Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

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Thats not the only thing I caught, at least with Ebay.

During the pandemic, I decided to sell a bunch of a component I had stockpiled. (Im not a scalper. I got the parts when my dad died.).

I put them for sale with $100 minimum, auction. They ended up selling for $300. I was definitely happy.... until Ebay refused to send me my money, and instead demanded access to a bank account, after the sale was complete. Fuck that.

I found the user who bought it, traced to a business. Cool. I contacted him, explaining what happened. Turns out they did the same to him since he too was a seller. I told him that I'd honor the same price Ebay told me....

Ebay told me (seller) $300. Ebay told the buyer $350......!! Mind you, the fees are taken out of my $300, yet that $50 difference is Ebays scrape off the top.

Obviously, I sold it to them for $300, and provided screenshots of what I was being told, and they did the same. We arranged the sale over Paypal and worked like a charm.

And sure, Ebay's scamming as far as I can tell, everyone. But it's also reminded me to check on websites with a private mode browser and logged in, to see if there's funny games.

It's amazing how quickly I recognized eBay descending into this sort of stuff from its inception. Maybe Amazon did so quickly too, but it's so obviously scummy that even as a teenager I got this impression. Kudos to you for going the extra mile

I recently sold some items on ebay. ebay will not release the funds for 3 weeks. They give no reason for this. However I think the real reason is that if you do this over a large enough user base you can use the "time-value" of money to make extra money. It's nefarious, and I too will never use ebay again.

The reason they give/non-cynical take is that it's a hold for potential buyer dispute. If they do, and eBay decides in their favour (to refund or partially refund) then it ensures they already/still have your money, they don't have to try to bill you back for it. (Which would also have an associated cost, but surely the main aspect would just be already having it, you haven't run off with it, not unable or unwilling to pay it, etc.)

Wow, this is wildly unethical and shitty. I'm never using ebay again.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-st...

They also allegedly hired someone to stalk and harass a couple who posted negative reviews of them online.

That was supposedly rogue execs. Not taking their side, but I don’t think it was company policy.

This statement is very meaningful in our current society, but one I wish sounded as insane as it is. I hope more people will think about the basic dogma of corporatism in the coming years...

Well, what if we translate this into a very different society?

You live in a big mansion. Your live-in cook heads into town one night and ends up getting into a fight in a bar. He breaks the other guy's leg.

What should happen to you?

Now imagine a legal entity represented and managed by several officials.

One of them heads into town, hires a bouncer to break a guys leg using the legal entities money, letterhead, and declares that this is work on behalf of the legal entity.

What should happen to the legal entity wrt acts commisioned in its name?

They denounce the official and sue to recover the money he spent without authorization?

What happens if someone with no affiliation of any kind with the company hires a bouncer to break a guy's leg using company letterhead and a sworn declaration that the work is commissioned on behalf of the company?

If he's an official representitive of the comapny he is the authorisation - we're not talking about the janitor here, we're talking about people with fiduciary responsibility between themselves and the company.

A lone wolf acting alone and falsifying documents is entirely different to a direct representative who is authorised to act on behalf of a company acting in bad faith.

Otherwise company officials are free to do henious crimes in the name of and on behalf of a company with no blowback on the company when those actions go pear shaped and get exposed.

Commanders are responsible for the actions of their men, companies are responsible for the actions of their principals.

So your answer is that the guy in the mansion whose cook gets into a fight should be punished for personally breaking the other guy's leg?

A cook is a bad analogy for the rank held by the people involved. It's more like "son of the estate owner" or "head guard", except it's both of them because it was multiple execs. So, yes, the estate owner should be held accountable. And in most civilized societies, he or she would be.

Nope.

At this point I'm merely questioning your ability to parse and undertand English in good faith.

I’m not great/don’t have time for a good metaphor dance, but that’s definitely a good one IMO! I guess I’d say the big difference is that you’re asking “what should happen to rogue execs”, and I was more interested in the general “who is culpable for the actions undertaken by an organization? Can the organization itself be culpable?”

In that metaphor, I see it like this: you live in a big estate that operates as some sort of business (wine, tourism, B&B, w/e), and your live-in cook breaks a guy’s leg while working for the estate (say, in a case of kitchen negligence, or just plain-old kitchen assault). I come along and propose that maybe you and your other owners should be forced to sell the estate or seriously rework things, since the assault was so bad.

In this world, do you share my intuition that at some level the estate itself should be made to answer for the actions of its employees on the job?

Beyond just fining corporations for damages, I feel there’s an unaccounted for intuitive sense that corporations should forfeit their autonomy and very existence in light of serious or repeated malfeasance, even if it wasn’t voted on by every member of the board before being enacted.

Ok maybe I did have time for a metaphor dance lol. Hope all this was somewhat clear!

> rogue execs

What is a company if not a collection of people? I fail to see the difference between "rogue execs did it" and "the company did it", except for who gets thrown under the bus.

> That was supposedly rogue execs. Not taking their side, but I don’t think it was company policy.

rogue employees is not company policy. rogue exec? maybe that isn't company policy. rogue execs!? that IS company policy.

> rogue execs

That's not 'rogue' that's completely and utterly unhinged. It's a walk-in position, not a 10th generation family firm. Why would you even think about it?

Isn't that open and shut fraud on the part of ebay?

How is that fraud? Ebay is brokering a deal between two parties. It doesn't seem inherently fraudulent to offer differing prices to each party.

The deal I make with eBay is "I sell X for whatever the highest bidder pays, and then pay a percentage of that to Ebay for services rendered" (10% IIRC). That is: I would get $315 and eBay $35, but instead what happened is that I get $270 and eBay $80.

Note that it DIDN'T list a "higher price for the buyer"; people were bidding so that price was correct. What it did was list a LOWER price to the seller.

This is like you giving me your guitar and telling me "Martin, sell it for me and keep 10% of the price for your trouble" and then I lie to you about the price I sold it for so I can keep the difference.

I don't know how else to describe this than fraud. This seems wildly illegal in most jurisdictions and I'm surprised they're getting away with it.

I see what you mean and indeed that does sound fraudulent. Initially it had seemed to me sort of like ebay acting as a middle man and buying from you/selling to the buyer but them saying they sold your item for X price when they did not sounds cut and dry.

Are you in a state with sales tax? eBay is required by law to collect sales tax from the buyer, and it does not get passed on to you (nor does it go to eBay, it goes to the state taxing authority). As you are currently describing the issue, it makes absolutely no sense otherwise.

Tax was being collected, on top of the $350 being told to the buyer.

Ebay told me $300 for the completion of the auction. There was the normal fees associated with listing, which again, are understood.

This $50 discrepancy was not accountable anywhere. It just went poof into Ebay's gaping maw.

Like I said, we both compared notes and what our respective screens said. The numbers absolutely did not add up. And Ebay reallllly doesnt want the buyer and seller to talk directly. It's why the "ebay mail" is so limited and crippled, to prevent actual conversations like this from taking place.

I talked with them over text and email proper. There was no filter, or daddy ebay censoring all my messages.

This should be illegal misrepresentation of your selling price wow

eBay stole my money and made it impossible to get a refund fifteen years ago. I gave up and stopped using the site. Sorry I don’t have more details; it’s faded from memory. But it was dirty behavior, that’s for sure.

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