Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The End Of eBay: How & Why!

                                                                                                                12/21/11
                                              HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Regular readers of my posts know by now that I was kicked off of eBay for fighting fraud in the sports card & memorabilia areas after 14-years of them praising me for doing this. In mid-2010, they decided that people like me were costing them money so we were eradicated. The details are in previous posts so I don't need to repeat myself.

I didn't quite finish getting cards to add to my 40,000 card donation this year, so I decided to try signing up on eBay again without lying about anything which I was certain would not work. Well it did! I was a full member of eBay with ID cert-auto-inserts & the only things I changed were of course the User ID & e-mail address I used. Keep in mind: I wasn't suspended, I was banned for life according to a  nasty eBay Safety supervisor who couldn't give me a straight answer as to WHY & she actually hung up on me when she ran out of lame excuses which I retorted which made her look retarted. Every regular eBay phone employee still thinks I'm suspended for a short period & they all think my account should have been reinstated by now??? Sounds like they don't have a clue what they are doing, right? CORRECT!!!

With my new ID I bought over (300) items in a little over 2-months & eBay never contacted me once about me not being allowed to be on eBay! Then once I got most of what I needed to finish my donation, I started sending e-mails to honest collectors & sellers warning them about eBay's new lack of empathy for anyone but themselves & why. So after a week of doing this, eBay FINALLY suspended my new account with their BIG BROTHER e-mail scanning software. These idiots were so paranoid that I was going to publicize this that they deleted every single item I won from their database going (200) items back!!! THAT'S THE CRAZIEST THING I EVER HEARD! That caused every seller (who I bought from) headaches they didn't deserve! EBAY DID THIS, NOT ME & IN 14-YEARS OF USING EBAY & FIGHTING FRAUD ON EBAY I NEVER SAW THEM DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. They erased the existance of (200+) items that I won, paid for & 95% of them were already received by me. So why delete them???

So here I was: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 ACCORDING TO EBAY'S Safety Supervisors (yet con-men like tntnorthnj are NEVER suspended???). I decided to see if they'd let me have a new account with the SAME Paypal account & same master Paypal e-mail account (the 1st account they suspended: cardcop05) BTW & used the new ID for over 2-months & I busted myself basically or eBay NEVER would have caught me. IS THIS CRAZINESS OR WHAT?

Since it worked once, I tried it again. AND IT WORKED AGAIN!!! I tried ID ectopic-foci (an EKG medical term) & that account lasted as long as I wanted it to once again! This one lasted a month, then I told several sellers (who asked) how to donate cards to children's charities with the holidays coming up quick. This was obviously one of the RED FLAGS eBay's software e-mail search worm used to find me and I was suspended after 4-weeks - again.

The point here is that there are MANY sellers especially in the collectibles areas on eBay who rip people off as their main business practice just sign-up again when they get suspended & EBAY DOES NOTHING TO STOP THEM! As hard as it is these days to get eBay listen to you & ban these jerks from eBay you'd think eBay would take steps to keep these crooks off of eBay FOREVER: BUT THEY DON'T & I PROVED IT TWICE!!! All they'd have to look for is the last name and zip code, BUT THEY DON'T DO THIS LIKE NORMAL SITES???

All eBay cares about now is making money & every single bit of their honor & integrity that they once had is long gone. If you don't listen to me, you will be ripped-off with NO RECOURSE at some point in the near future & this is no 'IF" - this is a "WHEN" and I am trying to save you heartache now so please LISTEN TO ME: get off of eBay now!!!

Most of you can travel to 200+ table card shows (I can't because I have Muscular Dystrophy so I'm screwed): THESE ARE THE BEST PLACES TO BUY! So stick to these rules and you'll never lose:

1) Pay no more than LESS THAN LOW BECKETT PRICES- period.

2) Never believe rookie HYPE, or new release hype. Only buy cards that have been out for several months to a year or more.

3) NEVER buy loose packs in bulk lots from big dealers like Dave & Adam's Card World. These are the packs that sat on retail store (Target, K-Mart & Wal-Mart) for up to a full year & have been searched dozens of times- so every good hit has been LONG GONE from these packs!!! Also stay away from SUPER DISCOUNTED boxes from big dealers like DACW, card companies run out of all big hit inserts yet let the packaging continue. Then they sell these boxes dirt cheap to DACW & you think you are getting a bargain getting a $75.00 box for $29.95! BUT THESE BOXES HAVE NO DECENT INSERTS & IN MOST CASES CARD COMPANIES WILL DO NOTHING TO HELP YOU IF YOU CONTACT THEM! Their disclaimers on packs & boxes legally give them a right to NOT help you!!!

4) Only buy MINT cards or better made after 1985. Or NM-MT or better On Card Certified Autographed Inserts.

5) Your best bet for long-term collecting is to stick to HARD SIGNED (On Card) Certified Autographed Inserts (CAI's) from BIG card companies only- like Topps & Upper Deck, and Panini to a lesser degree. When Panini took over Playoff they kept most of the crooked Playoff employees, so I still don't trust them.

6) Buy what you like for personal reasons to collect, NOT with investments in mind. The days of reselling for profit are gone!

Price guides are useless for ten years now! They don't print the whole truth & NEVER print negative info about companies still in business. Plus they always push products based on the amount of advertising dollars they get from the companies. THIS IS ALL A COMPLETE CONFLICT OF INTEREST & IF THE SPORT LICENSING AGENCIES CARED ABOUT COLLECTORS, THEY WOULD STOP THESE PRACTICES!

PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELF ONLINE & BUY SMART! Everyone selling is looking to take your money & they don't care to tell you what I'm telling you here: EVER because that will lower the amount of money they make. This is why I never became any kind of dealer- I'm way too honest and care too much about fellow collectors: especially young ones.

I just had a collector today ask me what to do with a dealer who they won a fairly expensive itewm from for $1.00, then the seller just refunded the buyer's money & the buyer thought there was something I could tell them to help them. With eBay not caring about buyers anymore- WE ARE S*** OUT OF LUCK! So the only recourse is to STOP BUYING ON EBAY UNTIL THEY GET THEIR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT AGAIN >>>>IF THAT HAPPENS<<<< BEFORE THEY GO BANKRUPT!

I wish everyone the best & enjoy the holidays!

James McCay aka Cardcop