I have had a bad ebay experience running over the past few months. Paid for item, never arrived, ebay shut down the users account so I had no info at all as ebay provided absolutely no info or service at all helping us get our item or money back.

I then notice two people left negative feedback all this relating to items sold in december 4 months before my dealings with the ebay. I contacted the members, so did a few other users and slowly we collected some info.

Police and trading standards are not interested claiming it's a civil matter. It however looks like this guy has been selling £400 tv's which never turned up (luckily i only brought a router). I got my money back (£35) but people owed a lot more are still waiting several months down the line.

In his small claims defence he states he was trading as a business, money has been being paid into his personal accounts and the info he provides in his defence does not match up. With this we are now chasing up the tax man about this ebay scammer hoping they will teach this fellow a lesson.

I have built a forum at http://tringo.thebikersbar.com where we have gatherd a wealth of info useful to police, trading standards etc etc, so far they are not interested. This guy todate has happily pocketed money and seems to be getting away with it while telling blatant lies on his small claims defence.

I too have been a victim of Ebay fraud but over here in wonderful ol'America. And I went through all the retarded computer generated Customer support responses, the little "Resolve" wizards, you name it. It took about 10 emails and wizards to actually get in touch with a human at Ebay. Who then arrogantly told me to do exactly, the things I had already done.

Ebay is a gamble. They have no power to protect you., regardless of the premise they may have. Buy relatively cheap items, that can be shipped quickly, 

Trust me on this, it's better to be safe, and pay a few dollars extra at the local store, then being sorry, and losing your money to a fraudster.

It usually appears that their only interest is avoiding all mention of fraud... 

Some months ago a Saab Trader was told one of his cars was being "sold" by someone else on eBay. Indeed it was - they'd even copied his text & pictures from his website. He had to register just to complain to eBay but they (mostly) ignored him. I also contacted eBay and complained about the item/car. (He was a respected trader and the photos & reg-number proved his ownership of the car). 

I also posted about the apparent scam on the ebay forums. This got an immediate response - it was deleted and I got a warning. I posted about the deletion and got a second deletion and warning. These were the ONLY substantive responses from Ebay - the item was allowed to run to completion over days. We captured the pages incase Ebay deleted it later and thus claimed it never happened.

These sort of scams are exactly the reason why I stay away from ebay.

I've seen so many people get ripped off and both ebay and papyal don't even bother to bat an eyelid.