'll never stop', and 'I laugh at anyone who bothers to report me because I'll keep moving the ads between my hundred plus ID's to evade more deletions'. From his greed and arrogance and the nasty tone he uses responding to his negs he sounds like a young punk. His real profile claims he is a 22 year old single male commodities trader. How he had use of 100+ credit cards for all of these ID's I don't know. He was probably able to re-use the ones from the ID's that got deleted.
Naturally he has tons of negs on his string of ID's from people screaming fraud and stating they'll report him to the FTC. I hope they have, I'm sure he's cost us all many customers. When a bidder feels they have been ripped off don't you think they tell everyone they know 'don't shop Yahoo auctions, you'll get scammed!' He typically averages 7-9 sales a day and, always has. That's a lot of cheated bidders and hopefully it will catch up with him soon.
As far as NW, I wouldn't bother. I have alerts set for all his ID's and email Abuse 5 minutes after he lists every day. It doesn't help but I enjoy pointing out to them how inept they are at policing their site. Maybe they allow these spams to run every night waiting for his insertion fee scam to reach the level of felony fraud before they charge him. At $346 a day it shouldn't take long. I really don't think Yahoo is that bright though. They simply have USELESS customer service, it hasn't improved at all since they started charging, in fact it's worse than ever.
posted on February 4, 2001 08:20:59 PM new
You can have 100 cards to the same address, you will get one account to that address, regardless of the amount of cards you have.
If you have more then one card, I would think you can pay, that's all we care about.
posted on February 5, 2001 09:03:22 AM new
Okay rolllanotherone - I am game. First I want you to tell me who the "we" is in your last sentence ~~ "If you have more then one card, I would think you can pay, that's all we care about."
Me thinks you spend a lot of time pushing Yahoo to not be affiliated! Why do you care how much money Yahoo does or doesn't make?
Explain this to me: I make a crocheted dish cloth. The material costs me $.99 ~~ I list it at $2.00. The average auction shelf life is 4 months. It will cost me $3.20 to list it for this time. So my profit would be $1.01 less the listing fees of $3.20 equals a -$2.19. Now I may not be doing this as a business but as a means to sell my hobby but I think I have enough business sense to realize this is not the way to go.
If I list my children's Pokemon or baseball cards at $.10 {so other children can afford them}. It takes about 2 months for these to sell so I spend $1.60 to sell a card I have already lost money on in buying the pack.
I crochet a baby afghan. The materials are $24 and I sell it for $25. I am only looking to make back my materials so I can make another blanket. If I list this blanket for 3 months it costs me $2.40. Once again I am in the hole listing on a pay site.
It does not matter how many credit cards I have. Just because I have credit cards does not mean I wish to throw money away. I see no reason to spend more money than I make to sell my items. And FYI I do sell on eBay occassionaly so it's not that I am cheap - just smart!
