After getting a nastygram and a 25k penalty from UA about a 3P ebay auction, I found my buyer has been bidding like crazy on all kinds of UA benefits.

UA denied having contact with ebay, and ebay denied having contact with UA. But I did see some info on the web that "concerned" travel agents can receive bonuses for turning in users who sell benefits.

So it seems that although UA is not employing these fake buyers, they certianly could be exchanging goods or services for what I consider a "phishing" scam: Making a fake bid so high the auction is doubtless won, and not paying but instead whining at the seller or trying to bail out of the auction until some identifying information is given up in the name of "trust".

I suppose this job could be as easy as matching an email if that's the case, but from a few cases it seems like more devious approaches have been used.

Yeesh - how's that for customer service? You'd think they would ask ebay to restrict their items before employing an army of scam artists to whack their highest-paying customers. I guess it's worth more to get those RT tickets back than it is to politely ask non-complying users to read the Terms again.

I'd be interested in compiling a list of suspected "phishers", so feel free to offer up your own suspects.