A 24/7 marketplace with security that takes weekends off

The more I hear from experienced eBay users about their experiences, the more I suspect that eBay shares some responsibility for the kinds of scams Blakely Smith and others encounter while doing business on the online auction site. (Click here to read about Smith and the phantom Monique Lhuillier wedding gown.) Something about eBay's hands-off attitude smacks more of a strategy of minimizing legal liability than of doing the utmost to minimize problems.

Exhibit 1, shared by Beverly Okin-Larkin, is how hard it is to report a scam-in-progress. Okin-Larkin knows, because she recently discovered one on a weekend, and was told that she could file a complaint, but that having a "live chat" with security would have to wait till Monday morning. (Don't even think of reaching somebody by phone.)

Okin-Larkin's day job is as a human-resource trainer at a Texas state facility. By night, she runs an eBay-based business, selling stuff (OK, condoms) to buyers too embarrassed to visit their local pharmacies. EBay is proud of people like Okin-Larkin. As spokesman Hani Durzy told me last week, more than 724,000 professional sellers in the United States use eBay as a primary or secondary source of income.

Proud, but apparently not-so-interested in the security problem she unraveled. Listen to her account of what happened when she was shopping on eBay for a camera to use in her work:

I noticed a scam IN PROGRESS three weekends ago, was interested (and admittedly greedy) to see a $2,000 camera being listed for a low reserve price of 700$ (sic). Now, I am an experienced eBayer (and Internet type), so I started looking at what this person was selling. I always try to research the people before I bid.

Hmm. LOTS and LOTS of cameras and other high priced electronics - all with conveniently low reserve pricing. I look back further to see his feedbacks and look at what he was selling last month - whoa. Car parts ... and only car parts.

I go back and look at the listings and I start noticing how the syntax is weird (especially the "$" sign after the monetary amount) and that this new batch of listings is supposedly coming from someone in Boston, MA, when the car parts were sold from Santa Monica, CA.

Now I am really noticing the differences, and I realize that someone else has posted all this merchandise - well over 40 auctions, all posted in the most expensive way possible: color, photo feature, extra headlines, etc. Wow. I only thought this happened in movies - someone hacked into a guy's account and was posting a mess of auctions. [Okin-Larkin says each auction also included an outside e-mail address, and told buyers to contact him directly because of glitches in the seller's eBay e-mail.]

However, when I go to look to find assistance through the ever-unhelpful Site Map and try to report what looks like a hijacked account to eBay - well, it's Sunday, and little did I know that their Security department is closed on weekends. I even went to a Live Chat area [for 24/7 technical support], and no one helps except to tell me to "use the web-based reporting form." Some old timers in a chat room told me "no one's home at eBay on the weekends" - I bet the scammers know that, too.

Anyway, I do fill in the form, wasting 20 minutes, and noticed that people were starting to bid like crazy for all sorts of stuff. I actually started e-mailing the victim of the original eBay account AND the potential buyers trying to warn them off these bogus listings.

I even got bold enough to e-mail the "seller" - after three emails I find out that he wanted me to send "Western Union money order as my Paypal is not working," and when I asked for his address, he's located in Romania.

I sent the info to both the victim and eBay.

The victim thanked me, the potential scam victims thanked me - however the next day eBay sent me a "Why were you using our message service so much - we're suspicious" e-mail. They never contacted me from the web-based form info I sent. Sheesh eBay, thanks a lot.

Still over three weeks later, nothing from eBay - honestly I think eBay just wants our money and doesn't truly care about security. If they did, then their security department would be open 24/7 just like eBay and the internet.


Anyway, let me tell you what I consider my "tells" for "safe" eBaying:

1) Feedback - always read it and look at the negatives
2) While at Feedback - check the previous auctions: Do they usually sell this merchandise, especially high-end items?
3) E-mail the seller - I ask questions and look for more pictures if necessary
4) Never do business outside of eBay. [PayPal is owned by eBay, Okin-Larkin points out. If someone says their PayPal account is broken, rest assured it will be fixed, because the seller will want the money and eBay will want its cut.]
5) Don't use money orders unless you can trace them

In the 5+ years I been using eBay, I've only been burned once and that was early on over a DVD. Learned my lesson, cheaply. Not for $2,400.

Anyway THANKS!

- Beverly Okin-Larkin

Stuck in interactive-voice-response hell? Here's how to get help!

A while back I told Consumer Inq readers about this great new tool for anybody who's sick and tired of getting the electronic run-around when they try to reach a company about a billing, service or technical question. Yes, that means everybody I know, and probably everybody you know, too. (I imagine mega-millionaires don't complain, but I could be wrong – maybe they gripe about how many hours their butlers or personal assistants have to spend on hold.)

Well, that wonderful tool, Paul English's IVR Cheat Sheet, has a new home: www.GetHuman.com.

The founder of Kayak.com – an entrepreneur who's definitely wealthy enough to pay his assistants to wait on hold – is hoping to foment a revolution in customer service. I'm hoping he succeeds. Click here to read my recent column about his growing ambitions.

Does eBay need to be more aggressive on fraud?

Today's column on how an eBay newbie was scammed out of $2,400 while trying to buy a wedding dress – a scam that won't even add to eBay's fraud statistics, but it says she fell victim to a "back alley," off-eBay transaction that just isn't its problem – drew some telling response from experienced eBay users.

A common thread: It's a wonderful place to do business, but eBay could and should do more to address fraud problems – especially in such areas as password theft and account tampering that eBay can't so easily disavow.

This e-mail from Denny Hannigan of Northeast Philly, who does business on eBay as Way Back When Antiques, makes the point better than I can:

Just read your column in today's Inquirer and had to post a reply.

While Ebay buyers and sellers must be cautious and abide by all the safety rules, there is definitely some responsibility on the part of Ebay management. Ebay, as a consumer service company, must be more receptive to the problems and scams encountered by customers. They cannot just provide warnings and conclude that the customers must be more wary.

I've been a registered Ebay member since their early days in 1997. I deal with them on a daily basis for the last several years and have an impeccable transaction record with no negative marks. I was a recent victim of a scam attempt where a predator was able to get my Ebay passwords and info and list items under my account. He was able to run up a very large dollar amount in fees before I even noticed it was going on. Ebay DOES NOT provide a direct phone number to contact anyone in the event of this type of problem (or any problem for that matter). Due to this I was forced to get online in a chat room with an Ebay rep and after several hours got the problem resolved (with NO explanation from Ebay how this happened). I realize Ebay cannot have an open line for the whole world to call on trivial matters but they need a direct line for scam protection, at least for registered members. This scammer I ran into was able to represent himself as me through no fault of my own.

Also Ebay provides system called FEEDBACK where members can complain or praise other members on the results of a transaction. This system is a great concept but seriously flawed in that it allows a "questionable" member to make erroneous claims against a member with a good record. Ebay has no upfront system of reviewing these disputes and just posts the comments for all to see. A disreputable member can smear the record of an upstanding member with no review by Ebay (until much later down the road). This can cost the reputable seller/buyer a great deal of business.

In conclusion, my point is that while Ebay is a wonderful venue that has changed the course of online buying and selling, it must be more receptive to it's members. Create a hot line to stop scams as they are discovered, allowing members to contact someone at Ebay. Establish a review board to look at feedback issues to protect honest Ebay members and their reputations. Ebay must remember, its strength is in it's continued use by contented customers. They must not isolate themselves from their customer base and continue to point to problem issues as being caused by the weaknesses of their users.

Whoops! The FCC admits earlier study was biased, says a la carte cable WOULD benefit consumers

Remember the computer programmer's postulate: "Garbage in, garbage out"? Today's stunning news once again proves the point.

The Federal Communications Commission now says its staff's 2004 conclusion that a la carte pricing would provide little benefit to consumers was based on a study that made "unsupported and unrealistic assumptions," and then piled mistaken calculations on top of them.

How mistaken? The 2004 study said a consumer who purchased as few as nine networks would likely face an increase in monthly bills under a la carte pricing. But the FCC now says that even if you accept that study's questionable assumptions, a customer could buy as many as 20 channels without any increase. That's three more than the average household watches.

After reevaluating several hypothetical scenarios, the new study concluded that a household's monthly bill could drop by as much as 13 percent under a la carte pricing. The 2004 study predicted that bills could rise by as much as 40 percent under a la carte.

Some credit for the FCC's reversal must go to the strange bedfellows who have been pushing for more control over what cable channels they buy. The a la carte concept was embraced early on both by conservatives, who don't want to pay for programming they don't approve of, and consumer advocates, who don't think people should have to put up with cable's monopolistic practice of charging ever-higher prices for ever-larger bundles of channels that customers may not want.

But you have to give FCC Chairman Kevin Martin credit, too - and praise the FCC's staff for its willingness to admit having been bamboozled. I don't know the back story yet, but the FCC news release outlines how the agency was misled by an erroneous Booz Allen Hamilton study submitted by the cable industry to support its argument that a la carte was a bad, bad idea.

Not true, the FCC now says. Further examination reveals that a la carte could actually help combat rising pay-TV prices and lower consumer bills.

As the FCC's new study itself puts it, dryly:

For example, under a la carte, a consumer could cut his programming bills merely by electing to purchase fewer networks. And a la carte could make service affordable to those who cannot afford bundled rates. A la carte also could offer consumers the ability to pay only for the programming that they value.

We could save money by paying only for programming we value? Now that's a novel concept.

The big question now is what lawmakers, regulators and the industry will do in response to this sudden attack of FCC common sense.

As they like to say in TV-land: Stay tuned.

Penn hospital says not to worry: No more trans-fat fries

The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania says french fries made with unhealthy trans fats were never served to patients - just to unwitting staff and doctors, it seems - and haven't been served to anybody since the HUP cafeteria began undergoing renovations in late November.

That response comes courtesy of my colleague, reporter John Sullivan, whose article on the killer fries in hospitals appeared in yesterday's Inquirer.

HUP says that once its new cafeteria is done, it will serve fries without trans fats.

Kudos to the Center for Science in the Public Interest for conducting its little study. It demonstrates the huge gulf between standards for labeling most packaged foods, which since Jan. 1 have been required to list trans fats on ingredient labels if a product is intended for interstate commerce, and the complete lack of knowledge we have about the content of most restaurant or food-service foods. Even if they were shipped in labeled packages, how are you going to know? Dig through the trash for labels that refer to "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil"?

Trans fats don't exist in nature - they're chemically altered fats. There's a growing mountain of evidence that they increase cardiovascular risks at any level in your diet. Yet some hospitals weren't even bothering to cross them off the shopping list.

There was one saving grace for HUP, though. As Sullivan's article notes, Massachusetts General in Boston originally led the list of hospitals with trans-fat-laden fries. But when hospital officials found out the "food police" were on the case, they made sure the kitchen switched to trans-fat-free cooking oil.

For more information about trans fats, the Food and Drug Administration has an excellent Q&A page.

Killer trans-fats ... in hospital food?

OK, I kind of expected junk-food manufacturers to be slow to adjust to the damning evidence against trans fats - the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that make foods taste better and last longer, but are worse for you even that saturated fats.

But hospitals?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest had its suspicions, so it had an independent lab analyze French fries sold in cafeterias at 18 of the nation's top hospitals.

Bad news, Philadelphians: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was the worst offender, according to the study's findings. A six-ounce serving contained 5.3 grams of trans fat - enough to infer that HUP still uses partially hydrogenated oil in its deep-fryers, CSPI said.

(Amounts under 2 grams - such as the 1.2 grams in fries sold at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia - suggest that the institution is using a non-hydrogenated vegetable oil, but buying frozen French fries that had been par-fried in partially hydrogenated oil. )

CSPI is trying to draw more attention to the trans fats that people are unaware of in their diets. New labeling requirements have made their presence more obvious in packaged foods, but restaurants and food-service companies aren't affected by those rules. So consumers suffer - as do doctors, other hospital employees, and perhaps even some patients at these hospitals, apparently.

Trans fats not only raise blood levels of LDL cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol), as saturated fats do; they also lower levels of HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol that helps guard against heart disease. It's a double-whammy that leads many scientists and nutritionists to the conclusion that no level is acceptable in a healthy diet.

The National Academies' Institute of Medicine concluded in 2003 that Americans should eat as little trans fat as possible, CSPI says. In 2004, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that Americans consume less than 1 percent of their calories from trans fat - about 2 grams per day.

I have to second CSPI's conclusion: Hospitals should know better.