Yet Another Reason Why eBay Is A Total Joke

I can’t believe eBay is still in business considering the huge number of scams that seem to pervade the site like flies on you-know-what. Just this past week I attempted to use eBay to auction off two notebook computers and quickly discovered that this was an impossible task thanks to all the scammers who now appear to have almost complete control of the site. Yes, you heard that right. Complete control. The way these scammers work is they send you an email asking to purchase your item outside of eBay, then when you won’t bite they hose your auction using a hacked account effectively preventing you from making a legitimate sale and at the same time sticking you with huge sellers fees from eBay. Don’t believe me? Here is the proof.

Technorati Tags: auctions, ebay, fraud, phishing, scam, scammers, security

Here is just a sampling of the emails I received from folks attempting to purchase my auction items outside of eBay:

Email #1 (Spam)
Email #2 (also a hacked account…yay!)
Email #3 (please ship it to Nigeria…NOT)

When I did not respond or responded that I did not ship outside the U.S. here is what happened to the auctions. Nice.

Auction #1 Ganked (by a hacked account).
Auction #2 (looks like it is getting ganked also)

I guess I should have figured this out earlier but I thought maybe eBay actually took security seriously and might have at least made some attempt to curb this activity. Guess not, shame on me.

UPDATE!!!!
Just when I thought these stupid Nigerians could not get any more stupid I get this email along with a fake paypal email (which did not even go to the correct address) claiming that a *payment* was made.

Hello,
I am glad to be the winning bidder of your item, i was just lucky to have won it,l just have to stick with it as l have seen the advertisement for it all around and lm impressed by the features. I came on to eBay purposely for a present for my Son.I want you to understand that i’m currently in conference in UK. I wonder if you could be so kind as to help me ship this item to my Son .It’s his birthday and this is his birthday gift. I’m prepared to cover p&p. i’ll pay through paypal and i will add $120 for shipping to my son where is on an assigment for the british Consulate in Nigeria, I want the item to be shipped to West Africa via USPS Global Express Mail 3-5 Days Delivery. The address of my son where you will ship the item to is below,

Olatunji Sunday,
# 2 Adeogun Street Off Anfani Layout Challenge
Ibadan
Oyo State
Nigeria
23402.
+2348027283323..

Thats the address where you will ship the item to and i will get back to you after the payment is made.
Pettit

This is total BS, fake paypal payment notices from Nigeria and hacked eBay accounts….and still not even a single response from eBay to my emails telling them this is going on. I think it’s high time eBay is forced to take notice, so digg / reddit this post up!

UDPATE #2

Finally some signs of life from eBay….too bad they are not offering to fully refund the fees for this listing. So far they have only refunded the insertion fee and have not removed the final value fee which is the large one at $82.97.

UPDATE #3

Still no full refund from eBay but thanks to a comment below I have taken the time to capture further proof that not only does this happen to others but it is so obvious that I still can’t believe eBay is letting this crap continue.

UPDATE #4

FEES HAVE BEEN FULLY REFUNDED! I just confirmed after reciving an email from eBay that both the listing and final value fees for the hijacked auction have been refunded. For the sake of completeness here is the email I recieved from eBay:

Dear Robert,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your auction that was recently
removed by eBay.

I recognize your frustration and want to quickly and responsively
resolve your concerns.

The bids placed using this account occurred during an unauthorized
account takeover. We took immediate action to stop the activity as soon
as we discovered the situation. We are now in the process of restoring
the account to its rightful owner.

Because the account holder didn’t actually bid on your listing, please
consider the sale incomplete.

I would like to inform you that we cancelled this listing in order to
limit the negative impact to you and the account owner, we temporarily
suspended the bidding account and ended the listing in question.

We took this step to ensure all fees were credited back to you, and to
prevent any negative actions resulting from this listing, including
unpaid item reports and negative feedback. We encourage you to list your
item again, either through the Sell Your Item process or through your
third-party listing service.

Also, I am pleased to let you know that I have credited all fees
associated with the unauthorized bid placed on your item and I assure
you that we do not expect you to pay the fees for the unauthorized
listings.

This is a good first step on eBay’s part but lets just hope maybe they will at least try to make an attempt to limit the impact these scammers are having in the long run otherwise it most certinately does not bode well for the future of anyone interesting in selling goods on eBay.

Related posts:

1. Numerous Hacked Accounts On eBay