[rzwitserloot]

In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

To live up to that statement, society pays. Through the nose - letting criminals walk free is annoying, we do pay the cost of trying to find them, and we pay a large cost gathering evidence to make it stick in court even when e.g. the cops are 80% sure. Courts are very expensive; judges have a salary. As a society we pay this, because, well, take the frustration of OP and now imagine the penalty is not 'banned from ebay', it's 'in jail for life' or even just 'most employers will no longer employ you because criminal record'.

eBay could choose to pay these costs. It will mean:

* Paying for a tribunal of sorts, paying to have them set up procedures and checking that they live up to them.

* Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

* Accepting that fraudsters who do get 'caught', still spend a lot of time 'free' whilst the laborious process runs its course.

* To manage fraudsters, rules are created and publicised which interfere with legitimate business to some extent; everybody on the platform will have to deal with the fact they can no longer do this. (Laws that oversimplify - in society parlance: Walking through a red light even when there are clearly no cars at all is still illegal; that anybody can clearly see it was safe to do this doesn't change either the fact that you could be ticketed for this offense, or that police should just arbitrarily let this go).

In this case, 'society' becomes 'ebay users'. Do ebay users want to carry the burden of this cost? In any case, ebay users carry the burden of paying for the salaries of eBay's board which may well be excessive.

Why isn't there an ebay alternative? One that is more expensive for buyers and sellers but has all this? In large part, network effect makes it infeasible to have many ebay-esques out there. None of them would be any good at that point, and/or you get services that make it easy to post to all of them.

[ClumsyPilot]

> * Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

But already go free, there is staggering ammount of fraud, counterfeit, stolen and illegal goods on Ebay.

Their system is more like "10,000 criminals who go free, 15 random people get banned and the person who wrote the algorythm get a raise and no-one measures the amount of crime or gives a shit"

[withinboredom]

My wife got banned from some service a year or so ago. I asked her if she complained, she said no. I thought to myself, “well, I bet those spam-stats are going to look great this quarter.”

[nitwit005]

It seems to be fairly rare for there to be a way to complain. They often make you log in to file a support ticket, but you can't log in anymore.

I suspect most of these companies have no real idea what their false positive rate is.

[ascar]

And even if there is a way to complain, unless they take action to reverse the decision it's probably not considered a false positive. And most complaints probably achieve nothing.

[kingcharles]

> In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

As someone with almost a decade of experience in the criminal justice system in the USA, it is pretty much the exact opposite. Of the dozens of prosecutors I know, I can't think of a single one that would care if someone is innocent of the crime for which they are charged.

[t-3]

Yep. The really messed up part is that normal people who end up in court are often punished more harshly than professional criminals. It's insane to see guys go to jail with long sentences for driving on a suspended license, while habitual offenders and scofflaws get slaps on the wrist.

[kingcharles]

This is very true. If you go to jail often you know the things that can help to get your case settled out quickly for a low plea.

[ipaddr]

Have you heard of facebook marketplace, esty, shopify? EBay doesn't have the monopoly it once did.

People go to court for murder yes but they also go for smaller things like a neighbour's tree causing property damage. The cost are different.

Companies that force users to give up the ability to sue need to provide an alt system.

"Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars"

This is not how things work outside of tv and talk radio. 1/3 of people in jail are innocent. Cops being sure doesn't make a fact true. Everyone has different priorities and cops are extremely good at jumping to simple answers because this is in their collective interest.

[bluGill]

EBay is still where you turn for random things that few people need. Baby toys can sell on Facebook, but parts for an obsolete computer are valuable to the right person and worthless to everyone else.

[ipaddr]

Amazon is the place for rare things few people need these days.

Selling things where you need the perfect partner are not things that sell well through an auction. An auction is 7 days where you hope to get many people interested in your unique product. An obsolete computer is better on a shelf with a price tag available all year until it sells.

[hattmall]

Yeah you can sell like that on eBay. Most things aren't auctions.

[account42]

Amazon is absolutely terrible for anything used or where minor variations matter (e.g. collectors items) as they will just combine all listings into one with a generic image. Useless for many things that eBay covers.

[jhugo]

And yet eBay remains the biggest marketplace of obsolete computers.

[Gibbon1]

I'm hearing a lot more people talking about selling stuff via Nextdoor.

If you want something old school web 1.0, https://www.car-part.com/ for junk yard parts.

[JadeNB]

> In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

> To live up to that statement, society pays. … As a society we pay this, because, well, take the frustration of OP and now imagine the penalty is not 'banned from ebay', it's 'in jail for life' or even just 'most employers will no longer employ you because criminal record'.

Aren't you describing a cost that is alleviated by (allegedly) making sure that the innocent aren't imprisoned, or, rather, a cost that would be borne if the legal system made sure to imprison those whom "the cops are 80% sure" were guilty?

[morpheuskafka]

> Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

I think part of the problem is that even if eBay is willing to spend a lot more money on this process, everyday buyers will blame them whenever something goes wrong and just stop using it altogether. Basically, they want to be seen as an alternative to Amazon and don't want buyers to ever think about risk. The sophisticated users are already aware of it and are very skeptical, but the newer users who never read or leave reviews make them money too.

[ghaff]

There are two sides to every fraud. So if 75% of suspected/accused fraudsters go free, on the other side is a ton of buyers/sellers who got scammed. And to top it off the word gets around that you can scam on eBay and almost certainly get off with it.

eBay can try to make people whole who claim to be defrauded. But in addition to being expensive that creates its own perverse incentives.

[sokoloff]

I have several hundred EBay transactions over the last 15 years, probably 99 buys for every sale.

In the past few years, EBay has gotten very good at being pro-buyer (which is good for me). I can think of 2 transactions in the last 3 years that were “enough not as described” for me to bother to complain. In both instances, the sellers immediately offered something reasonable and we all moved on with our lives. (I think both sellers were clueless as to the defects, being high-volume churners of resold tech.)

It might be the case that EBay is more buyer friendly than Amazon at this point.

[hellotomyrars]

This reflects my experience as well. Same with Paypal. As a buyer when I have had issues, those issues have all been resolved to my satisfaction after going through the dispute process.

I dislike Paypal as a company and they do a lot of shitty things but the benefit to me using their services is tangible.

Honestly even sites like Aliexpress and Banggood have always resolved issues to my satisfaction once a dispute has been filed.

[actually_a_dog]

Almost all fraudsters on eBay already go free, at least in certain circumstances. I have reported numerous, obvious fake items in categories I'm familiar with to eBay, and had virtually none removed.

[bryanrasmussen]

So, it seems that you know better than Blackstone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio even though, as others have commented in response, the current American system does not follow the principle.

[citizenpaul]

You have a vastly incorrect understanding of ths topic. I highly suggest you read some criminal justice theory for your own good. Instead feel free to DV and remain ignorant.