ebay/half.com - How is this even possible?

[disneysteve]

I sold a book on half.com the other day. I just noticed that the buyer has a feedback rating of 145,515 which I thought was a pretty impressive number. I then looked at the breakdown and 9,641 of those have been received in the past month, and all as a buyer. That means this person has made at least 9,641 purchases in the past 30 days. Since not every seller leaves feedback it is likely that the actual number is even higher.

How the heck could one person buy nearly 10,000 items on half.com and ebay in 30 days? That's over 320 purchases per day, over 13 per hour 24 hours/day.

[SnoopyCool]

That sounds fishy.

[disneysteve]

That sounds fishy.

I'm figuring it is a business account of some sort. Perhaps more than one individual is using it at the same time. The person has been registered on ebay for over 10 years so it isn't like somebody just signed up and started buying. Plus, with half.com, you can't scam sellers the way you can on ebay.

[creditcardfree]

Maybe someone is starting a business or a library! Interesting to think about.

[gemologist]

Yeah, a library is probable. There are people that just buy books all day when a new branch is opened, or even to keep the existing book count up (my wife is a librarian)

[scfr]

I've encountered the same thing. I assumed the person was simultaneously buying from me and selling elsewhere at a higher price, under a different User ID, because I'd get notes like "don't send invoice" and feedback would be something like "thank you for being a positive transaction partner."

[myrdale]

I've never visited half.com. It sounds like either he is bugged or he has cheated the system in some way to raise that number.

To the point of being bugged, that number may be accurate and his join date may be false.

I would imagine he has cheated the system some how though.

[disneysteve]

myrdale, what do you mean by "bugged"? And what benefit would there be to cheat the system in that manner? He (actually a she I think) bought and paid for my item. What do I care what the feedback number is.

When you pull up the feedback profile, you can read all the comments and see the items attached to them. Are you saying that all of that could be fake?