I am not so sure anymore.  Ebay and their subsidiary, PayPal, in their haste to protect buyers from crooked sellers, may have enabled crooked buyers with an open season.

The thing is there are more buyers than sellers-- the scams may increase and may go unnoticed because sellers may not want to bother.

Like many others who write on frugality, I advise people to sell the excess stuff in your life and I have done this myself.  I used to be very active as a seller, but I haven't used it in more than a year.  I had an experience with a crooked buyer using the new system to scam people.  Despite plenty of evidence I possessed , eBay and PayPal helped the buyer get the merchandise, keep it, and then gave the buyer their money back by pulling directly from my PayPal account.  I gave up and punished eBay and PayPal by not using them.

While I have a multi-year history with positive feedbacks in the hundreds and only three negatives (including the scammer), they "sided" with a buyer with a short, but colorful history of scamming sellers (numerous complaints using the same M.O.).

As I mentioned I gave up on them, but now have plenty of stuff, that I would like to liquidate.  Unfortunately, I will have to use them again.  I have researched many other auction sites, but they don't have the same coverage eBay does.

The safeguards I will now have to implement, will end up costing the honest folks.  I will also have to factor "scam" losses into my shipping and handling (I will have to add a "pad").

Wish me luck . . . and to others, all I can say is, "Be careful!"

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