Automated Scripts Overrun eBay Holiday Contest

turnkeylinux writes "TechCrunch is reporting that eBay is under fire from users because of a holiday giveaway contest gone awry. On Tuesday Nov. 25, eBay announced its $1 Holiday Doorbusters deals promotion, giving away 100 gifts on a daily basis, all for a $1 fixed price. The gifts ranged from jewelry, clothing, digital cameras, and GPS devices to a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette. The only catch is that there's no announcement on when these items are released or in which category they will be. But cheaters came up with a clever way of winning deals on an automated basis by continuously running scripts to bid on items for $1."

Re:Time to offload some crap

[theaveng]

P.S.

And of course with Ebay's "brilliant" idea to not let sellers give buyers negative feedback, there's no way for us to warn other sellers about these deadbeat non-paying bidders. Yippee.

Re:Cheaters?

[brian0918]

The two are similar in no way, and sticking them next to eachother in the same post does nothing to make them similar. One is a violation of the rights of another - taking their property without their permission. The other, at best, may be a violation of some end user agreement, resulting in the termination of the user's account, but no rights are being violated. eBay is selling the stuff for $1, and people found a way to find the stuff and buy it. The transaction is made with both parties acting voluntarily. Where's the problem?

Re:Time to offload some crap

[Blimey85]

Use a proxy? If you are sophisticated enough to write a bot for this sort of thing, you surely know about using proxies and most likely have some at your disposal. Or maybe your mom hates you and won't let you get broadband to the basement so you are still on dial-up. Each time you dial in, you get a different ip address. But then again, how are you possibly running a bot that needs to make a lot of connections on dial-up? lol

Re:Time to offload some crap

[tlhIngan]

Really? You can't leave negative feedback for buyers?

What is the point of feedback?

Because a good chunk of sellers won't leave feedback until the buyers leave them positive feedback. It became a tit-for-tat system, where sellers could get 100% feedback ratings because buyers who got scammed refused to leave neutral or negative feedback. There were even lawsuits threatened (and maybe even launched) because sellers took negative feedback as libel.

Buyers have few recourses if scammed by a bad seller. Sellers who have a non-paying bidder though, should file a complaint with eBay (who is supposed to refund all fees due, and mark the buyer, I don't know if this happens).

Feedback is supposed to rate the trustworthiness of buyers and (especially) sellers. It's a bit more important for a seller because buyers use that to determine if they should bid since once payment is sent, recourse is limited. Pretty much the worst that can happen for a seller who has a bad buyer is they don't pay. (Of course, there is the issue with sellers claiming they didn't receive it or it was damaged, which is why there's tracking information and insurance, all of which a seller can mandate).

I will agree though that eBay's system is horribly screwed up (as a buyer). Some sellers have gone to use the (neg) in the comments to mean negative feedback. A system where feedback is kept hidden until both parties have sent it in (keeping tit-for-tat at bay) would work better.

Re:Time to offload some crap

[Poruchik]

As a seller, now I have no recourse against a bad buyer. Ebay does not refund ALL fees, just the final value fee, which is a percentage of the final price that the buyer pays. I lose the insertion fee (which would be refunded if an item is relisted, but not for multiple item auctions) and any and all listing upgrade fees that are substantial. So in essense, it is GOOD for Ebay to have non paying buyers, as they get double the fees if the item has to be relisted.

(re)captcha?

[Devil's BSD]

they just couldput in a recaptcha... prevent bot bidding and help digitize books... it's win-win!

They Tried (but mostly failed)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebay tried to make things harder for the scripters as time went on. The first few days, the listings were simply text, easily searched by bots (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270311657856&ru). They then shifted over to making the entire description an image (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270313225226&ru).

Re:Time to offload some crap

[rfunches]

Based on that, they should allow sellers and buyers to submit feedback into a private "holding area." Sellers have 14 days to post feedback, and buyers have 30 days to post feedback, leaving enough time for longer payment methods (mailed payment, or waiting for a check to clear) and longer shipping times. If feedback is received from both sides before 14 days, it is released and posted to the accounts immediately; otherwise, any feedback received within the two time frames is released after 30 days. Until one of those two conditions are met, the feedback stays hidden and doesn't appear on a user's account. And to prevent non-paying bidders from having 30 days to hide their status, allow the seller's feedback to post immediately if eBay declares a user is NPB.

Re:The internet is full of assholes...

[iamhassi]

"How is this ripping off eBay?"

Well... by cheating on the contest, it's hurting eBay customers, which could be interpreted as "ripping off" eBay, because they may lose money on this.

However these scripts aren't doing anything ebay wasn't already designed to do. Here's the $1 Corvette auction [ebay.com]. Says "Holiday Doorbusters" in text in the auction and it's a $1 auction, so anyone with half a brain could search all auction text for "Holiday Doorbusters" and narrow the search to only auctions that are $1. You can do this manually within the search tools provided by eBay, and that functionality on ebay has been available for many years. Dozens of programs existed for the past few years that can automatically search titles and auctions for keywords and limit it to under a certain price. I have one I use that I know has been around since at least 2003, and I'm sure eBay knows these programs exist.

So if anything eBay did this to themselves and encouraged the "cheating" by making it so simple to do. If they really wanted people to search ebay for great deals they should have made the whole page an image, that would have prevented searching at least.