Ebay is keeping a blind eye to phishing fraud

Ebay is a well known auction site for the internet. I have been a regular buyer of various merchandize in ebay.co.in for a while. A recent transaction, I would like to bring to everyone's notice and would like the audience to pay attention to ebay (India operation)'s role, which I think was dissapointing.

I purchased a palm treo 650 (price 14500 INR) from ebay through the normal auction process. and paid through paypal system of ebay using my credit card. The seller is a Mumbai based stocker (name witheld currently), who promised to ship the product within 2 weeks. I waited patiently for 20 days and did not receive the product. When I called the seller back, he said the product was late in arriving his stock and advised me to give him a week for shipping. As the product was undelivered even after 1 more week, I contacted ebay via email. Ebay's response was to wait for 8 weeks after the day money was paid and if the product does not arrive, one can use the purchase protection program and get the money back.

I felt assured that if the seller does not ship the product ebay will come to the rescue via the Purchase Protection Program. I waited for one more week and seller didn't respond to my email. I downgraded the seller's rating in ebay as a last resort and launched logged a dispute request in ebay website.

The seller being a smart person called me and said he wanted to give me a quality product and hence the delay. He said if I close the dispute in ebay's system, he will promptly deliver in a grade-A courier. I felt convinced and closed the ticket. 8 weeks after that the product is still undelivered. The seller when contacted told me that he will not ship the product, even if he received the payment through paypal system using my credit card. When I wrote to ebay, ebay's customer care sent an insipid email saying "Its my fault since I closed the ticket before receiving the product."

The matter of concern is why ebay didn't allow me to reopen the ticket? Any conster can persuade an innocent customer to close the ticket. Ebay cites legal issues. However they are glossing over the phishing attack which happened by the seller, taking advantage of the lacuna in ebay's model of product delivery.

The above scenario shows how an ebay customer can run into online fraud, even if he/she uses time tested methods such as 1. secured payment through paypal, 2. Ebay's well known auction platform. Since this is a high valued product, the undelivered product results in great loss to the customer and it was dissapointing to see ebay's response.

A class action suite can be filed to take care of this issue. Due to my busy schedule I haven't explored the scope of such an actionplan. However if there are more users affected in similar way, then it is really a matter of concern.