Plasma Scams on Ebay

leeb

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Anyone looked at ebay recently at the plasma section? I have today and it's very scary! We all know about scams (obvious foreign sellers with 0 feedback offering Pioneer plasmas for £800) but today I've noticed at least 3 sellers using rather less obvious tactics.

Came across one seller of the Hitachi 32PD3000 and it was going for £500, checked it out and there wasn't a reserve. What instantly struck me though was the description and style of the advert was an exact match of Crampton & Moore (Sheffield) who of course are a very respectible company that offer plasmas on ebay. The seller even left in the statement "we are an authorised Hitachi dealer." But the interesting part was that this seller had a very good feedback rating and stated they were in the UK.

Only when you look closer at this feedback do you find that although they claim to be in the UK they are actually in the US and ALL their feedback has come from them BUYING lots of items in America.

And the scariest part of this? People were bidding for the plasmas! :eek:
 
Friend of mine got conned into one of these last week. I told him again and again that it was a scam, but no, he stumped up £400 to some bloke in Italy via Western Union, and guess what.. no plasma..
 
You know what they say with fools and their money.

Still at least they learn a lesson, and hopefully they won't be so gullible next time. At least con-men keep dumb people on their toes.
 
I saw a load of these ads last week and got the feeling they were US as some part numbers were for the US versions that only took 120V - not that it would matter as I'm sure you'd never get the chance to plug it in!!!

Even scarier than people bidding, was that a lot of them were Buy-It-Now's !

I did notice that they didn't stay on there for very long - maybe e-Bay were removing the ads after complaints or there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. We'll probably see reports of this on the Register in a week or so when those that won the bids or bought one start complaining.

The thing is, I almost bought one at a reasonable price, not these silly prices of a few hundred quid - who wants to see some companies stock market info. while watching TV :lesson:

Anyway, I've now got a Pio 433MXEV ordered through Empire Direct @ 10% off and can cancel after the AV Sales Showcase if there's a better deal on offer (I missed the last one and had to do a special order ... still at the low price mind you!).
 

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