Cohen/Philip:Walking Penis with ears

Visa/Banks prepare to put PayPal back into its eBay box

It is with very great sadness that “Dr Death” Donahoe MBA (aka Peter Principle), the resident eBay witch doctor, is expected to announce the probable imminent demise of eBay’s most ugly daughter, PayPal. “Noise” Donahoe is expected to advise the market that it is probable that PayPal is about to be stricken by a particularly virulent strain of Visa + CyberSource, accompanied by financial institutions complications. PayPal may therefore be expected to deteriorate rapidly and, if ultimately not completely incapacitated, will most likely be eventually confined to what little there is by then left of the Donahoe-devastated eBay Marketplaces. There is no known cure this condition, and the Chief Headless Turkey will undoubtedly also say that he is particularly saddened by the inevitable presumption that it is unlikely that PayPal will be able to continue to underpin eBay’s bottom line in the future.

A detailed examination of and prognosis for the patient at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6504554

And for anyone interested generally in the matter of eBay’s unscrupulousness, including its criminal facilitation of the rampant shill bidding fraud being perpetrated by unscrupulous professional sellers on buyers on eBay nominal-start auctions, an introduction thereto at

http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6502877

eBay/PayPal/Donahoe: Dead Men Walking

For anyone who buys on eBay, a detailed case study of another classic instance of blatant shill bidding and the abuse of eBay’s proxy bidding system—all exacerbated by eBay’s introduction of “hidden bidders”—and a detailed comment on eBay’s disingenuous attitude thereto, at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033

Having said that, I think that most of us appreciate that the people currently in control of eBay are a bunch of unprincipled, disingenuous, (and possibly stupid) corporate snakes; it’s very difficult to keep track of such snakes as they slither through the undergrowth; and that “spinning” forked tongue doesn’t help any either!

A lengthy detailed criticism of the eBay “snake” starts at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6499794#6499794

As an eBay “junkie”, predominantly a buyer, my principal concern with eBay is their recent introduction of absolute anonymity of bidders to their Australian and, more recently, UK sites (and undoubtedly coming soon to the US). I consider this action to be unprincipled, unethical, reprehensible, even unconscionable; however you look at it, it is outrageous.

eBay has now obscured auction bidding to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from “shill” bidding (a criminal offence in most civilised countries) by unethical vendors. Notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity by eBay serves no purpose other than to deceive consumers; and the same criticism has always applied to eBay’s existing facility, “User ID kept private”—aka “the shill bidders’ stairway to paradise”. Again, notwithstanding eBay’s various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now knowingly “aiding and abetting” such shill bidders, at the expense of consumers.

What possible reason could eBay then have for increasing the level of bidding anonymity from that of a bidder-specific level (as currently used in the US) to an absolute level? The only possible reason can be to make shill bidding “disappear”. If shill bidding cannot be detected, then genuine bidders cannot report it and, as a consequence, eBay will not have to waste any of their valuable resources pretending to do anything about it.