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Thursday 16 September 2004

Ebay set the dogs on Brit for twenty quid [Brit]

A few weeks ago, I got an email from "ebay", indicating that I owed them £21.90 in seller fees. Like all emails from ebay, I ignored it - I get so many duff emails telling me to update my account details and whatnot, that I simply stopped believing anything with an ebay logo on it a long time ago.
Anyhow, given that I've got two cards on file with them (ebayers will know you have to have at least 1 card on file to handle fees etc) I figured that the behemoth that is the ebay/paypal empire would bill where needed and that'd be that.
This avo I get a call from some random sounding company that turns out to be a UK based collection agency for ebay. "You owe fees" he exclaimed, and I said "yeah, about twenty quids worth, why isn't it taking them automatically?"
Of course, he was a collections drone, so he didn't have a clue - and wanted me to stump up my card there and then. Fuck off says I, my card is already on file, and I have my fees paid direct from paypal.
But no, he wouldn't take that, and wanted an extra fiver anyhow presumably for administration costs.
"You got an email from ebay reminding you of late fees" he points out - and he's right, I got an email from "ebay" which like all the others, I deleted for the reason explained at the top of this blog.
Well, needless to say, I logged onto paypal and in a matter of moments had cleared the balance; 3 emails confirming this arrived from paypal and it's job done.
However it raised a point in my mind - ebay is so full of scammers, and so scam targeted, that there must be zillions of folk like me who just discard "ebay" mail as a matter of course.
Why don't they do certificates or links to a genuine messaging centre on their site? email is so easily spoofed, it's the obvious answer, no?

2 comments:

  1. Lowest common denominator, how many ebay users would check the certificate?
    Also there's countless folk telling you not to follow links as thats a prime way to get spoofed. So thats out the window too.

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  2. my old man is not so hot on PCs and he is being phished already. Good thing is he doesn't know what online banking is yet :)

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