I'm not at all surprised to find out that I'm not the first person to suspect that eBay could be running non-paying, fake accounts with zero feedback and it should not surprise sellers to hear it. Look at the amount of shady business practices of which eBay is already guilty. eBay employees were recently arrested by the FBI for stalking and harassing a couple of bloggers, at the behest of the CEO and other executives. You really think they wouldn't run shill accounts on their own platform; a system they have complete control over, with no outside oversight??
Actually think about this. eBay wants everyone to use Good Til Cancelled / Buy It Now. That much is quite obvious to any seller with a brain. Yet a percentage of people continue to use Auction. Hmm, gee, I wonder what they could do to encourage 100% compliance with their Buy It Now scheme without flagrantly ditching the image of the online auction that their brand is built upon.
When you look up the problem of zero-feedback non-paying bidders, you can find several threads where the suggested 'solution' is simply to use Buy It Now instead of Auction.
When you look at eBay's lack of meaningful response to this problem, you'd have to be dense not to be suspicious about eBay's motives and possible involvement. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to address the problem, instead of quietly watching it drive people away from using auction style listings??
I understand people not believing that is the case, but to outright poo poo on someone for suggesting it seems really naive. The accusation is not nearly as outlandish as some of you are making it out to be. It's actually more likely than unlikely, based on the history of eBay's business practices.
Ask yourself; who has a financial / business incentive to discourage auction style listings? The only answers are rival sellers, rival e-commerce platforms, or eBay itself. It's illogical to assume that all of these non-paying junk accounts are simply trolls trying to mess with people for no reason.
