Ebay

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Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 3:00 pm

Don't know if this has been mentioned before but I thought I would post it.

I recently put a mobile phone on Ebay, strictly auction only, no �Buy it Now� price, and sat back whilst the bids came in (actually no bugger did bid but hey ho). After a day or so I got a message from a potential buyer with the story that they needed it for a present for their brother in Nigeria and wanted to give me �80 plus postage � and, wait for it, could they please have my Paypal login details to transfer the money over.

Obviously I reported it and forwarded the message to Ebay�s own internal systems and they acknowledged it.

�80 was way over, do people actually fall for this kind of thing? I couldn�t respond without giving my real email address over, which is a shame as I smelled a nice bait coming on.

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:17 pm

Very common on other auction sites (esp. Yahoo) and it seems to be growing on eBay as of late.

You could still bait the guy, assuming you didn't put any contact info in your auction. He would have had to write you through eBay's internal mail system which hides your email unless you choose to respond directly. You should have his though.

Did he ask for your actual login info (ie password), or just the email address you use for PayPal?

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:27 pm

He actually wanted my login details. Anyway, it's been removed by Ebay now, and it was pretty lame, I can't think anyone would fall for that. Except maybe my mother.

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:50 pm

^^^ that is exactly what I thought when I got my first 419 e-mail. Then I found out exactly how many people out there DO fall for stupid shite like that. Shocked

Just grateful that my parents don't have e-mail... Smile

Not quite a Newb Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 40

Since my wife and I have sold on Ebay for many years we have had just about every sort of scam thrown at us.

I will say that it was more of a problem before Ebay added the internal email system. Before that they could contact you easily and would offer just about anything to get your stuff and your money.

Another common scam through Ebay is to contact you when you have listed yourself as a Ebay partner (they have an actual name but I cannot remember it). Basically you are saying that you will sell stuff for other people in exchange for a percentage. When we first listed our usernames we stated that we would only deal with people locally. Well right away we had a guy supposedly from Singpore who had thousands of baseball and Pokemon cards that he wanted us to sell sight unseen. He said that once he received the money he would ship them to the buyer. Yeah, like that's gonna happen! Rolling Eyes

The changes Ebay has made over the years have made it much more difficult for the scammers to get through but they still do manage one way or another.

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:57 am

I sell a lot of vintage and antique stuff on eBay, and I know before hand what it is worth, but I start auctions at $9.99. I find that I get a lot more buyers interested early if I play dumb and pretend to have no idea what the item is worth. I often get questions from buyers who want to buy the item at ridiculous low prices, so they can give them for a birthday present to some relative three day from now, but only if I will end the auction early. These buyers are in the US, so it's not only Nigerians looking for a quick steal. I just ignore these.

Have I ever got burned at selling an item way to cheap? Never! I always get more than it's worth. You're not only selling the item, but the story to go with it. People love to think they are ripping off some clueless idiot. Trust me, this works.

Strange world we live in. Shocked

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:03 pm

I've noticed that some people are quite inventive at Ebay : I recently bid on an amplifier (my maximum bid was 250 Euro). At one point I was the highest bidder at 220 Euro. It's easy to notice that your highest bidder hasn't yet reached his maximum bid. So what do you do (if you're a dishonest jerk, that is) you get someone to bid a way over the top price (in this case 350 Euro), and hey bingo you can see my highest bid. Then you get your mate to withdraw his bid, and wait until just before the auction ends to throw in a bid of 249 Euro, thus making me pay 250 Euro whereas I might have got it for 220 Euro.
Told the bastard to shove his amp up his back pasage, and informed Ebay : got a nondescript reply and the bugger is still trading ...

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:30 pm

Bobo419 wrote:

.. you get someone to bid a way over the top price (in this case 350 Euro), and hey bingo you can see my highest bid. Then you get your mate to withdraw his bid, and wait until just before the auction ends to throw in a bid of 249 Euro, thus making me pay 250 Euro whereas I might have got it for 220 Euro.

That is probably quite hard to prove, but you did the right thing. Enough people report the same problem, Ebay will do something.

I always get tossers asking me for BUY IT NOW prices when I never put them on my auctions. It really pisses me off, and I usually tell them to piss off as well.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 7

The company I work for recently came across one of our products. Oddly enough, we haven't released it to any of our customers yet, but there was one carton missing from the entire consignment of 10,000 pieces. Needless to say, it's outright theft and we ordered our product back from the guys, got his email addy and physical address. We asked how many he had and sure as shit, had the exact amount of product we were missing. Cops are on the case now and we've been told he was fired from the shipping company. Too bad. He was a hell of a salesman. Twisted Evil

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:55 pm

Bobo419 wrote:

I've noticed that some people are quite inventive at Ebay : I recently bid on an amplifier (my maximum bid was 250 Euro). At one point I was the highest bidder at 220 Euro. It's easy to notice that your highest bidder hasn't yet reached his maximum bid. So what do you do (if you're a dishonest jerk, that is) you get someone to bid a way over the top price (in this case 350 Euro), and hey bingo you can see my highest bid. Then you get your mate to withdraw his bid, and wait until just before the auction ends to throw in a bid of 249 Euro, thus making me pay 250 Euro whereas I might have got it for 220 Euro.
Told the bastard to shove his amp up his back pasage, and informed Ebay : got a nondescript reply and the bugger is still trading ...

That's called shill bidding and will get you banned.
It is unethical and kind of a dirty under-handed way to do your auction bidding. Shame on you

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:15 am

@Bobo419,

Wait.

Your maximum bid was 250 so you thought that was the maximum value of the item. And you complained you got it at the maximum? That was a scam bid on your part. If 220 was what you thought it was really worth, then you should have bid 220 then. Don't overbid and complain you got ripped off.

And the other bidder: Definitely report that for shill bidding. Both could get NARU'd. If no response, report them again.

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:16 am

Call me niave, but isn't the point of an auction, whether in house or on line, to attain the item you want for the lowest cost? (Although, obviously paying a higher cost if the auction goes up and you really want the item?)
And if the seller puts the item on low to begin with, then that's the sellers gamble?

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 9:37 am

To Baron and Bobcat :
Maybe I didn't make myself very clear :
My maximum bid was indeed 250 Euro. However, the seller wasn't supposed to know this, and if someone hadn't bid 300 Euro (thus revealing the maximum I prepared to pay), and subsequently withdrawn his 300 Euro bid (again making me the highest bidder at 220 Euro), I might have won the object for 220 Euro. Instead someone mysteriously bids 248 Euro seconds before the auction ends which results in my maximum bid of 250 Euro to become the highest bid.
I wouldn't have minded paying 250 Euro if the auction had been handled fairly. But I am convinced that the seller asked someone to bid 248 Euro just before the end to get 30 Euro more from me (the chap had 3 other items for sale at the time and the same thing happened on the only other item a bid was placed on - coincidence? I think not).
I have sold items via Ebay, and sometimes I was convinced the buyer's maximum bid was a lot higher than the eventual selling price. Tough luck for me : that's the risk of selling items via an auction. Some you win and some you lose. But I believe the method with which the buyer managed to crank up his profit is dispicable.

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 9:53 am

't seems I posted too quickly !
Another good one that happened the other day was that I won a CD for 1 Euro. No shipping charges were mentioned in the auction, but the item was to be sent locally (usually 1.5 to 3 Euro).
The seller then asked me 15 Euro to send via mail !
When I told him I thought the shipping charge was a bit over the top I got the reply that he had to make a profit somehow and I shouldn't be surprised seeing as I bought the item for just 1 Euro (strange logic, but there you go...).
When I told him I would collect the item myself, he refused.
Reported him to Ebay (after all, he's conning them as well : he would only pay commision on 1 Euro), but the chap is still trading (selling Cd's at 1 Euro...)

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 10:34 pm

Do actual postage costs not appear on the auction sight?
In NZ we have something called "Trade me' Basically the same as Ebay, but NZ items only. ALL casts are printed on the auction page so you can't have any 'hidden' costs.
Maybe sauggest this to Ebay if it doesn't happen already. (I don't use Ebay)

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:37 pm

@it wasn't me : when you sell with Ebay you have the option to show how much you charge for shipping, but you don't have to. You can put that the buyer needs to contact the seller to obtain the shipping charges.
Obviously if the item is from a different country you always ask first, but having bought many CD's from different people from my own country I didn't think the charge would be excessive... lesson learnt, I now ALWAYS ask prior to bidding if the shipping charges aren't displayed...