What's The Bigger Scam? Clickfraud Or Clickfraud Class Action Settlement?

Yahoo Japan Pays Up For Those Who Lost Money In Online Auction

from the didn't-expect-that dept

Mon, Aug 21st 2006 12:01pm — Mike Masnick

The oldest scam in the book for eBay users is to simply sell something they don't have, and then just take the money and walk away. There have been various adjustments on this, but the basic concept is still the same, with the user being left holding the (empty) bag after it's done. It seems that Yahoo Japan is now trying to keep some of its pissed off users happy by paying the users who never received their purchases from an online jewelry store. It sounds like the store may have simply gone out of business, rather than scam users -- but you would think if that were the case that they still should have had the products they sold in stock to pass on to the buyers. However, even more interesting is Yahoo Japan's willingness to step in and pay back all the buyers who never received their jewelry. It's likely a very good move for loyalty purposes, but it makes you wonder if scammed users will end up feeling that they, too, are owed money after botched auctions.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 21 Aug 2006 @ 1:25pm

introducing the metascam
This will in turn produce the meta-scam where you pretend to get scammed and then enjoy the scam compensation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
william, 21 Aug 2006 @ 2:55pm

Scam
Forget the sellers one time I got a PS2 stolen from me at UPS. I was shipping it after they just came out to an eBay buyer. When i checked on it it was never checked in. The guy behind the counter stole it and I only got 300 bucks insurance back even though it sold for over 800$. Thankfully I had another for personal use that i was able to ship in its place. But that's why I always use the post office, they might be a day or two slower but at least they wont steel you package.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ehrichweiss, 21 Aug 2006 @ 6:23pm

now if fleabay would do this..
...they'd go broke, since they almost encourage this type of behavior, and would actually have to compete for our money again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Charon, 21 Aug 2006 @ 8:47pm

eBay pisses me off
I wish ebay would compensate you if you got scammed... some asshole disappeared with after taking $400 from me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Igor, 23 Aug 2006 @ 5:15am
  
  eBay pisses me off too!!
  Hi, i'm an italian user and i've bought an item from US seller worth $ 485! Unfortunately, many other scummed users will never know about what eBay and PayPal have done to compensate them! The seller (power seller 99,8% of positive feedback,etc...a person you can trust..) wrote at the end of item description: ***PLEASE NOTE: Due to extended travels, and extended backorder status of this item at this price, all orders through end of July have been filled, and this unit won't be able to ship unit 8-02-06 -- thank you for your patience - will be carefully and thoughtfully packed to the winning bidder!*** eBay suggests to ignore auctions where the shipment is post-dated! Why do they allow this sort of things! Because they don't give a dawn about user and they don't check upon it! - For istances you will see many user selling pirated or copied software for few bucks! This what happened to me fist time on eBay. I thought..great it's very convenient..BULLSHIT!! - I paid this "gentleman", which is not longer a registered user, the 6-08-06 with PayPal (that pissed me off as well) and after the insignificant eBay and PayPal user protection has expired i got nothing! So i lost the money, i lost the right to know what they did to his PayPal account and what legal prosecution process they have started against him, in order to refund the victims. Honestly i don't care about privacy policy if someone steal money from you. They must inform users about legal actions taken! They should grab money from his bank account and refund users! UTOPIA!! I think they made the rules just for their own advantages and to make people unhappy ! I definitely need a lawer to sort this out! As you probably know YAHOO Japan decided to refund about 300 scummed user (wierd and rare action) from a bankrupted online Japanese jewelry that did the same ! I feel like i want to contact all scummed users to move against those big muther****** that don't want to cooperate! I hope this comment can encourage you and many other scummed users to fight for their own rights! I'll do my best to search and find solutions (even if i struggle writing in English). Thanks for your patience reading and trying to interpretate this. Regards Igor P.S.: Feel free to send an e-mail consolation, YOU ARE WELCOME ANYTIME!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Igor, 23 Aug 2006 @ 5:16am
  
  eBay pisses me off too!!
  Hi, i'm an italian user and i've bought an item from US seller worth $ 485! Unfortunately, many other scummed users will never know about what eBay and PayPal have done to compensate them! The seller (power seller 99,8% of positive feedback,etc...a person you can trust..) wrote at the end of item description: ***PLEASE NOTE: Due to extended travels, and extended backorder status of this item at this price, all orders through end of July have been filled, and this unit won't be able to ship unit 8-02-06 -- thank you for your patience - will be carefully and thoughtfully packed to the winning bidder!*** eBay suggests to ignore auctions where the shipment is post-dated! Why do they allow this sort of things! Because they don't give a dawn about user and they don't check upon it! - For istances you will see many user selling pirated or copied software for few bucks! This what happened to me fist time on eBay. I thought..great it's very convenient..BULLSHIT!! - I paid this "gentleman", which is not longer a registered user, the 6-08-06 with PayPal (that pissed me off as well) and after the insignificant eBay and PayPal user protection has expired i got nothing! So i lost the money, i lost the right to know what they did to his PayPal account and what legal prosecution process they have started against him, in order to refund the victims. Honestly i don't care about privacy policy if someone steal money from you. They must inform users about legal actions taken! They should grab money from his bank account and refund users! UTOPIA!! I think they made the rules just for their own advantages and to make people unhappy ! I definitely need a lawer to sort this out! As you probably know YAHOO Japan decided to refund about 300 scummed user (wierd and rare action) from a bankrupted online Japanese jewelry that did the same ! I feel like i want to contact all scummed users to move against those big muther****** that don't want to cooperate! I hope this comment can encourage you and many other scummed users to fight for their own rights! I'll do my best to search and find solutions (even if i struggle writing in English). Thanks for your patience reading and trying to interpretate this. Regards Igor P.S.: Feel free to send an e-mail consolation, YOU ARE WELCOME ANYTIME!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anon E. Moose, 16 May 2007 @ 3:44am
    
    Re: eBay pisses me off too!!
    Actually, that's "SCAMMED" users, not "SCUMMED". :)
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]