GM and eBay might be criminals.

I have been the biggest reporter on this news since it broke many months ago. This is both odd and scary to me, as I'm not a reporter.

The program, GM selling new cars over eBay ceased at the end of October.

Now, me reporting this to you is completely old and not news. But as has been the case from day 1, I'm not the top reporter for timeliness; I've been the top reporter because NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THIS AND I'M THE ONLY ONE ACTUALLY PUTTING ANY EFFORT INTO THIS.

If you haven't read my previous blogs, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. Basically I did an in depth analysis of eBay and GM's plans, and used actual data that the media seems to be ignoring.


Hilariously enough, they've left the conclusion for me too.


You'd think one person in all of the media might have looked into this whole program. After all, millions were spent, and it was an industry first.

Sadly, what I've seen, one guy got a few official statements from eBay, GM dealers, and one customer, and wrote a puff piece for the NY Times. I looked around, and every other report on the close of the GM eBay alliance was just plagiarized from the NY Times article. Absolutely no original work across the global media.

What really annoyed me was that they all 'speculated' on the success of the program. They seemed completely unable to provide actual stats. Some people actually concluding that eBay and GM were "hiding" their results.


DO ANY OF THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY USE EBAY?? All I had to do was look up the "yourgmdealer" profile and I could see every vehicle they sold and the feedback from the customers.

Grand Total: 24 vehicles transactions through eBay. Note, I didn't say vehicles sold, because if you read the feedback, many of the sales fell through when dealers refused to honor their deals.

With only 15 positive reviews (and one of them recanted) This company, bailed out by America, owned by all Americans, a multibillion dollar global century old corporation completely fucking sucked on eBay. Their feedback score was 7. Motherfucking 7. With only 68.4% of feedback positive (less considering the recanted one).

This program from day one was written to screw customers. The way it was set up, no "deals" could be had, eBay and GM conspired to set up the decks in their favor, and apparently people realized this. The worst part, reading what GM and eBay had to say, I don't think they learned a god damn thing. The only reason they would admit any drawbacks, was that THEY COULDN'T SELL ENOUGH CARS ACROSS THE ENTIRE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO FILL A PARKING LOT!!

HERE IS A LIST OF SOME OF THE BULLSHIT THEY EMPLOYED THAT ULTIMATELY GUARANTEED THIS VENTURE WITH TAX PAYER MONEY WOULD FAIL:

-"Buy it Now" prices were above sticker. Needless to say, nobody fell for it.

-eBay gave GM "Power Seller" status, essentially selling out their own standards for an accolade GM didn't earn.

-GM used a dummy account to give themselves more "e-cred" by changing some asshole's account from "bighouse0001" to "yourgmdealer" they did this to make it look like GM has been on eBay since the end of 2007, when they actually just got some guy to hand it over to them and changed the name a couple days before the program started.

-GM was given privilege to do "closed" auctions, something almost never used on eBay, it is completely the antithesis of open auctions people expect when they go to eBay. This way, it's like getting the credibility of a company like eBay, but going around their time-honored tried and loved system. The closed auctions gave the buyer no advantage (or even incentive) whatsoever compared to some shlub walking into a dealership.

-All deals made through eBay aren't guaranteed. Multiple feedback occasions showed the dealers changed the price, the car, or simply left the eBay customer ass-out in the end. When all is said and done, nothing on eBay is contractual, and therefore it is akin to window shopping. No deals could actually be made online, thus entirely negating any advantage, however small, to the buyer. Even if the buyer just didn't want to get hassled, tough shit, they still had to negotiate after the deal, then go into the dealership, negotiate again, then sign the real paperwork.

-eBay and GM did all they could to hide their failing venture. Listings only lasted a few days to a week. Even now, if you go to "yourgmdealer"'s profile, you can see eBay is violating its own rules, hiding information on the last 3 transactions. They claim the information is available for 90 days, but the last 3 transactions are less than 90 days old, and their information has been removed.


In addition to all these verifiable facts above, I have one theory, that I'm currently investigating. It would be nearly impossible for me to prove, but if I can, it would blow the fucking lid off this whole thing. I believe GM used a stooge to boost their ratings (that are still incredibly low). This is an absolute flagrant violation of eBay policy, because it is a crime in the United States to misrepresent a business transaction to dupe customers.

The easiest way to spot a stooge is if they don't bother leaving any other tracks. You see, usually people don't create accounts right before an event, then participate in said event, leaving a positive impact, and then vanish from a website forever.

So if you look at eBay user "661henryglen" who signed up for eBay June 30 2009, bought TWO CARS ON THE SAME DAY August 20, 2009 (being the second and third positive feedbacks) all the while NEVER DID ANYTHING ELSE ON EBAY FROM SIGN UP UNTIL NOW. It looks really suspicious. It is similar to the cheating card dealer on the side of the street who has a friend come bet a round and let him win to dupe the marks.

This kind of stooge work actually reminds me of the Balloon Boy, as most people know, the whole family took part in as much attention whoring as possible, and they had released a children's film. When I heard about the film I went on IMDb to check it out, and I found a couple suspicious positive reviews from two separate accounts. Both accounts had been opened within days of each other, both accounts left a positive review for the movie, and both accounts never logged on again, nor left any comments for any other movies. That was another clear Richard Heene scam, though on a much lower level, and oddly once again, I'm the only one reporting on it. Though if you go to the IMDb board for the movie, I left a comment explaining this, so any person who came after me would know about it.


Ultimately the company we own did a bunch of stupid shit at our expense, and everyone; government, media, customers, has looked the other way. I don't know why I'm the only person reporting it. It feels weird, like American news dropped the ball. But I suppose this is an indicator of the big change in American media. As the newspapers fall out, as news becomes increasingly less lucrative, reporters stop reporting, investigators stop investigating, and we get Twitter.



Previous post on GM/eBay: http://promontorium.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Official GM eBay Feedback page: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=yourgmdealer&ftab=AllFeedback&items=25



Richard Heene Movie IMDb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387889/

Stockton Killings Up, Underreported and Unsolved

I try to tell people, in this city with an underreported population by tens of thousands of legal residents, the true number of killings is never acknowledged.

Stockton officially had 35 homicides in 2009, which is lower than average in the past, but more than in 2008. The Record's report admitted they cut out many deaths for these numbers,

No one the police kill are ever tallied, even if the death hasn't been ruled "justifiable homicide", no "justifiable homicides" are counted, and no DUI killings are counted.

Seems to me, death by cop, justifiable homicide, and car crashes would be three of the biggest sources of death tolls, I mean, at this point we're just talking about cold blooded murder, involving no law enforcement, and no vehicles, and still, Stockton can get up to 1 a week, like in 2006, 2005, 2004, where 40 plus people fit the category.

For regional comparison, Stockon in 2009 was 35, the entire county was 52, with the second highest city Tracy with 5.

2009 saw some of the worst rates for law enforcement, only 10 of the 35 cold blooded, unjustified, non police, non vehicle murders led to any arrests.


So in Stockton, if you're murdered, there's a 71.5% chance the police will completley fail in catching the criminal.


My contetion is this, if the police can't solve over 70% of the murders, and Stockton is actually much larger in population than anyone will admit, with or without the illegal encampments I know exist, and can show you on a map. How can we trust the number is actually 35? If someone is killed, and you don't find the body, and the person never officially existed in Stockton to begin with, there is no stat, that person was and will ever remain a ghost.

And it is precisely those people on the fringe who are most likely to be involved in shady operations, who are most likely to be murdered. The undocumented illegal brothers, sisters, cousins, of documented legal immigrants. The ones who couldn't get legal status, so they can't work legally, living either in the encampments or with their legal relatives. Either way, they must work, so they do it illegally. And once one crosses the legality threshold, once the threat goes straight to deportation, there is no limit, and here come the drugs, prostitution, slave labor, sex slavery, and with these criminals, all ghosts in the machine, murder goes unnoticed, unchecked, undocumented, and unsolved, or perhaps obvious to those who knew the victim, but never officially reported.


I have recently been in discussion about the subjectivity of focusing on blocks of time such as years and decades, so to throw in one more unhappy stat, 16 of 2009's murders in San Joaquin county were in November and December, 8 each. This is double the average. 2010 isn't looking good.