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Comment by arthurcolle | Hacker News Reader

I know PayPal spun out of Ebay a long time ago and that PayPal is especially evil and sociopathically unscrupulous but...

EBay just banned my account last week for listing a Macbook Pro with stock image, removing it to adjust the title, relisting it with a photo of the "About this Mac" to show that the specs were correct. (Can't think of anything else that would even be remotely related).

Also, the messages component of the Ebay web app was completely down the whole time so it made it impossible to respond to any users that were asking questions about the MacBook Pro. Completely insane. Apparently making listings is "harmful to the [Ebay] community"

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Meanwhile, my stolen phone was for sale on a prolific local seller's account (IMEI was listed, but two digits transposed - looks like a genuine error, but also stifles searching, fails checksum. Every other phone for sale by same seller has the same thing).

100+ phones. Mostly "activation locked", all "no charger, no accessories".

50+ laptops, all "no charger, no accessories".

All blatantly stolen goods.

That is insane! How did you even manage to find them with digits transposed? By local seller, you must mean actually local to you? Sorry you got your stuff stolen, I once had a Giant e-bike stolen in Jersey City, so I know how much it sucks. I firmly believe everything should have some kind of tracker if it is more than $2K in cost.

Pretty much everything you get from Apple is trackable. That's both good and bad; depending on who you ask, but they know where every device is, as soon as it's turned on.

That's why I wonder at folks stealing iPhones and iPads. They are basically unsellable.

This is from mid-2021, so not sure it's reliable (any more):

https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/07/brazilian-criminals-detail-ho...

Still... :(

And there's this, which is current:

https://archive.is/eEt4B

Funny you should ask. I’d put a message on it, some guy with more cojones than me calls me and says “I think I have your phone, I bought it on eBay. Since you’ve presumably got a new phone now, can you get it unlocked for me?”

Nah bud. How do I know you are not the person who stole it? So I guess he went back to the seller, asked for an exchange. Seller said no, so he said “I have all your information, and I have the legit owner, so give me a different phone or I give him your info to take to the police.” Seller exchanges the phone and guy gives me the info anyway, including the listing.

I take all the above discoveries to the police. Who, I kid you not, first say “he’s probably not the person who stole it”, though I could have sworn selling stolen goods was still a crime, and said as much. They declined to get involved.

Can you buy your own phone and chargeback after you receive and confirm it is indeed yours (jave original paperwork to show)? Get law enforcement involved if they fight?

It's just algorithms out of control all the way down. They are probably ok with some number of false positives, but they don't account for how much these situations erode customer trust across the board.

But also, this just happened to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34840250

and thankfully backed up all my critical data, but still have not been able to get a hold of anyone at Amazon.

It seems like our ability to interact with a corporate entity has become an afterthought + that all the machinery driving customer interactions (UIs, special support chat hidden, dark patterns everywhere...) have become a total impediment to actually getting something fixed.

See also from today: "I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34912314

ebay banned my account recently because I decided to list a vehicle for sale and noticed my address was old (I moved 3 years ago). I updated the address at the time I listed the vehicle and they auto-banned my account. The only way to log back in was to use SMS to verify a landline number I had associated with the account 20 years ago. Their support was no help and just kept asking me to verify my phone number. Oh well, the fees were too high anyways.

>I know PayPal spun out of Ebay a long time ago and that PayPal is especially evil and sociopathically unscrupulous but...

I thought it was that PayPal was built, then bought by eBay so the could double dip.

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