EBay's success makes it a huge target on the Internet. Scammers are attracted to eBay like moths to a flame; the problem is that it's the eBay buyers and sellers who wind up burned. While unsuspecting bidders are the main prey of the crooks, sellers are also bilked when their accounts are hijacked and when scammers hack into and clean out PayPal and linked bank accounts. EBay sellers pay an additional price in the general loss of trust in the site as it becomes increasingly perceived as riddled with flim-flam artists, driving away buyers.
It Can Happen to YouSellers are often the last to know when their accounts have been hijacked, as I discovered. One morning, about a year ago, I received an eBay e-mail inquiring about shipping costs for a John Deere tractor being sent to North Carolina. Since I only sold books on eBay and have never even sat on a tractor, this caught my attention. But I had been selling on eBay for six years without a problem, I never responded to phishing e-mails, and experience taught that occasionally such buyer e-mails went astray on the site's server, so I paid it no mind.
Several days later, the hammer dropped: eBay closed my account, and I was told that a scammer hacked my password and was piling in high-ticket items under my name. Since it is virtually impossible for anyone but power sellers to talk on the phone with an eBay rep empowered to solve problems, (generic phone reps, the only phone help available for the rest of eBay's members, always steer the caller to live chat or e-mails,) the road back involved changing my password and a multi-e-mail/live chat, week-long process of having several hundred dollars in scammer-generated listing fees reversed.
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