Crime and outsourcing & eBay. Not a good combination.

I can't remember the name of the person, but a few years ago there was a news story about an eBay member who had been shot and pistol whipped by a "seller" he had connected with through eBay.

I was intrigued by this story, and was able to find his eBay account, and the account of the criminal. And, the emails that the victim had sent to eBay.

A little background on the story. This guy had come across an amazing deal on sports cards, had bid on and bought them, only to have the seller not ship them. He was able to get his money back through Paypal. At this point he should have been happy, but when the seller again listed the items, he made contact with him for second time. The seller made up some excuse about a sick relative, and they agreed to meet to exchange the cards for cash.

Now, savvy eBay members know that if the deal sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, and they should run away as fast as they could. Especially when it's a cash deal. Unfortunately, this member was a lot more trusting.

So, he took his wife/gf along with him, and drove to the meeting spot, which was supposedly the seller's apartment. The meeting time was in the afternoon, but the seller didn't even show up until it was dark out. They finally they made contact, and the buyer went off with his cash to meet the seller. Which is when he got robbed, pistol whipped, and shot at. Yes, he made a very bad decision, there's no doubt. Oh, and it was a substantial amount of cash, I believe in the 7 to 8 thousand dollar range.

He spent the weekend in hospital, and despite being in awful pain, he wrote to eBay detailing the situation, identifying the member account responsible, including the police case information, etc etc etc. He did the right thing, because he could see that this "Seller" still had items listed, and he was worried that he would do the same thing to another buyer.

So, this is where the outsourcing comes in. By this time, the Investigations department had been outsourced. I can't remember exactly, but the main bulk of the work was being done in the Phillippines.

I had come across the story a couple of months after it happened, so I was able to view the entire history of his email. The proper thing to do with such an email would have been to escalate it to a supervisor, who would then probably have escalated it to the executive and legal level. However, this email was bounced back and forth from rep to rep, dumped back into the queue multiple times, and bounced around some more until finally, more than a MONTH after sending it in, the victim got a reply. It wasn't a sympathetic reply, it didn't show concern or worry, nor did it come from the legal department. It was a stock reply that if memory serves, had absolutely nothing to do with his email at all. Or in other words, about exactly what I personally had expected coming from an outsourcing partner.

I sent the information along to my supervisor, but I never did hear if anyone at eBay cared enough to follow up with this member.

Eventually the police did catch the criminal. I wonder if the buyer still uses eBay?