E-commerce juggernaut eBay is under fire because of a holiday giveaway contest gone awry. On Tuesday 25 November, eBay announced its $1 Holiday Doorbusters deals promotion, giving away 100 gifts ranging from jewelry, clothing, digital cameras, GPS devices to a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette for a $1 fixed price on a daily basis.
The only catch is that there’s no announcement on when these items are released or in which category they will be in.
But cheaters came up with a clever way of winning deals on an automated basis by running scripts to continuously bid on items for $1. That way, they’re gaming the system and winning hundreds of auctions before the items are even available to the public. As evidence, angry eBay users point to a number of closed auctions where the visitor counter shows zero users have actually visisted the item’s page before it was won. That way, an electric scooter worth $1,000 was won by a bidder before anyone visited the page last weekend. (Update: a commenter says eBay took the counters of the listings to make the whole thing less apparent)
Honest eBay users are evidently unhappy with the whole situation, and the eBay Forums reflect that. Meanwhile, bot scripts are being offered on RentACoder for $20 and even free of charge here and there.
The terms and conditions for the contest states:
Sponsor reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel or suspend part or all of this Promotion at any time without notice, if in the Sponsor’s opinion there is any suspected or actual evidence of electronic or non-electronic tampering with any portion of the Promotion, or if virus, bugs, non-authorized human intervention or other causes corrupt or impair the administration, security, fairness or integrity of the Promotion or for any other reason in its sole discretion.
With that in mind, MSNBC reporter Bob Sullivan interviewed a couple of eBay representatives about the issue, and found out that they’re unable to provide a clear explanation of what kind of automation is allowed and what is prohibited, even contradicting themselves about the issue of using automated tools to bid for items during the contest.
So eBay, if you’re reading: do handy programmers have the right to overrun contests by automatically bidding for items without even visiting the listing, or not?
shitbay shitbayed again?
Ebay takes another hit. Cool idea at first but evidently flawed!
>Honest ebay users are evidentially unhappy
Should be:
>Manual email users are evidentially unhappy
If ebay doesn’t even have the story straight, how is using a script / tool “dishonest”?
Honestly!
And, rather than fix the problem and at least slow down the scripters, they took away the counters that proved the fraud by showing 0000 on winning auctions just to cover it up and leave regular visitors thinking they have a chance to win when they don’t.
Losers.
It’s tough but fair.
Perhaps it was a security hole that was overlooked by Ebay. Of course, had it known such vulnerability ahead would not allow it to happen under its roof.
It’s not a technical issue.
It’s a technical issue. Robin, where do u get off your high horse and not think it’s a technical issue.
Well, because it’s an issue of policy. The question is if eBay should allow the use of automated bots or not, since their terms don’t make that abundantly clear.
I participated in this for a bit of time on Sunday and almost even won something. But I think eBay had it ALL wrong when they let people with 0 feedback (read: bots) participate in these promotions. Personally, I left my feedback to eBay with similar sentiment and eBay had no response. I’m not entirely surprised.
Yes, it’s sad that people have to spend their time on the promotion whereas bots and scripts who aren’t physically at a computer are winning Corvettes, Wiis, iPod Nanos, and $225 purses because they’re doing something hardly ethical. Why do the people who actually put time and effort lose?
It’s a “technical” issue in the sense that eBay should have thought of safegaurds. It’s a “technical” issue in the sense that bots are being coded to manipulate the current tech of the site.
Did anyone not expect this?
Not to be an ebay jerk, but you say they bid on fixed-price listings, which is not possible. Either you bid on an auction or you buy-it-now on a fixed-price listing or on an auction that does not have bids and has a buy-it-now price.
So that makes me curious, how did they know which items were the specials? Because there are a zillion one-dollar buy-it-now items on ebay. Were the bots keyword AND price driven?
It would be pretty funny to list 500 one-dollar pictures of a corvette.
It’s fixed-price for this contest.
On the how: http://frippich...sters-deal.html
So I’m confused, it was scripts or it was using the “Search title and description” search that did it?
That would be absurd if that guy is right, about searching title and description. eBay warns sellers that if they are going to use non-item words in their listing (such as, “I also sell Gucci”) to put it as an image file so it doesn’t qualify as keyword spamming. I can’t imagine they did something SO STUPID like that. It’s scary… I’m employed at a business as an ebay seller and my job is in their hands…
Well, at least we sell on Amazon as well, the smart persons ebay.
“So I’m confused, it was scripts or it was using the “Search title and description” search that did it?”
I’d reckon a script that performed the search to start with and automated the bidding part when results were returned.
In addition to fixed search terms, all the recient winners are zero feedback users, so if the bot does purchase the wrong item that “user” never returns and defaults on the purchase.
Dang if i only I knew of that I could have sold some text files for $1 fixed price and they would have auto brought them
They might have bought them, but you’d never see the money. And all you’d be left with is the horrendous ebay fees.
They could auto-buy every $1 item and only actually pay the contest ones.
One cute seller had to send apologies after baiting people with false $1 items resulted in a low enough feedback that the seller was banned from ebay.
Reason #87658 I love the tech world.
when has ebay ever been honest? ebay is front for a hedge fund. ebay doesnt care about the sellers rankings or feedback or customers… it appears that way with all of their info to read… but it’s a scam in the long run… eventually you’ll be ripped off and ebay and paypal won’t help like they said.
So, givin that ebay is a scam in the first place, I would never trust a promotion or contest of theirs to be fair. What do they care who wins the prizes if people go to the site and the auctions because of the special contest
Welcome to Mars! I thought it is not news that smart users use script to automatically place orders of wii or other hot items from big online retailers like amazon. There are even script to handle amazon user votes once your account gets in, which is another holiday promotion. You just don’t get it, do you? grandpa!
I didn’t like this idea much in the first place. “Sit and pound our servers for hours and maybe you’ll find a needle in the haystack.” What did they think would happen? Would this be any better if users were spending their time refreshing pages manually?
What bugged me most was the product marketing. Calling it a “doorbuster deal” to capitalize on Black Friday madness when it’s clearly just a sweepstakes. Door busters bust the door because they are available to SO MANY PEOPLE – exactly the opposite of a one-in-a-zillion prize drawing.
Anyway, I thought it showed a lot of disdain to users to dangle this thing like an actual sale price, then expect people, after they learn the disappointing truth, to stupidly click around eBay forever waiting to find an easter egg.
It’s a shame contests like this (not a terrible idea, but a pretty desperate bid to get customers) need to be protected against people with so much time on their hands (ie cheaters).
LOL… that’s exactly why I started learning javascript as a teen.
A friend of mine asked me to make something that would allow him to do exactly what is described – see when a promoted item is on sale (on some small auction site in his country) and bid for it. First bidder wins.
That site was overrun by script-bidders, but my script managed to beat them a couple of times and my friend managed to buy something nice for his girlfriend.
Now 90% of my job is javascript… funny.
WELL
EBAY STOCK HOLDERS
AS
OF
11 / 22 / 08
EBAY HAS REMOVED
OVER
648
Items
FROM MY STORE
CAUSE I REFUSE TO USE THEIR NEW
PAPER LESS PAYMENT
LAW !!!!!!
My MONTHLY EBAY BILL
WAS
APPROX: $178.00
A
MONTH
THATS OVER
$2,000 a YEAR
NOW HOW DOES IT FEEL
THAT YOUR
COMPANY
THAT YOU INVESTED
YOUR HARD EARN MONEY
IS DOING THIS TO THE PEOPLE WHO MADE EBAY !!!!
I BEEN MEMBER SINCE 1997
MY EBAY DAYS ARE OVER
I SPENT MANY WASTED
HOURS / DAYS / MONTH
BUILDING UP
A
STORE
TO HELP EBAY TO GROW !!!
ONLY TO BE EVICTED
AND
ALL MY HARD EARN TIME
&
MONEY TO BE THROWN
OUT THE DOOR
WITH
NO COMPENSATION
OR
EVEN
A
THANKS FOR BEING A LOYAL
CUSTOMER TO EBAY
AND ITS WORKERS
AND
STOCK HOLDERS
OVER
THE
LAST
11 YEARS
JUST LIKE YOUR STOCK MONEY
BEING THROWN OUT THEIR
FRONT DOOR
I HOPE THEY HAVE TOLD YOU
THIS
I WONDER HOW MANY OTHER STORES THEY ARE DOING THIS TOO
HAVE THEY TOLD U
HOW MANY SELLERS ARE FLEEING EBAY !!!
NOT BECAUSE
OF
BAD ECONOMY
BECAUSE
OF
BAD MANAGEMENT
AND
MAINLY
GREED !!!!!!!
PRETTY SOON
EBAY WILL BE LIKE A MALL
WITH MANY STORES
BUT EMPTY SPACES
I WAS SUSPENDED
CAUSE I WROTE THIS STUFF IN THEIR CHAT ROOMS !!
CAUSE THEY DIDNT WANT OTHER SELLERS TO
SEE THIS !!!
SO I WASNT ABLE TO WRITE
NO MORE COMMENTS
IN CHAT FORUM !!!
SO HERE I AM
WHERE THEIR STOCK HOLDERS
COME
GO VISIT MY
EBAY STORE !!!
A BLAST FROM YOUR PAST !!!
SEEE HOW MANY ITEMS ARE IN THERE NOW
SEE HOW MANY HAPPY CUSTOMERS
I HAD
USING
POSTAL MONEY ORDERS ONLY
OVER THE
LAST
11 YEARS !!!
THANKS FOR READING THIS
EMAIL ME ANY TIME WITH YOUR COMMENTS !!!
PS
I HAVE A STORE ON
EBAY
THATS
UP FOR AUCTION
OR
FOR SALE !!!!!
I’ve also ready complaints (now moved from Seller Central to hidden in The Soapbox) that the Sellers are upset with the “Free Shipping” promotion – as one seller said “How nice that Ebay will offer more free shipping. That’s a good trick, considering they don’t actually ship anything. What this really means is that they’re going to add another layer of coercion to force us sellers to give free shipping. Of course this is not really free. We have to add it onto our prices, which means Ebay gets a cut of it in their newly-increased Final Value fees.”
[CAPS LOCK] is
cruise control for
COOL
!!!
just setup lots of auctions with bits of scap paper for 1$ and set the P&P to $10.
In fact I have a load of junk mail I would like to sell on ebay.
More and more reason to use Craigslist now.
Whatever the rules of the contest, automated scripting is clearly not ethical. But lots of people out there don’t think ethics applies online, clearly.
They should have randomized the amounts. Buying a corvette for $65.81 is still a good deal.
Or can add a complex captcha so that only manual users can participate.
They should of gave the gifts as extra prizes attached to real auctions. So you had the chance if winning a valuable prize for winning a real auction. This could of been randomized. Or even given a lottery style entry into a drawing for prizes for winning a auction.
I wonder if Ebay is actually going to give any of the prizes out. It would be a great way for them to save money if not. Of course the people who really manually participated would be screwed and we know they won’t be getting their money back. Perhaps ebay was in on the whole thing and the contest was just a scam to try and sell useless trinkets?
On the bright side, I’ve enjoyed getting $600 from the live.com cashback promotion.
Well, I’m just waiting for Google to launch Gbay, when that day comes eBay will be dead for sure.
Well, this sure isn’t surprising.
eBay hasn’t done much right for a long time now.
And the “free shipping” promo junk is just another way to increase their FVF cut. SOMEone has to pay for Meggie’s golden parachute package and all the over-compensated former and current execs!
I’ve headed to other places to sell. Right now, my biggest selling place is Atomic Mall. Fixed price or best offer, free to list, none of the eBay grief.
So, not really a surprise that this contest bombed as well. eBay keeps thinking from the bottom dollar side instead of the user side, and will always mess things up.
PS , if Gbay ever becomes a reality, I will be among the first in line to try it out!