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 This is a continuously updated archive of the Aroid-L mailing list in a forum format - not an actual Forum. If you want to post, you will still need to register for the Aroid-L mailing list and send your postings by e-mail for moderation in the normal way.

  Off-Topic ebay question
From: Ken Mosher <ken at spatulacity.com> on 2012.02.22 at 05:26:58(22568)
I wanted to ask this group a somewhat OT question because there are lots
of heavy eBay users here. I discovered this seller
(http://stores.ebay.com/7servant7/) who has so very many questionable,
if not outright fraudulent listings. (See the rainbow rose seeds as an
example of the worst offense, item 160733406329). I've investigated
eBay's listing policies and there doesn't seem to be any way to report
her; I can't find any specific rule she's breaking. It shows a real
flaw in the eBay system that I had never discovered - I can list a
"left-handed skyhook" for sale and there's not much anyone can do about it!

I would like to make it my life's work to shut this woman down if
someone has a clue as to how it can be done. eBay simply doesn't seem
to have a procedure for something like this. I feel myself starting a
rant so I'll just hit send before I lose it completely...

-Ken

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From: Susan B <honeybunny442 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.22 at 05:47:41(22570)
Just like the person that sells Naked Ladies Amaryllis but lists them as Amorphophallus, probably not much you can do, or ebay will ignore you if you complain.

From: Ken Mosher
To: Aroid list

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From: "Greg Ruckert" <greg at alpacamanagement.com> on 2012.02.22 at 11:06:25(22574)
Hi Ken,
I know it is only a starting point but, on that page, under the number of
items for sale, there is a "Tell us what you think" page. This gives you a
2000 letter oportunity to say what you think.
You can also go to the "Contact Customer Support" and follow the link to let
them know exactly what you think.
In my experience Ebay try to help, good luck.
Cheers,
Greg Ruckert
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From: DAVID LEEDY <djleedy at sbcglobal.net> on 2012.02.22 at 12:50:45(22575)
Hi Ken,

I spend a lot of time on ebay, although not much money. I have met very few bad sellers and lots of really good ones.

Usually, a seller will refund your money if you are dissatisfied. The ebay insurance policy will step in and refund both your purchase price and shipping & handling, if you cannot work things out with the seller.

Sometimes you doubt the veracity of a seller's claim, but you go ahead and buy it anyway. I purchased a rather expensive Canna and found out later that the picture and been photo shopped. I had it anyway and it was an interesting plant, even if not worth the money I paid. So I did not complain, although several others had. I noticed that the next year the seller listed the plant at a greatly reduced price. Then buyers began listing propagates at even lower prices.

In another case, my purchase was never shipped. I complained to Ebay and unloaded with my negative feedback and noticed that others had also. Ebay stepped in and repaid my cost. Within a few weeks, that seller was no longer listed on ebay.

The seller in question has had 14,125 transactions since 2004 and the positive feedback is overwhelming. In the last month she received 2400 favorable responses versus 3 unfavorable responses. In the last six months she received 8290 favorable responses versus 15 unfavorable responses, so my guess is that your battle is impossible.

Yes, you can list a left handed sky hook, but if you can't deliver, someone has to repay the buyer. If ebay has to step in, they will look to you. They can either refuse your future listings or, if the amount is significant, they can contact the authorities and sue you regarding the fraud you have committed.

It will take several years to find out if that rose is not as listed. By then, the seller could be gone and, in fact, ebay or you could be gone.

My advice: Forget About It (life is too short).

David Leedy

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From: The Silent Seed <santoury at aol.com> on 2012.02.22 at 15:44:22(22577)
You CAN report members for items not matching the description - but again, if they do match, well...
But, why take it personally? There are hosts of other sellers who do this. It's up to us to be educated enough to avoid such items. Just my 2 cents. I totally agree with you, though. If something is fishy, or fraudulent, I simply move onto the next item. People will catch on.

Best, Jude

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From: The Silent Seed <santoury at aol.com> on 2012.02.22 at 15:57:51(22578)
Some sellers list an item with "other" names, just so that their item shows up in your search. It bugs me, but it's a way to get more people to "walk by" your item.

______________________________________________

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From: hermine <hermine at endangeredspecies.com> on 2012.02.22 at 16:00:58(22579)
At 09:26 PM 2/21/2012, you wrote:

I wanted to ask this group a
somewhat OT question because there are lots

of heavy eBay users here. I discovered this seller

(
http://stores.ebay.com/7servant7/) who has so very many questionable,

if not outright fraudulent listings. (See the rainbow rose seeds as an

example of the worst offense, item 160733406329).

I share your pain. the problem with that ROSE is she says the growers
inject dye into the stems, so anyone with an IQ approaching body
temperature KNOWS this is not a real normal flower but one which has been
manipulated. as for the photoshop colours, I dunno. what caused my shortz
to burst into flame was seed of MOSO BAMBOO, since I am a BAMBOO DEITY
and really, I have not heard of MOSO flowering in the USA EVER EVER. this
does not mean it could not have happened, but growing bamboo from seed is
a dicey proposition and also when a specific species of bamboo flowers it
nearly always (and there are some exceptions of which MOSO is NOT one of
them)....anyway, that species flowers and dies and is replaced by its
seedlings. this flowering is WORLDWIDE. the bamboo people keep watch on
bamboo for flowering the way geologists watch the San Andreas
fault.

Now when Big Herm sees something wonky in the Sansevieria word on the Bay
of E, she writes to the seller and says, you are making a big mistake,
the name is wrong, I wrote THE BAMBOO BOOK and I am telling you this is a
wrong name and you should not be selling this plant under this name and
also it is worth about $15.00 and not $250.

I have no idea if this has been effective. some sellers have written back
and suggested to what location I should go. Others HAVE corrected names.

as I work through her lists, I see she is offering seeds of maple
cultivars which do not come true from seed, they are propagated as
grafts.

this is annoying


Japanese Bonsai Seeds "Black Pine- P. Mikawa"

since you only get a bonsai like this after years of doing what bonsai
growers do, a subject on which many thick books have been written, and in
which I have taken classes at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, an amazing
repository of "living national treasure" bonsai given by the
Japanese government to that facility.

I notice she gets 99.6% positive feedback. I know a goniff who gets 100%
feedback. I have no explanation for this.

Now we all remember those Burpee and other seed catalogs which came in
the mail with their hyper colour gravure illustrations, so hyping the
colour is nothing new.

I feel that as a life goal, shutting this seller down is unworthy of your
efforts.

HOWEVER by telling everyone on your plant lists about her and asking them
to spread the word and never buying anything....frankly I do not see how
she makes any money, she is clearly reselling seed purchased from others.
the nightmare of packing numbers of seeds and getting them to the post
office must be HORRIBLE!

It would be nice to find her real name and google her.

I occasionally look at Sansevierias when I think it is time for me to
have a cranial bleed. I see variegated plants in which the variegation is
chemically induced and all kinds of made up fanciful names. and they are
now being grown in the pacific rim and names are proliferating like
fleas.

hermine

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From: Susan B <honeybunny442 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.22 at 17:02:25(22587)
That is called keyword spamming and is supposedly not allowed by ebay.

From: The Silent Seed
To: aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com

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From: Jason Hernandez <jason.hernandez74 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.22 at 17:13:19(22588)
Has anyone else but me noticed the "bidding bot"? I can bid on an item that has seen no bids in days, and in a matter of seconds, I receive an email saying I have been outbid. The first time it happened, I wet back to bid again, only to get the email again in a matter of seconds. I didn't feel like upping my bid again, so I let it go. Lo and behold, as soon as the auction expired, I got a different email, this one saying I had a second chance to buy the item at the price of my last bid. I did. So after that, I took a different approach: bid once, and ignore the notice saying I had been outbid. Sure enough, as soon as the auction expires, I always get the notice of my "second chance" to buy at the price I bid.

Now, I cannot prove there is a bot
involved -- certainly don't know the name of any such bot -- but I can think of no other explanation. Also, it seems to be used mainly by sellers located in Asia (selling things other than plants).

Jason Hernandez

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From: Zanezirklejr at aol.com on 2012.02.23 at 02:35:03(22591)
I seen that rose too, as well as the names that don't go with the particular plant. Report those listings to ebay.

In a message dated 2/22/2012 11:52:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, hermine@endangeredspecies.com writes:

At 09:26 PM 2/21/2012, you wrote:

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From: "E.Vincent Morano" <ironious2 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.23 at 07:11:48(22593)
They changed that, its allowed now.

From: Susan B
To: Discussion of aroids

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From: DAVID LEEDY <djleedy at sbcglobal.net> on 2012.02.23 at 09:49:04(22595)
Jason,

I am not sure what you mean by a "bot."

As a buyer, I think the only way is to bid the highest price you would be willing to pay within the last 10 seconds of the auction on ebay. If you don't want to watch the clock tick away, you can engage "Snipe," which will automatically place the bid for you. By bidding before that, you encourage higher prices and, sometimes, get into a bidding war which becomes a macho thing (as a seller, I love when this happens).

As a seller, when the auction for my item is over, I have an opportunity to offer a second (same) item to the second highest bidder. I purchased fifty commerative medals at an estate sale and have been selling them on ebay for a minimum bid of $5. When the bidding gets over $15 (and it has gotten as high as $30), I usually offer the losing bidder a second chance to buy the same coin at his last bid.

David Leedy

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From: The Silent Seed <santoury at aol.com> on 2012.02.23 at 13:12:32(22596)
I have never seen that bid bot personally. That is strange, and unnerving.
Ebay is really not what it used to be, sadly.

______________________________________________

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From: "Sherry Gates" <TheTropix at msn.com> on 2012.02.23 at 15:07:43(22597)

Hi Jason and everyone,

Hope y'all are all doing very well.

I have this answer! What some of the sellers do is have friends bid their items up higher, then they send out 2nd chance offers to the legitimate bidders that bid "high enough" to please them. This is one way they get the price driven up. I know someone that asked me, once!, to do that very thing.. bid their item up, but I wouldn't be accountable for the bid, they'd 2nd chance it to the next highest bidder. It's a chicken-stuff way to do business.

As a seller, I can tell you that I was totally P'd OFF. I went ballistic! lol I don't think she sells on ebay anymore, though. Anyhoo, that's the deal with that practice.

Take care & have a great weekend everyone!

Sherry

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From: hermine <hermine at endangeredspecies.com> on 2012.02.23 at 16:53:47(22599)
At 09:13 AM 2/22/2012, you wrote:
>Has anyone else but me noticed the "bidding bot"? I can bid on an
>item that has seen no bids in days, and in a matter of seconds, I
>receive an email saying I have been outbid.

THIS IS VERY EL CREEPO!!!! and should be reported STAT!

hermine

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From: Nathan <plantsman at comcast.net> on 2012.02.23 at 16:54:42(22600)
Buying plants on ebay from an alleged reputable grower can be just as
frustrating, especially when one receives an irrecoverably smashed
Amorph. dactylifer bulb carelessly packed in an oversized box with
hardly any packaging material and the seller obstinately refuses to
replace the bulb....

....or so I hear.

Nathan

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From: hermine <hermine at endangeredspecies.com> on 2012.02.23 at 16:56:29(22602)
At 06:35 PM 2/22/2012, you wrote:

I seen that rose too, as well as the
names that don't go with the particular plant. Report those listings to
ebay.

Yes but on the rose she SAYS PLAINLY that the colour is produced
artificially! so she cannot be gotten for deceptive advertising. She has
about 127 pages of stuff listed, and clearly she does not have all this
stuff on hand so she is some kind of broker but those GOOSED COLOURS,
what KRAP! and those fancy maples are always grown as grafts, you do not
get them from seed.

I do not know what the latest protocol is at the Bay of E to report
somebody whose whole offering is creepy, but if I did, I would do
it.

hermine

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From: Don Martinson <llmen at wi.rr.com> on 2012.02.24 at 00:55:37(22603)
I see your point, Susan, but I don’t see there’s much they can do without being familiar with the object.

I’ll have to admit that I use it when I sell some of my Fat Plants, using the keywords: caudex, pachyform, pachycaul.

But yes, some people go way overboard in this repect.

Don

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From: Hannon <othonna at gmail.com> on 2012.02.25 at 01:48:37(22606)
"That is called keyword spamming and is supposedly not allowed by ebay."

This is, or can be, a legitimate marketing device to help customers and sellers find/sell obscure plants. For example, if I want to sell Synandrospadix vermitoxicus but I suspect most of the people who might want to buy it are not familiar with this name-- and would certainly not search "Synandrospadix"-- then "Amorphophallus" or "Arisaema" can be listed in the entry line. In my view this is a plant affiliation prompt and not a deceit.

Dylan Hannon

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From: Ken Mosher <ken at spatulacity.com> on 2012.02.25 at 02:31:49(22607)
I'm loathe to keep this thread going any longer, but...

It's morally irrelevant that this seller plainly states (not so
plainly in my opinion) that the rainbow roses are produced
artificially by some kind of dye injection. That "disclaimer" is
only there to meet the letter of the law, so to speak. The entire
listing is indisputably fraudulent in its intent. "Plant the seeds
from this awesome fake rose and see what you get! It MIGHT not look
like the photo but who can know for sure?" (New can of worms alert
- read her profile and see that she is an evangelical christian -
and committing blatant fraud in her ebay listings. How do *you*
spell hypocrisy?)

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From: Dick <Dick at Strever.com> on 2012.02.25 at 02:56:42(22608)
the key words here are (no bids in days)

he (Jason) does not say NO BIDS

of course he gets out bid

the last bid sitting there is much higher then yours

and if the seller has more then one you will get the 2nd chance
offer

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From: Jason Hernandez <jason.hernandez74 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.25 at 05:18:54(22609)
A bot is simply a program that is set to do something automatically. The best known example is a harvester bot, which automatically searches the web for email addresses, which it compiles and delivers to a spammer to use in mailing lists. So the putative "bidding bot" on eBay would be a program set to up the bid automatically every time a real person makes a bid. It happens to me almost every time I deal with sellers in Asia.

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:49:04 -0800

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From: Susan B <honeybunny442 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.25 at 05:36:57(22610)
Those keywords are pertinent and allowable, as far as I know. Spamming is when they sell a hibiscus and put Amorphophallus, fat plant, peony, roses etc in the title.

From: Don Martinson
To: Discussion of aroids

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From: Zanezirklejr at aol.com on 2012.02.25 at 19:08:23(22612)
I sent her a message about the rose telling her it will not be rainbow colored, the sale itself can be considered fraud since she is offering it for sale, its deceptive to those who are beginner gardeners, even though common sense says its not real.

In a message dated 2/24/2012 7:41:37 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, hermine@endangeredspecies.com writes:

At 06:35 PM 2/22/2012, you wrote:

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From: Susan B <honeybunny442 at yahoo.com> on 2012.02.27 at 01:00:29(22625)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18-Naked-lady-ladies-Amorphophallus-dragon-bulb-lily-air-corpse-voodoo-flower-px-/360436593771?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53ebb1f46b

I can see Synandrospadix etc. , but I don't see the connection between Naked ladies and Amorphophallus.

From: Hannon

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From: Michael Pascall <mickpascall at hotmail.com> on 2012.02.27 at 02:23:32(22627)
All buyers should know that they can enter a 'highest bid' that they are prepared to go to ,
often doing this the day they see item that they really want .. it might be double listing price .
They are the only bidder, with first bid just .50 c more than listing start , along comes someone else , and bids again ..
instantly ebay sends an email saying you have been outbid .maybe 20 bids later you have reached what first bidder is prepared to pay .
you will get a 2nd chance offer then .. if you stop after first bid .. you might get a 2nd chance .
Michael Pascall,

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