[cyberheater]

I've starting to see a load of new listings on ebay. They all seems to have be private listings and the seller seems to have no feedback for sales.

Also. In his description, they state something like

"PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY AT vaiarexx@aol.com INSTEAD OF USING "ASK THE SELLER A QUESTION" AS YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE A RESPONSE!!

The buy now price is 450 GBP"

This looks like a scam to me. What do you think.

[Stevie LA]

Link?

[JorisS]

Wouldn't consider for a second to buy from such a seller, when it's about such amounts of money.

[Gary Lightfoot]

There are a lot of items like that with a low price and a "dont, bid contact me for the buy it now price" or similar and the BIN was ridiculously cheap. There was also a spate of buy two at £200 each, and this was for items costing a couple of thousand. You really have to be careful at times.

Gary

[TopMeTom]

asked about the rotel 1098 here is the reply:

Hi,
The buy it now price is 700GBp includding shipping cost.
If you are ready for this purchase please go to www.westernunion.com insert you address at FIND A LOCAL AGENT and you will see that they are a lot of western union agentcy near you.
Here's what you have to do.You must go to an Western Union office and make the payment on my name and address, after you made the payment people from Western Union will give you a MTCN# (Money Transfer Control Number),you must mail me this number and i will check with this number at Western Union web page and if everything it's fine and you are a serious buyer i will go right away at FedEx Priority Service and send you the package and the tracking number from Fedex priority service in your e-mail to be able to check that the package is in your way.After you receive the package you need to email me that everything is okay so I may pick up the payment.
My payment information is:
Full name :*******
Address : 227a ******
City : LONDON
Zip codes : ******
Country : UNITED KINGDOM
Please remember to email me with your shipping address.
Thanks

Have replied with :

Yeah right!

don't bother with it!!

[j0hn]

If theyre not after your money they'll steal your Identity.

[cyberheater]

Originally Posted by philb

i will go right away at FedEx Priority Service and send you the package and the tracking number from Fedex priority service in your e-mail

Yeah. Sure they will.


Thanks for a very informative post.

[cyberheater]

I've reported them to ebay. I wonder how the investigation will go.

[mcmad]

he also offers m&k speakers & lots of other decent gear at silly prices.

looks like he hijacks accounts & offers up gear on a 24hr listing.

Not a lot ebay can do about him I dont think, Ive reported him in the past but he is managing to hijack different accounts fairly frequently.

[Oakleyspatz]

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER pay for anything on eBay via Western Union or similar. You are basically giving your money away and you will never see any goods. Use Western Union ONLY for paying someone you actually know.
Oh yes, all these kind of auctions (cheap price, email direct for 'buy now' price, bidder ID kept private etc.) are scams so avoid.
Don't even rely on feedback as most scammer user ID's are hijacked accounts and the feedback refers to the original genuine member.
Common practise to ensure you do not get scammed on eBay

Insist on a landline telephone number and call the seller to verify his ID

Get an address you can verify (www.192.com lets you check names/adresses in UK)

Pay using credit card and Paypal ( your card covers you against fraud) if seller is abroad or into a UK bank account/cheque if in this country.

Do check feedback but make sure previous feedback history matches current auction ( e.g. if the seller previously sold tea cloths out of Texas but is now selling £10k projectors from Africa)

Be wary of auctions where the bidder's ID is kept private as nobody can contact them to either warn them or check if their auction went through ok.

Collect the item if possible and pay cash on collection

On very expensive items, consider using a company such as Escrow which acts as a middle man (you pay Escrow, they hold the funds until you receive the item then when you let them know you have got it and you are satisfied then they pay the seller). A seller who will not use this service for very expensive items should be treated with caution.

Basic stuff I know, but worth remembering as so many people have been taken for a very expensive ride via eBay!!

[cyberheater]

Originally Posted by mcmad

looks like he hijacks accounts & offers up gear on a 24hr listing.

Oh. Hijacked accounts. Why did I think of that. Pity the poor sod who's account it is.

Thanks Oakleyspatz. Some good advice there.

[Oakleyspatz]

Originally Posted by cyberheater

Oh. Hijacked accounts. Why did I think of that. Pity the poor sod who's account it is.

Yes, you get an email looking very much like one from eBay or Paypal (it isn't though) asking you to verify you membership details or to verify a Paypal payment by clicking on a link. This takes you to what looks like eBay or Paypal (it isn't) and asks you to sign in. This gives the scammers your username and password and they then log in as you, change your password and then you cannot gain access to your own account making it difficult to even alert eBay to the fraud.
It is a very lucrative business and eBay do not warn members enough of the dangers in my opinion.
Remember, never give your details or passwords via a link in an email. Only when you yourself have gone directly to the site and have punched in the web address yourself. The scammers have web addresses which look so much like the original but may have a "." extra or added a word like www.secure.ebay.com (I just made this up but it wouldn't surprise me if this was already being used by scammers)

TAKE CARE!!!

[JorisS]

even worse... I got one of those once, they actually want you to enter your full credit card number, along with security digits

As soon as I saw that something in my head went
As the mail does look genuine, I did at first go to the site/link. But never filled it in, instead I reported the email to eBay.

[pioneerman]

another one to watch for is tko notice from ebay asking you to update your details as you cant bid etc untill you do,and the paypal one i had with a bogus transaction saying i had paid astalavista $39

[gingerone]

Originally Posted by pioneerman

another one to watch for is tko notice from ebay asking you to update your details as you cant bid etc untill you do,and the paypal one i had with a bogus transaction saying i had paid astalavista $39

I get loads of these, they do my head in.
I use ebay quite a lot and am amazed when I see all these reports on watchdog about how blindly trusting people have been on ebay.
Treat everything with caution and you should be ok, if it looks too good to be true then it is.

[TopMeTom]

I wish they would stop it, I had a non payer for my pj drove me mad,had to wait over a week before i could do anything,and this guy is a joke!

There are so many of these scams now it is hard to see the good from the bad!

[tiredeyes]

Originally Posted by Oakleyspatz

Pay using credit card and Paypal ( your card covers you against fraud) if seller is abroad or into a UK bank account/cheque if in this country.

All good advice except the above - the credit card provider's responsibility ends as soon as they have put funds in your Paypal account. They won't give a hoot what Paypal or the seller does with the money after that.

[mikim]

Yes... this has been a nightmare lately... there are loads of these hijacked accounts now... easy to identify too with the dodgy e-mail quote, and usually American ebay accounts.. It winds me up!!!
Something decent catches my eye, and it turns out to be a scam!

I have e-mailed the users via ebay a few times advising that they are been hijacked, but I'm bored of helping out now!!

Haven't these small minded idiots got something better to do with their time

A few months ago, I had my ebay account hijacked - the first I knew about it was a question from a prospective buyer, asking about a tractor I had for sale (luckily, the scammers had not bothered to alter my email address, so the question came to me). I could not log in to my ebay because the password had been changed, but ebay very quickly reset it all for me (removing the TWELVE tractors I seemed to be selling - all of which were requesting Western Union payment!), so I did manage to keep my ebay account with all its feedback. Strange thing is, I did not respond to a bogus request for my details, so I am at a loss as to how the account was hijacked in the first place.

Re Western Union - this is never a safe way to transfer money (unless you know where it is going). As soon as you have a reference number and give it to the seller, the money can be withdrawn without question. This should be fairly obvious, so I can't believe anyone would fall for the payment instructions as specified in post #5.