Watch out online auction scammers! The e-posse's in town!

[TexasStooge]

(Court TV) — Christina, a pre-med student at Georgetown University and self-described "denim-fanatic," bought a pair of trendy, low-slung jeans on eBay. But after three weeks, she still had no jeans and no response from the seller to her repeated e-mails.

Christina, who declined to give her last name, knew she had been gypped, but other than leaving the seller negative feedback through the voluntary review system, there was little she could do but file a complaint with eBay.

"I got an e-mail from eBay that said, 'You are not at fault, but we're not going to do anything about it,'" Christina recalls, interpreting the company's response.

So she went to http://www.ebayersthatsuck.com, a Web site that encourages a new trend in online auctions -- online vigilantism.

"We call them [the] e-posse," says Dolores Thompson, a staff attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, about online auction watchdogs in general. "They are great. We have worked with some of [these watchdogs] in the past and we really will rely on consumers themselves to provide us with information about problem sellers."

The FTC received 51,000 online auction fraud-related complaints in 2002, making it the second largest consumer complaint behind identity theft. Although the crimes are usually simple, tracking down a scammer through his e-mail address or telephone number can be difficult because both are easily changed.

At http://www.ebayersthatsuck.com, eBay members concerned about fraud can track down the con artists themselves. They post the user names of buyers and sellers they believe to be deceptive, discuss tips on how to trade safely and exchange information on the latest scams.

"They do supply us with leads," said Thompson, adding that e-posses can help identify the number of victims injured by a particular criminal, which can affect the department's decision to prosecute. The FTC has made more than 130 arrests this year for Internet-related crimes including auction fraud, according to Thompson.

Ebayersthatsuck.com was created a year ago by Steve Klink, a patrolman with the Paramus, N.J., police department after he paid $80 for a chewed-up wireless speaker. Instead of waiting for eBay to act, he posted his story and the seller's user name on a Web page and e-mailed the link to his offender. Klink even spoke with the seller's mother, and eventually the man returned the money.

But instead of taking the page down then, Klink decided to expand it.

Now the site has nearly a thousand registered members and receives an average of 30,000 visits a month. It lists about 200 eBay users to avoid. According to Klink, most of them were "NARU-ed'" (made Not A Registered User) by eBay shortly after he posted their names, although whether their outing was a result of Klink's actions is unknown.

Klink, who has a flawless eBay rating, reviews each complaint before he posts it.

"I accept only a few per week," he says. Klink first makes sure that the transaction occurred. Then, perhaps inspired by his police training, he performs a quick background check. He will only post the complaint if the accused has at least 3 percent negative feedback from eBay users.

"I'm not about to ruin somebody's track record on eBay," he said. Wary also of vengeful members, he won't post a complaint if the accuser has more than 3 percent negative feedback.

But even careful vigilantism can have drawbacks. Kevin Pursglove, a senior director of communication at eBay, says that e-posses have on occasion accused innocent parties, tarnishing a seller's good name.

"We urge extreme caution particularly when it comes to exposing a person's eBay user name on Web sites," he says. He notes, however, that he can't think of whether ebayersthatsuck.com has ever had that kind of problem.

In any case, eBay and ebayersthatsuck.com have a somewhat contentious history. Klink was briefly NARUed this month because his site listed the e-mail addresses of certain suspected fraudulent eBayers, a company no-no. EBay provides an e-mail service that allows members to contact each other via user name alone. Klink says he was reinstated after explaining that he was in the process of removing them anyway.

Earlier, eBay asked Klink to alter his logo for trademark reasons, which he did.

While Klink remains enthusiastic about the future of ebayersthatsuck.com, he acknowledges that he needs to make it self-supporting. Litigation is also a continued threat.

"If I have to keep battling with attorneys it would probably have to stop," he says.

"Liability issues" forced one of the most popular auction watchdog Web sites, auctionblacklist.com offline, according to a message posted there. Other online auction watchdog sites, such as techsurplusvictim.com, electrodepotsucks.com and laptopscam.com, have also disappeared.

For now, ebayersthatsuck.com appears to be the only vigilante site still functioning.

In April, Klink posted a complaint about the woman who sold Christina her jeans. Although no one had lost more than $100, her repeated and fervent denials made her case one of the most hotly debated within the e-posse. Its members determined that the seller was operating three different eBay identities and was artificially inflating her positive feedback by buying hundreds of $0.99 items.

Users left feedback after each transaction, thereby making the five negative comments the seller had received seem less important — a clear manipulation of eBay's safeguards.

EBay booted the seller a few weeks after her name was posted on Klink's site, prompting one http://www.ebayersthatsuck.com member to write, "Yeehaw!! She's outta here!"

[stormraiser]

Great. Ebay should have a link for people to see this. It would save a lot of people a lot of trouble.

[fixitmhn]

The FTC is great in this regard. You don't have to be an e-posse member to file a complaint. Just go to the ftc.gov website and file a complaint. They won't act on individual complaints, but will act if they receive enough complaints about the same issue. I personally know one of the investigators that deals with Internet Fraud among other issues. They really are out there looking to protect all of us!