EBAY Service Disrupted, Shoppers And Sellers Howl

EBay Inc.'s main e-commerce sites suffered from sporadic failures on Saturday, limiting the ability of shoppers to search for products on the site in the lead-up to the crucial holiday shopping season and prompting hundreds of complaints from sellers.

Sellers say they first began noticing problems with eBay's search system on Saturday morning. At 11:17 a.m. Pacific time, the company posted a note on its announcement board stating they were aware of the problem - which intensified through the day.

Antique Dealer Uses Craigslist - And Regrets It

We're not big believers in the "big box" online sales components called Ebay and Craigslist.

Friends left Ebay in droves when their rates climbed and their vetting process slid and now no one we know uses it unless they want a cheap knockoff Tiffany bracelet or rebel belt buckle.

So when those same friends suggested Craigslist as a free alternative to the Ebay/Paypal money machine we thought: "What the heck..."

We posted a saddle. A nice old highback with some history, and kept the description informative and straightforward. We weren't prepared for the response - which was heavy - or the tenor of the replies, which were just this side of insane.

We can't tell you what the first reply said, it was incredibly profane and disconnected. For an instant we considered writing something like "please take your meds" but then saw little sense in that and said nothing.

That didn't stop them. Three Nigerian wire-transfer scammers tried next, promising to send a check they had "mistakenly" cut for three times the price of the saddle if I would wire the difference to them in Lagos. This is pretty much the oldest scam in the book and I was going to ignore them, too, until one guy - probably sitting in his shorts and flip-flops in an internet cafe in Lagos - pushed it and asked when the wired funds would arrive.

We told him to come by the San Francisco field office of the FBI, International Fraud Division (no such thing) and we would personally hand over the money. That resulted in the following email message:

"*uck You You Stupid American Fool."

Then there were the Craigslist "experts." These are people who feel free to weigh in on your post, telling you where you've misidentified your item and how you're a moron for posting it at the suggested price. Oh, and by the way, they'll by it for $25.

We've since heard there are some frustrated individuals out there who like to string sellers along, asking seemingly pertinent questions and attempting to draw them into a meeting to consummate the transaction - and then not show up.

Lovely people.

Archeology Ace "Chip" Stanish Says Ninety Five Percent of Ebay's Antiquities Offerings Are Fake

You want a KKK pocket knife or a bogus Tiffany ring - Ebay's the place for you.

Charles "Chip" Stanish, director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, says archaeologists were initially "terrified" that Ebay's arrival in the online antiquities market would send demand for ancient objects sky-high and more looters into sacred spaces in search of fodder.

But that didn't happen, not because of Ebay's self-policing (which most admit is pretty poor) but rather because most of the fraudsters selling there quickly realized they didn't need the real deal - they only needed the cheap knockoffs already proliferating on the tourist market.

In the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine Stanish goes on to say:"Now, 95 percent of the stuff you're looking at on eBay is not real."

An Ebay spokesman says that if fake antiquities were as rampant as Stanish says, buyers would complain and eBay would police the problem, but that it's not a problem they "hear about."

Hmmm.