eBay

My apologies to Allen Ginsberg-

eBay I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
eBay two dollars and twenty-five cents February 22, 2007.
For an auction listing.
eBay when will you end the scammer war?
Go fuck yourself with your double speak
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't list anymore till I'm in my right mind.
eBay when will you be angelic?
When will you fire Meg Whitman?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your millions of users?
eBay why are your forums full of tears?
eBay when will you end your insane censorship?
We're sick of your insane demands.
When can we go into the marketplace and buy and sell as WE see fit?
eBay after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Sellers, buyers leaving the site, I don't think they'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
eBay stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

eBay the stock prices are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial by
VERO.
eBay I feel sentimental about the sellers.
eBay I used to be an idealist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I shop on independent websites every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the computer on my desk.

When I go to Amazon I buy stuff and never get scammed.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen pharming page.
At first glance I thought it looked perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
eBay I still haven't told you what you did to Aunt Gertrude after she signed up for an account.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our business plans be run by Wall Street analysts.
You're obsessed by Wall Street Journal.
I read it every week.
I see the millions your executives make on insider trades. On the backs of the sellers.
I read it online while looking for scams and waiting for Vladuz.
It's always telling me about eBay's earnings per share. Businessmen are losing. Ma &
Pa sellers are losing. Everybody's losing but eBay.
It occurs to me I was once eBay.
I was an infant once as well, but I grew then too.
I am talking to myself again.

We are only a week and a half away from the end of Q1 and eBay's media machine is rolling along. Bloggers such as myself, forum groupies and volunteer security monitors seem to have been experiencing some "trans global hallucinations" in the past month. Today in eBay news we see that Manny Ramirez is helping his neighbor sell a grill on eBay, evangelist Ted Haggard's massage table was removed and that Paypal is doing exceedingly well in Europe. eBay stock is getting a strong buy rating from many analysts too.

Perhaps it was naive of me to think that the tens of thousands of scams I've found on eBay in the past 48 hours are of any importance, either now or for the future of the marketplace. eBay has ramped up their end of quarter sales efforts with listing specials, free stores offers and even a radio advertising campaign (that seem to be directed at mentally impaired pre-teens). The sad part isn't just the fact that many users are being scammed and losing money, but that the sellers who fund eBay's growth are suffering as well.

So who is benefiting from keeping the eyes of the world off the recent Vladuz hackings, security breaches and millions of weekly scam/phishing/pharming auctions? It seems the answer is eBay executives. After viewing the reported insider trades at eBay over the past year, it looks as if a large portion of the $1 billion stock buy-back program was actually repurchased from executives who exercised their stock options.

One promotion this week on eBay is 3 free listings for new sellers. No special deals for veteran sellers who have been the engine behind eBay's success and profit. No free listings for Powersellers who spend thousands and thousands of dollars a month in eBay and Paypal fees. No, no such luck. eBay would rather stab longtime users in the back and bring new sellers into the marketplace; fresh faced, naive newbies who are the most at risk for falling for the type of phishing scams that have been plaguing the site and that eBay appears to be defenseless against. Good luck new sellers.