I have been a fan of eBAY. I admire the way they are constantly upgrading operations and adding additional services. And most of all I like that they are adding new divisions. Skype might be controversial, but the purchase illustrates that there is orignal thinking going on at headquarters.

On a personal level I have been surprised about how sloppy the company is on its record keeping. Occasionally I sell or buy items on eBAY. Recently I attempted to sell a car. I paid for the ad with my PayPal account. Apparently I had a shortfall in my PayPal account and owed eBAY money for the ad placed. What happened next is puzzling. It took eBAY several weeks to recognize that I owed them money.

I paid the money due immediately by credit card. I never received acknowledgement of the payment and never gave it another thought. Recently I went to eBAY to sell an item. I found that eBAY had frozen my account for lack of payment. However, as mentioned, I had paid the bill four weeks earlier via credit card.

I protested via email to the eBAY complaint area and was pleased that the situation was rectified within 24 hours. In the end my confidence in eBAY was restored by the rapid response to my complaint.

I do have a defense for eBAY. It is possible that eBAY was sending me emails to warn me about my supposed lack of payment. However I tend to never open such emails because of the phisher problem we all face. Increasingly the problem that I faced will have to be solved via digitial signatures and other means to assure someone like me that eBAY is in fact asking for details about my account information.