UK - Police Appear Shy to Tackle Low Value Ebay Scams

With the explosion in person to person, or P2P, trading on the internet it is obvious that the Web 'low life' will step in to exploit the goodwill necessary to trade online. However, in days gone by, we felt a degree of comfort knowing we could report scams and crime to the police in full expectation of a hearing at least, if not a remedy. However it appears now that too many victims are under the impression the UK police don't want to know about these crimes and, if they are reported, will do nothing to assist.

I ask the question: Is it performance statistics that make it better these crimes go 'offcially unreported' or uninvestigated? Or is it just a lack of resources to tackle the issues? After all, rip enough people off for twenty pounds here or fifty pounds there each day, and you've got a nice little tax free earner going!

I now read reports that police forces in the UK are refusing to investigate incidents where less than £1,000 (Approx $1,900) has been stolen. Apparently the existence of this 'threshold' for online crimes was exposed by online powerhouse eBay recently having received complaints from users that the police were refusing to follow up on their complaints.

Ebays UK Head of Trust & Safety, Gareth Griffith, told the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on Personal Internet Security; "When we try to get police involved, sometimes they will say, 'We'd love to help you, but if it is not over a (certain) threshold of thousands of pounds, we cannot'. Gareth continued, "Users come back to us (eBay) saying the police are not interested because it is only a £500 ($950) laptop."

In this modern day era of spin and, being frank, political BS, we seem to have arrived at a stage in the UK where politicians are happy to claim lowering crime rates simply by turning a blind eye to an officially condoned huge level of unreported crime because it is no longer considered worthy of investigation by police.

Even with this woeful attitude, prisons in Britain are full to bursting point. I shudder to think what the real numbers of crimes, convictions and prisoners would be in the UK if all reported crime were properly logged, investigated and included in the politicians' stats.

It seems a fraudster has to bid very high on eBay to merit the attention of a policeman now.

The writer is a moderator for the online auction forum Pheebay.