Talk:EBay/Archive 1

Caveat Emptor
Section seems incorrectly titled. While the first bullet has to do with buyers' concerns, the other two do not. The section seems generally more concerned with public and legal controversy surrounding eBay. Any ideas for a better title or a better arrangement of the information?

POV
Removed the following from the end of the Profit and transactions sections due to POV bias:

", although this system is far from perfect as ebay's stubborn refusal to take a proactive role against abuses of its listing policies means that at any given time there are several dozen people selling feedback on ebay."

Any comments?

baazee.com CEO under fire in India
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B9F8FBA24-0C7B-4A03-A23A-355616CCC212%7D&siteid=google&dist=google&dist=

Notable auctions
Requesting a seperate article listing notable, famous, odd, controversial, significant, or noteworthy auctions. Examples include the grilled cheese sandwich, various celebrity auctions, hoaxes and banned auctions, joke auctions, extravagant auctions or excessively bid auctions, etc.

Recent Controversy
Why is there no mention of eBay's upcoming seller fee increase of Feb. 18, 2005? The increases are sparking protests, the signing of petition(s), and sellers' threats to move their business to competing auction sites, all of which made the news.
 * Why should there be? It's hardly a controversy when a company wants more money and the customers want to pay less. Every time eBay changes anything, there are protests, people signing petitions, and sellers threats to move their business to competing auction sites. It's been that way from pretty much day one. When eBay started charging for reserve auctions: protests. ("It's only a dollar!") Every time eBay raises any fees: protests. Every time eBay changes the layout of a page: protests. With millions of customers, with hundreds of thousands of sellers, it only takes a miniscule proportion of the customers to seem like some sort of groundswell to business reporters who know they can get an article run if it mentions eBay. At any rate, the answer to "why no mention" is always the same here on Wikipedia: if you want it mentioned, mention it yourself. Likewise to the following question about half.com -- sure, it's important, add it to the article. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 16:17, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

half.com aquistion
Wasn't half.com also aquired by ebay?


 * Yes, it was. Several years ago, actually. David Hoag 21:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

ebay fraud
The "ebay fraud" link at the end under the "related topics" secion simply redirects to the top of the page again. Somebody should either remove the link, or create an actual article on ebay fraud, and make the link go to the right place.

I'll never understand...
Good grief, a small piece of paper with a picture of a sportsman on it sold for almost as much as a small aircraft. I'll never understand the Americans' fascination with these card-type thingies. &mdash; J I P | Talk¨

the "feebay" paragraph...
is completely POV. "eBay had gotten away with..." implies that there is something wrong with eBay setting its own prices for its own services. The "virtual monopoly" line, likewise, is POV, and needs substantiation. The history is also incorrect; buyers do not pay "percentage fees" except in a small number of categories (if that). I suggest this paragraph be retooled if not removed; it's hardly a controvery (as I said above) when a company raises its prices and customers would rather pay less. I'd like someone neutral to come in and comment on this, since I'm clearly biased in favor of eBay. But I don't think things like "feeBay", "fleeBay", "pee-Air", and all the other nasty names a tiny minority of eBay users have come up with in their whine-fests are in the least bit encyclopedic. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 00:46, 8 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I would agree that this should be reworked and not very NPOV. &mdash;Morven 03:10, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Anything POV on Wikipedia should be removed until purified. -SV|t 05:55, 8 May 2005 (UTC) PS. Otherwise maybe edit it? Actually Google comes up with a number of hits, including a Red Herring article.
 * Sure. Doesn't mean it's encyclopedic. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 05:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually it does - Rather singling it out for exclusion it would be unencyclopedic -SV|t 01:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. It's an insult, tantamount to calling you "Peeve", with no more value than that. The phenomenon of people complaining about fee increases might be worthy of discussion; the pejoratives are just grade school name-calling. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 01:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Most expensive items
Does anyone have a more up-to-date list of the five most expensive items sold on eBay? Surely Pope Benedict's old car would be on the new list, wouldn't it? --Angr/comhrá 06:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Who the fackle is Bailey Zumalt Rose? (The person whose autograph garnered upwards of $300k on ebay?  No such person with that name exists on google.
 * I've removed it; I'm pretty sure it's hooey. By the way, sign your postings with ~, please. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 15:30, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The section has been renamed "some expensive items" due to the lack of referenecs on what the most expensive items are. Shawnc 02:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Police badges
Recently, I heard a news report on Channel 4 in the Metro Detroit area. This news report talked about police badges being sold on EBAY and how they lead to falsified police imposters. Should we make an article about this controversy? --SuperDude 03:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hm. eBay banned the selling of police, fire, and similar badges years ago. All this will boil down to is "occasionally people get away with selling stuff that's against the rules". --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 04:38, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Added trivia sub-sections
I added two sub-sections under the heading "trivia" and felt like posting the fact that I did in the talk page because I am not sure if those facts that I added were true. I had read about them in an issue of Wired but cannot seem to locate the said issue. If someone were to checkup on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

--Nelson 00:20, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

Pure breed BEAGLE POOP/INDIANA SNOW

 * I have an mirror of the ebay item page, does any one know if I would be breaking any copyright laws if I posted this mirror so people can see it? --T0ny 06:14, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * posting a hyperlink wouldn't break copyright... UkPaolo 06:33, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Its not an url to ebay it would be to my site with a mirror of the old page. The item is no longer listed on ebay. ---T0ny 09:11, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

SnipeSwipe service
Why does this service, which is linked on this page, ask users for their eBay passwords? Why not just allow users to create an account for themselves? Is this site legitimate?
 * the idea of the service (if you read the article) is that it enables bid sniping, ie placing a bid in the last few seconds. The SnipeSwipe service places the bid on your behalf, and thus requires the auction number, and your username and password. Of course you could bid yourself, but ensuring you are available to bid in the last few seconds could be tricky, hence services like this exist. It is quite reputable, but you are right in thinking that you're ultimately trusting the company with your ebay password; whether you chose to do that is down to you. UkPaolo 22:12, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ebay no credit card?
How do you get started? What if you don't have a credit card? Does anyone know any auctions online that are free? PAypal is that like the way to go if you don't have a credit card? I hope someone can help. --Somaliafriend 18:57, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * this page should really be discussions about the eBay wikipedia article. you should ask questions about the ebay site, at the site directly. In answer to your question, however, I think you'll find that it's up to individual sellers as to what payment methods they accept. Some may accept cheque (check US), etc. UkPaolo 19:00, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Apparently it's time for somebody to do a general article on internet auction sites in general. Gzuckier 19:23, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unusual items
I'm uncomfortable with the lack of sources on these things; I'd like something more than "I heard somewhere that". --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 1 July 2005 03:27 (UTC)
 * yes, better sources would be good. Although i have to say that I have also heard most of these things, so I suspect they are widley enough known to be true. the trouble is that the auctions will probably long since have been deleted, so it's hard to document them... UkPaolo


 * Burnt toast as Elvis? Can we remove this till we have some kind of evidence, else we'll end up with a long list of questionable 'items'.sars 13:07, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

I'm putting it here for now:


 * A burnt toast was sold for hundred $ because looked like a pic of Elvis.

sars 13:08, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Some one is currently offering there place in heaven on ebay http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4604067913 should we wait till its over before putting on here? also i can't find his full name.


 * Seems to me unlikely to be a legit auction; I don't think the seller owns what they are trying to sell. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 18:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Reflectoporn rollback
I couldn't see why User:Jpgordon felt the need to "roll back trivial self-serving irrelevancy" over the anonymous addition of reflectoporn, so i've restored it (all be it now under a heading of it's own). It's something i'd never heard of which made me laugh when I read the article, and is clearly a true phenomenen if you try google, or visit reflectoporn.com etc. I can imagine if it gets deleted here, we'll end up with a seperate article entitled reflectoporn, which would then probably go through VfD and end up merged back here. Of course, we could try splitting it into a seperate article, and see if it survives... it was clearly a big enough subject to merit a newspaper article, so perhaps a user looking it up in an encyclopedia should expect to find it... UkPaolo 1 July 2005 07:49 (UTC)
 * When the first revert happened, I googled the term and got over 3,000 results. Sounds legit, and yeah, I've seen it too.  Meh, there are less relevant things listed on this page.  I'd leave it.Chairboy 1 July 2005 16:51 (UTC)


 * I have restored this section again, as per my reasoning above. UkPaolo 13:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * I think I have a better idea. A section on "banned items on eBay" would be somewhat interesting, as the no-no list has grown incrementally since the early days (which were completely unregulated). When were guns banned? When were tobacco products banned? Live animals weren't allowed for a while; are they now? When was porn put in its own section, and then restricted even further? (eBay was one of the best places for free porn for a while.) Nazi insignia. Police and fire badges. Reflectoporn would have a small place there. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 17:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds appropriate to me UkPaolo 18:51, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Argh. That means I have to do something about it. Problem is, I know most of the information in my head, and can ask a few of my friends to validate the timeframes -- but that's original research!--jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 05:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Page Move
Plugwash has moved this page (to the current place). Whilst it might seem better on some systems (no capatilisation), on mine there is a big gray rectangle before the title (presumably a infinitesimal space character that would stop the E from being capatilised - but is not installed on my computer). Something needs to be done about this. --bjwebb 17:00, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * it was just an idea. if it causes problems then feel free to revert it. Plugwash 18:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * there seems to be an article with a grey rectangle before the title, which redirects to eBay, which then works correctly. The workaround is a bit of a hack, but congrats Plugwash - neat idea to use the Unicode char, and it does seem to work. UkPaolo 20:12, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * What I'm saying is that the Unicode char is not on my computer - the title still doesn't work for me (but it does for you) --bjwebb 13:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

$8?
"A British man auctioned off an "air guitar" which included a shipping price of $8."

Was it definitely $8? Not £8, as he was British?
 * At any rate, this needs to be sourced. It's all too easy to make up "unusual eBay items". --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 16:54, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I know, although as someone said it's difficult to source as most of these will have ended now. Perhaps any future additions should have a screenshot to prove their validity? - sars 17:07, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Even screenshots can be faked though it makes fraud more difficult. probably a link should be posted and verified by other users.  That way, even if the auction is removed from eBay, we'll know that the item truly was once listed.

Souls
I once attempted to list my soul for sale on ebay and my auction was taken down. I recieved a very lengthy form letter from ebay that had obviously been prepared for this type of auction. The jist of it was "If a human soul does exist, it would be a part of the human body, and selling parts of the human body is against ebay policy. If a human soul does not exist, you have no actual item to sell which is prohibited." So I have serious doubts as to the allegation that "many people" have done this successfully. Can someone cite? Pacian 08:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I've trimmed down the unsubstantiated entries in that section. (Besides, if "countless" people have done this, it's hardly an unusual sale item, now is it?) --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 15:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)