eBay Trips the WTF Meter After a Good Deed

I was reading an article on SFGate about a NY man arrested after for selling stolen property on eBay. And that's well and good, but the final paragraph of the post has this bit...

Catherine England, a spokeswoman for San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, said those suspected of illegal activity have their account canceled immediately. His site was still offering items Monday, and England said it was possible police had yet to notify her company about the arrest.

Read that again slowly and realize that eBay will immediately cancel your account if you are suspected of illegal activity. Nothing like jumping to conclusions based on, potentially, baseless allegations.

The next time someone doesn't give me the deal I want, I'm going to accuse them of selling stolen goods and have their account deleted.

Seriously, WTF? eBay. Maybe you should wait until they're actually found guilty of a crime before punishing them for it. Just a thought.

And, in the meantime, you can suspend their accounts just as easily and alot less irrevocably if they happen to be innocent (perish the thought).

eBay continues to slide off the relevance scale. How many stories like this before they disappear altogether?

Tags: wtf, suspicion, guilt, theft, crime, auction, ebay