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View Full Version : dont ebay care for our safety?


tuscanyswe
11-03-2008, 07:36 PM
I spend alittle to much time on ebay..

And today i recognized a bike i was seriously considering bidding on some weeks ago so it stuck in my head. Today i c it again, take a peak and c that the seller wants one to contact him through his mail and not to bid on the item b4 having emailed.

If that dident look shady enough his buy it now price for a litespeed vortex 07 with dura ace and cosmic carbon wheels in like new condition was a 1000euros or 1300usd.

So after doing a search for completed listings i c that the bike indeed sold for about 300% of todays asking price just some weeks ago.

A month ago i found myself in a similar situation. I saw an item i had seen b4 and reported this to ebay. I provided ebay with item number of the first bike that sold! and the item number for the 2nd ad for the same bike with a different seller, I also provided them with email conversation between myself and the new seller where it was obviously to any1 he was lying as polite as he could.

There response was that they couldent do anything about the item unless the original poster filed a claim since it was his pictures/material beeing used/copied. They told me to contact the original owner and ask him to file a complaint.

I get frustrated and tell them to do their job instead of asking me to do it for them as i felt i did not want or had the time to play ebaycop (anymore:)), especilly since at this point they knew about the problem since i provided all the info and all they had to do was to ask the first seller themselves.

Todays fraud item was gone about 20 min after i asked some questions about the bike to the seller. The first fraud attemp item went away a day later so perhaps ebay did act, or maybe i scared the seller of when i mailed him a link with original item asking if he could explain it.

Either way ebay not acting on possible or confirmed frauds is crazy. And asking ebay members to investigate further is sureal. Is there any legal issues at play here im not getting? or do they really not care about their customers beeing exposed to frauds?

oldfatslow
11-03-2008, 07:56 PM
I've done more than 100 transactions on eBay with a mix between buyer and seller transactions.

I got sideways on a transaction last year where I was the buyer. I notifed eBay that I suspected fraud unfortunately after paying via paypal. eBay agreed that the transactions was fraudulent and pulled all record it off the site. PayPal, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, refused to stop the payment to the seller which was pending his collecting it.

It took way too many calls to get the situation fixed. PayPal seemed to have a lot of protection for the seller but very few for the buyer.

I still use eBay and believe it is a tremendous marketplace and one can learn a lot from it (how much is something worth for example) however I never pay for anything except by PayPal with a credit card as I know the credit card companies with whom I have relationships will protect me (provided the facts present a reasonable case).

Even then you must be careful...

Karin Kirk
11-03-2008, 11:22 PM
I heard that those types of ads are purely fishing for live email addresses. I have no idea if that's true or not, but it seems like a good idea to just let it lie and not email the seller.

Peter B
11-03-2008, 11:33 PM
Anytime a 'seller' requests you to email them directly and not complete the transaction through eBay loud warning bells should be sounding. Usually they've hijacked a legitimate seller's account. Try sending a message directly to the account holder via 'ask seller a question' and alert them to the perceived fraud. Every time I've done this the listing has disappeared within hours.

As a rule, if a listing appears too good to be true, it probably is.