Australian way to robber an online Fort Knox

EBay, as many other entities dealing with online trade claims to provide the best coverage of risks of both parties: buyer and seller. But how far goes the declared protection? Brent Mack became the most wanted Australian eBay seller ever chased by Northern Territory police.  He would face serious charges for collecting $5000 from the buyers for the sold items that were out of his posession. So far he would be charged with six other counts of benefiting from the fraud in 2004 also related to the trading on eBay and with one count for the credit card fraud (numerous withdrawals of money from the victim's account).

In fact, eBay, the most popular online auction offers Buyer's protection of $3000 per PayPal transaction, payment system that with the acquisition of the PayPal in 2002 substituted its own payment system Billpoint. However, the named protection plan is insuring only the transactions made through PayPal considering the other payment methods non-secured. At the same time many Buyers and sellers were "forced" to avoid the processing of payment via PayPal due to high applicable transaction fees.

In addition, eBay officials state that they have developed the practice of suspending the accounts with suspicious financial activities and to limit the chances of fraud likely users to resign on eBay even under the different accounts.  But there's no way to ensure if the Seller actually owns the item selling on the eBay and there's no way to check the criminal record of person hiding behind the nickname. And at the end it's up to the parties to take risk or to pay higher protective fees...

Natalia, reporter of Ecommerce Journal