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.
I can completely relate to this situation. About a year ago I tried to sell a Sony PSP and it took 3 total attempts to actually sell the item. The first attempt some guy tryed to get my to send it out of the country to his grandson and said he had money in the paypal account and said he would release it after I sent him a tracking number. The second time the guy said he wanted to send me a $5,000USD check from something and asked if I would cash it and send back the extra money????? WTF! Finally I got a legitimate bidder. It took a while to get the money back from ebay. I was thoroughly disappointed and disgusted with Ebay and the community that they have let evolve. Warning! Ebay is not a good channel to sell electronics anymore!
I have similar experience. But these are not scammers, these are existing eBay sellers who are nuking competing auctions. See my email exchange with eBay on this issue this January.
I too had a similar experience. In fact, I swear it was the same guy. I tried selling my Pavilion laptop on ebay a grand total of 4 times. Each time, the auction ended “successfully”, with one of these guys sending me an email. Same basic premise.
One time, I even got linked to a paypal clone/phishing site. It was a horrible copy and obviously a phish so I forwarded it on to PayPal.
Out of the four times I tried listing it on eBay, I didn’t even get ONE credit for the listings. I requested it multiple times and never got anything in return. I ended up not selling it at all as it was costing too much to even try.
I feel bad for the people that fall for this type of stuff. These people are what gives eBay a bad rap and unfortunately their number is growing QUICK. And obviously someone is falling for it, or else they would’ve stopped by now.
So is that a beta build of Vista you are selling on that laptop, or the RTM cracked?
[...] One casual seller’s story [...]
Grundle, its a fully licenced copy of Vista RTM. I installed it to try it out and found out the hard way that it cannot be uninstalled.
So you are selling a laptop with a stolen OS and scammers are attacking you. It sound the the jets are rumbling with the sharks.
Rob, the OS is not stolen, I have a totally valid license key. Anymore talk along these lines and I am going to start deleting those comments.
I had the same experience as Jeff when I was trying to sell my PSP. It was very frustrating…
Take a look at the feedback numbers of the winners. (1 and 2, each. ) You could have prevented these bidders from ruining your auctions by setting up your auctions so that bidders had to meet a certain feedback threshold (say minimum of 10 positive feedbacks, and no negs). By doing that it may seem you’re being exclusive, but you’re just being smart. That’s why businesses often won’t accept starter checks.
The other thing I hate about Ebay is that unless you have a PayPal business account, you can’t accept PayPal payments. Nobody wants to bid on an auction that only accepts checks/money orders anymore. Since PayPal gets their cut right off the top, I can’t see why they don’t allow anyone with a credit card to use it. I sell books on Amazon all the time and have never had a problem accepting payments that way. Ebay won’t be getting my business again anytime soon.
In addition to Brad’s suggestion about blocking low-feedback bidders, eBay also allows you to block any bidders from certain countries or regions.
When I sell big-ticket items like an old laptop on eBay, I restrict the bidders to the US. It’s a big country, big enough to supply a pool of willing buyers. I know it cuts down on my potential market, but also cuts way down on the potential fraud.
I agree that these measures will not stop a determined competitor or angry fraudster from ruining an auction if he has set up an account with a respectable feedback count. But such accounts are by nature rare and limited because you can complain to eBay about any non-paying bidder. Three such complaints bans that account forever, by long-established eBay rules. Thus, shill accounts always have a limited lifespan, which forces the fraudsters to constantly create new shill accounts and to buy small items with them in order to build up their feedback. Thus, the more often you complain to eBay about non-paying bidders, the more time and expense you cost the fraudsters.
@Kal
“Nobody wants to bid on an auction that only accepts checks/money orders anymore.”
Well, duh. I won’t do an e-bay transaction with anyone who can’t get a PayPal account. Of the two auctions I participated in that were non paypal, they both had issues. One refused to pay and one refused to deliver an item. I won’t fall into that trap again. If you aren’t credit worthy enough to get onto PayPal, I don’t want to do business with you. Sorry. Also, I don’t do auctions outside of the USA. If your in Canada or Britain, sorry, its too much risk.
Brad, you cannot set up your auctions with filter for minimal rating (minimum +6 etc.). That’s eBay policy. Minimal rating allows to bid is always 0. You can forbid people with negative feedback bidding, that’s all.
I had the EXACT same thing happen when I tried to sell my laptop. I tried selling it before Christmas (to get some Christmas money) but ended up having my auction removed by eBay because the winner was a Nigerian hacked account. I would’ve gladly sold it to one of the second chance offer guys but since eBay removed my auction there was nothing I could do about it.
Here’s a copy of the NIgerian’s e-mail just to compare:
“Hi seller,
i have made the payment and paypal sent me mail that your money has been dedutred from my account and it will be creidt into your account as soon as you send them the shipping information(tracking number)
And i have called my son that i will sending something for his birthday that is coming soon.As you can see that my money is under pending in paypal cos they are waiting for you to send them the prove of shipment.
Here is paypal E-mail (paypal-cash@auctionfan.net)
pls reply me soon
NOTE: Here is my son’s address
NURU AJAYI
NO13 AKIMUSUTI AVENUE
OLULOYO BUS STOP”
I hadn’t been so upset in a very long time.
-john
It depends what you are selling. I’ve had great experiences selling and buying. Often with buyers arriving at my door with cash in hand (saving me packing the items). I restrict geographically to just US and Canada. Maybe that’s it.
It’s probably just a coincidence, but the ZIP code of the “buyer” in auction #1 (Sony laptop) is the same as the ZIP code of Michael Dell’s house near Austin, Texas.
1gor, you’re right, eBay says you can only exclude buyers registered in countries you choose not to ship to, have a feedback score of -1 or lower, or have received 2 Unpaid Item strikes in the last 30 days. But as the seller you do have the right to ask buyers with minimal feedback to contact you first before bidding so you can verify they’re serious. Point is, you’re not stuck selling stuff to people with suspect feedback. It takes work to check these people out but you get better at it the more you sell.
You think it’s hard selling electronics on eBay? Try buying them! Everyone is a freaking ripoff artist. I won’t even go into my various sob stories, but suffice it to say that not only did the drama drag on for a month, both eBay and Paypal were completely useless in assisting me.
I wouldn’t use eBay or Paypal now if my life depended on it. Shortly after the above-mentioned incident my Paypal account was nearly hacked, and Paypal suspended my account until I could provide them with some backup info, like the personal sensitive financial kind. When I asked how the person could hack my account and what they were going to do to prevent it in the future, they wouldn’t even answer me. They actually told me it was none of my business.
So, I offer them all the big middle finger.
The way these scammers work is interesting… sometimes they actually will pay you via paypal. The money will really be in your account. They will then try to get you to mail the goods to them via any mechanism except for USPS.
When sent by USPS you have the protection of federal law. You also can prove that you sent your item depending on how you send it.
The goal for them is for you to get the item to them, without you being able to prove that you sent it. They then tell paypal that the item didn’t arrive, or was broken and have the paypal charges reversed! It’s really easy to reverse paypal charges, and the onus is on the seller to prove that the item has been received in good condition.
My auctions were stolen by these creeps, and when I complained to ebay they let me relist for free and deleted the scammers accounts.
One way to avoid this to specify that they must pay immediately, and insist on shipping via USPS.
Justin
yup, this happened to me too, they hack an account from some idiot, win the auction, and send bogus paypal emails. Most saavy people can spot this, but for clueless people, they could be in for a world of hurt.
I just went through a nightmare selling my PSP on ebay. It took three attempts – the first two were yanked by Ebay – and all three were peppered with Nigerian scammers (way overbidding on items and sending fake paypal notices) and Chinese company spam. I actually cancelled about 5 bids on my last auction attempt before I got a legitimate buyer.
This was the first time my auction was hijacked by scams, and I’ve sold tech items on ebay before! Maybe its new??
eBay is particularly difficult to deal with because you NEVER GET A HUMAN RESPONSE! It is, on the looks of things from others and my personal dealings, a company compromised SOLELY of automated email bots that analyze your text and email you the corresponding pre-assembled text. Ebay should send out some mercenaries to Nigeria as well.
When you see “Nigeria” somewhere in a deal like that, it’s just RED ALERT. Nigerians are the biggest sharks in this kind of market, known to be the best hijackers in Africa and the whole world.
So if you see Nigeria somewhere… Juste be on your toes.
This happened to me in december too. Had my auctions tanked twice by these scammers on eBay. eBay wouldn’t give my money back and even allowed me to get negative feedback when I wouldn’t ship to nigeria (I set up the auction as US only, but these people had US accounts then would bid and email to have it shipped to nigeria). I finally sold it legit, I found the best thing to do was to list in a 24 hour auction so they dont’ have as much of a chance to find and tank it. I did not get any of my eBay fees refunded, had to pay them all (over $100 I did not deserve to pay). I’ve sold a lot of computers on eBay in the past and never had a problem until now… I can’t believe it’s gotten this far and they haven’t done anything to protect sellers.
This comment list should serve as a petition of some kind.
I too, have a similar experience when trying to sell a PS3. Three separate occasions, on e completely fraudulent account and 2 hijacked accounts. Just effing ridiculous. However, I was able to recoup all my fees. But I just gave up. Can we ban all people from that country!:?!@?!L:!H#KLH:!?!@#K:LH??????
Don’t really care about your ordeal, get a life.
@Dr Who
Dude, get a grip. He has every right to post what he thinks about eBay on HIS site.
Make sure your eBay fees are charged to a major credit card. If eBay is unwilling to refund you for the fees, then call your credit card company and have the charges reversed. This may have your eBay account suspended, but at least you’re not out 80 bucks.
this has also happened to me. tried to sell my ipod on ebay and same gay ass bought it twice and wanted me to ship it to Nigeria. and now i have to pay the ebay fees. Watch out for their scam, were they say that paypal is keeping the money in till i send them a tracking number.
If you read the warnings and messages Ebay sends out, they often mention just what these listings state. Don’t trust anything that asks you to sell outside of it, or that says Nigeria on it, etc. Also, have some common sense, people. I’ve posted many, many items, most have sold (although, in some cases it did take more than one auction period), some have not. And I’ll only send to the US and Canada. Costs too much to go overseas, even when the buyer is paying the shipping.
Also, electronics is so over-saturated by online retailers selling on Ebay that the “little guy” who only wants to get rid of a PS2, iPod, etc, is better off not using that route to do so. I agree that Ebay needs to tighten up a little, but, from what I’ve read above, so do it’s sellers.
Stats show that the biggest phishing spam is to steal accounts from 1) Paypal users 2) ebay users. I understood Paypal; they want to drain your bank account. But I didn’t get ebay until now. I really doubt these guys are building up accounts with good feedback. Instead they’re stealing them.
Glad to hear about this. Not sure I’ll ever use eBay again.
[...] read more | digg story [...]
The thing that really gets me is, eBay has to do almost no work to list your auction. It’s all automated, and it’s just one out of the perhaps 200,000 new items listed that day.
It would cost them nothing to remove the charges from your account. If you provide a decent set of proof that this guy is a scam artist (aka he sends you a message in eBay asking to send to Nigeria, when you listed as USA only) they should have no problems reversing the ebay charge. After all, it cost them nothing to list it, really.
This is what infuriates me so much about services companies: Their unwillingness to work with the customer about charges. The Cable Company, Phone Company, and websites like eBay all crap all over the consumer. If there’s an erroneous charge on the phone bill or cable bill, it practically takes an act of congress to get it fixed. Why is it so hard? It cost them almost nothing to provide that service to a single customer.
On the other hand, if you have a problem with an actual item, say a new HDTV that cost $4000 – you can return it to the store if you don’t like it. You can send it in for repair for a year. You have lots of options that will potentially cost the retailers and manufacturers a lot of money. How come the services companies aren’t just as liable?
@Matt
muahahaa he doesn’t
I worked for eBay customer services and I can tell you right now that for all their talk they’re more interested in dealing with as many support emails as possible rather than actually helping people.
They judge customer service success from the quantity of emails they answer, not the solutions.
And most of the answers are just standard templates which the techs bash out based on skim reading a few keywords of your email.
im a nigerian moron! i eat worms and raw rat meat.
Try craigslist instead
Yeah these scammers are very annoying. Listed my PSP like last year and took like 3 tries to sell it.
But here’s an easy way to avoid these scams:
1. When you list items, don’t put any Buy It Now feature on it, especially on costly items like electronics, computers, etc. If you put a Buy It Now, the scammer will just use the BIN feature, try to get you to ship it, and if you don’t then there’s nothing you can do, maybe you can report it to eBay to get some of your fees back.
2. So just use regular auction format. This way, if a scammer bids on your item, and you see the person has like 0 feedback or like 1 or 2 or any very low number, you can try and see if they are a scammer and if they are just cancel their bid.
i had no problems selling my laptop on ebay about 3 months ago…
I’d recommend using craigslist for anything personal. Especially electronics.
“shipping to my son where is on an assigment for the british Consulate in Nigeria”
Yeah, right! THERE IS NO “BRITISH CONSULATE” IN NIGERIA: it would be a High Commission (= embassy in a non-Comonwealth country) or a Deputy High Commission (= consulate). But a British-citizen diplomat would have used the diplomatic pouch address: Foreign & Commonwealth Office King Charles Street London SW1A 2AP
Sing a song of Nigeria 4-1-9!
You know what is fun. When you get the shipping address send something gross to nigeria (i.e. hard boiled egg, rotting veggis, dog feces) pretend like you fell for it (I mean if you already have to pay the fees anyways) know that you are sending them exactly what they deserve.
i think Dr.who, who posted above, is a nigerian!
whats the possibility that some nigerian is actually working at ebay and sending acct info back to his/her buddies in nigeria!
that would not be nice.
It’s not just eBay, try selling anything on Craigslist and laugh(or not) as the first half-dozen responses are scams. Not all are Nigerian or UK scammers, there is also the spam and TIA elements prevalent on the Internet. Active email addresses are like gold to some people. Others just want to know who is behind the email and what you are doing.
It is sad and I am sorry that you where scammed but please don’t call Nigerians “stupid” I am so annoyed at that. We are a country of over 140 million people and I can assure you that majority of us are good people like elsewhere worldwide. In Naija if you are caught as a thief you are burnt alive, So we do not tolerate fraud. Thank you,
I can completely relate to this. I just tried selling my PSP, and all of the top five bids were hijacked by Nigerians. Three of the top five were for ridiculous amounts ($3000 in one case) and all address were phished and unresponsive.
I got my money back from eBay but only after four phone calls and a dozen emails–not to mention six different chats with unhelpful eBya reps. They even suggested file a dispute claim, which I would of course have to wait around ten days to do. Ten days of waiting becuase eBay is overwhelmed by scammers? No thanks.
I’m back to selling by private auction in the local paper or via criagslist. At least there I have the option of requiring face to face meetings for payment.
Good luck to you should you choose to eBay again!
eBay is a joke. I totally agree. They let scammers shut down legitimate auctions and then close the sellers accounts. This happened to me and eBay now wants to to provide them with bank statements, proof of identity and file legally binding forms after scammers attacked my auction which competed with their fake ones. Go to hell eBay
Just play their game… Mail them something (a bunch of rocks), and mark them worth $5000 on the customs forms… They will have to pay to get this item out of customs, and will have pay a good chunk of Tax for a box of rocks…
There are companies that will do this for you if you don’t want to waste the time… Scamming scammers back is so much fun…
Ebay is a complete joke for selling stuff right now. I just tried to sell a laptop which ended with a high bid from some ****** in Nigeria. I second chance offered it successfully and both auctions where closed with the final value fee remaining. Google needs an auction service BAAAAAAAAAAAD.
ebay needs robot detection\brute force protections
more liberal customer service
a phone number
reps from USA
or it will fall hard.
the problem with ebay is that there is no seller protection against chargebacks. When i was clearing all my old gadgets on ebay out of 10 items that sold 2 items received a chargeback, despite the fact that there was insurance and tracking on both items.
I’m done selling on ebay, maybe buying, but never again will I sell an item. Craigslist is sooo much easier because you meet face to face with the person
damn this is annoying
why didnt you send a fake tracking number (send something like a card)
then he releases the $
then you send the real thing
or
charge crazy amounts for international postage (like those ppl selling SD cards, $1 for the card, $99 for the postage)
or
set up ebay to not allow ppl with less than x feedback points to bid (this is allowed in australia, not sure about it in the US)
I don’t understand eBay making the bidders anonymous. 2/3s of the auctions have shill bidding going on anyway and checking the bidders’ histories in detail is the only way to determine what’s going on.
Ebay sucks…
Spammers paradise…
Scam bait…
Etcoetera.
Gios
i literally had this exact same one!! word for word. I told ebay right away when i got it. the whole things was ridiculous! his account was gone a day later. sorry it happened to you. i just can’t believe it was the same exact thing.
Can’t we just disconnect Nigeria from the internet? It would solve a lot of problems.
@iteye: If you really are Nigerian, then sorry, it sucks to be you. Maybe you’re not all bad, but your government is notoriously lenient on people scamming foreigners. The police don’t give a shit, the government officials laugh, and there’s nothing we can do from where we sit.
So if you want that to change, get your government to change. Vote for people that will stop this bullshit. Until then, Nigeria can be knocked off the Internet for all I care.
I had a reasonably decent password, and I am a consumate spyware / virus fighter (for all family and friends). My ebay account was hijacked and I had 14 items listed before I saw them appear in my email. Three of the auctions ended before I could cancel them, I got the rest cancelled, contacted the buyers and Ebay immediately (and got a real person!)
Bidders had their money refunded, but I’m sure the ‘jackers got away with $500 or so.
A good start to prevention of this is for Ebay to allow payments only to the paypal account registered with the Ebay account. The person who jacked my account didn’t change any settings, they just specified a new paypal account as they created the auctions.
I now use a 16 random ascii character password, don’t think they’ll be able to guess that one!!! I’ve seen two other instances of accounts being jacked recently, so I think it’s becoming more prevalent. Make sure you use STRONG passwords!!!
I totally agree with your assessment of eBay.
I stopped using eBay 5 years ago but do not understand why it is still so popular. I would be extremely happy to see eBay go.
I use Craigslist these days if I need to sell anything.
We should start a movement to boycott eBay.
Had the same problem just this past week selling a GameCube. Hijacked a customer’s account in the UK to post the winning bid. Had me a bit confused as to why a person in the UK would buy an NTSC GameCube and want it shipped for an amount about 60% of winning bid.
Checked out the account, had about 150 feedback, all positive. Guy had recently purchased a pair of kid’s pants for like $5. Nothing really indicated anything odd.
Got an email from “PayPal” saying that I had been paid, and that they wanted to ship to Nigeria. Money was in holding until I could send them proof of shipping.
Needless to say, I just dropped the bidder, and did a second chance offer to the second guy, who ended up paying his bid and I shipped it off. The day after getting paid via PayPal and shipping out the offer, I got an email from eBay saying they cancelled both the original and the second chance offer due to fraud since the original guy’s account got hijacked. (Un)fortunately, the second account’s transaction already went through. So, while they were looking to protect people from getting screwed, eBay didn’t seem to care to refund the money from the second bidder even though they cancelled the auction.
In the end, the person who should’ve gotten the item got it, and I got paid. But still, it was an eye-opener.
I gotta agree with Dave. Evidently in Nigeria it’s not wrong to steal or scam, as long as it’s not your family – and there seem to be some gray areas there as well. I don’t sell a lot on eBay, but do have a website for my shop, and I get at least 20 emails a week involving shipping something for 10x the selling price to an address in Nigeria….
ok, but what is the ad appearing on your story page.
Get a free iPod. What is that? Not a scam? Well try that yourself.
I am in complete and utter agreement with you. I have tried three times now to sell a smartphone on eBay.co.uk, and three times the auction has been sabotaged using exactly the same methods you have outlined. Because of this co-ordinated approach to scamming, I can’t help but feel that there might be a greater tactic going on though — perhaps at the hand of a competitor?!
Thoughts?
I had this happen to me when i sold a copy of Dead Rising for the 360.
they wanted it shipped to Nigeria and they made a fake paypal domain.
While almost all communication with eBay is handled by automated bots or people in off-shore support centers cutting and pasting stock responses, there is still *one* way to quickly get in touch with someone at eBay that can actually do things: max-out your credit card and refuse to let your eBay seller’s fees go through.
I have used this technique 4 or 5 times in the past couple of years when I needed to get things done at eBay. They’ll send you a few reminder E/mails and temporarily suspend your account, but if you leave it long enough they’ll eventually call you. And once you do pay them, your account is un-suspended in less than an hour.
Typical call:
Ebay: This is eBay. You’ve been a bad seller and havent paid your bill.
Me: Absolutely. I’m deliberately withholding payment because XYZ is wrong with my bill / auctions / etc and you guys are impossible to contact.
Ebay: Well pay your bill and we’ll fix it.
Me: Nice try. Transfer me to somebody that can fix the problem, then we’ll discuss the bill.
Ebay: Okay.
…and then they usually transfer me to somebody who fixes the problem. Then when I’ve confirmed the problem is fixed, i pay the bill.
It makes perfect sense though… what drives eBay? Money. So if you get in between eBay and the money, you’re going to get their attention versus someone who say… lets eBay walk all over them.
If they already have your money, why should they bother talking to you? Because they’re going to lose you as a customer to a competitor? What competitor – eBay’s got a virtual monopoly in the online auction world!
So, as many other posters here, I have experienced the same this month. I was selling a smartphone. About 1 hour after posting the auction, I had a buyer using ‘Buy Now’. The buyer emailed me a story very similar in content and wording (Son was working in Nigeria, give me your paypal email, etc. etc. etc.). I told the scammer that I was not going to ship outside the US, and that I thought this looked suspicious. After 1 more email with the same type of BS story, I never heard from them again.
I posted my problem to the bulletin boards of sellers at eBay, and got very helpful advice: make sure you tell customer support that you had a buyer that wanted you to ship outside the US, and that your auction was a US-only. I got my listing fees back (all of it) within 1 day of my complaint.
When I re-listed, I limited the auction to only accept bidders from the US, and only to bidders with ratings higher than 1. Everything went fine on the second auction.
You can also require immediate payment on the auction, which will also discourage fraudsters, IMO.
It seems that there are things you can do to limit the fraud. I do think that eBay should make these things default for all auctions, so as to not expose inexperienced sellers like me from having a bad experience like this.
My $0.02,
Per
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the PPPowerbook option
Recently, I had the same email (from Nigeria, about sending the item to their son for a present) in reference to my Canon DSLR I was selling. It ended up being a huge mess, as they won the auction. I sent eBay the fraudulent email and they cancelled the auction. They didn’t immediately refund my final price fee (just like you mentioned), but I talked to a representative and got the final item fee back, so you should talk to someone from eBay (I used the live chat feature).
next time they ask for a tracking number, post of a dirty pair of undies and give them that tracking number, if everyone did this, they;d get right pissed off and maybe we could help clothe those third world bastards?
You should send this blog link to Ebay.
When I tried to sell a laptop, a scammer won the first auction. Ebay has refused to refund my final listing fee. I had to dispute it with my credit card company. I hope people are doing that so that Ebay is getting some pressure on that front.
Nigerians are stupid f****** idiots!!!
Don’t remind me of this. I have been receiving scam mails all the time with regards to eBay.
I used to like eBay, had good luck in general – but my last two transactions have both been shite. Pirated DVDs, and having to get money back from Mastercard; Paypal and eBay both have ludicrously inadequate fraud prevention and custom service. Both charge a flat $25 fee to investigate when you report their own incompetence – even when it is a known fraudulent seller! And you can’t get lying feedback removed, even when the user account has been suspended and the scumbag no longer answers email … fsck eBay, using their own incompetence as a profit center.
I resort to telling buyers to call me when bidding more than $200 on something. If they want it, they can leave a message with their username and their bid and then go ahead and make the actual bid. This lets me know that they’re a real person and willing to pick up the phone and let me know this.
Same thing on craigslist when I tried to sell a BROKEN projector for parts. I couldn’t believe these guys would even try to scam somebody for something broken. Check this email out:
I live at San Antonio in Texas but am out of the State now,i followed my company to China on business trip…..besides, this item is for my friend working with British America Company in Africa.Could you please tell me the shipping cost of this item through UPS courier service to Africa urgently.
The shipping address is here below to calculate the shipping cost:
MOYOFOLA OLALEKAN ABIODUN
63B ABODERIN LAYOUT,OFF RING/ROAD,ONI&SONS
IBADAN,OYO STATE
NIGERIA.23402
The above address has been submitted for paypal as alternative shipping address.
My paypal e-mail address is cbizone14@yahoo.com
Mail me with the price of this item and the shipping cost through UPS to the destination,your payment will be made now.
Your paypal e-mail address and full name has been noted for payment
I will be expecting the reply for immediate payment.
Regards
Jesus Guajardo
This was followed by a fake paypal email, which was followed by endless “send it urgently!” emails, including an email that says “paypal only credits your account after you ship it.”
Yes, Art is right: Nigerians are idiots and they all should be wiped off the face of the earth!!! The fucking animals cost me over $350 of sellers fees last month. Nigerians, FUCK YOU IDIOTS!!!!!!!
ALL NIGERANS ARE FUCKIN IDIOTS
I would love to see someone set up a 419eater type program with Ebay. Maybe ebay could help scam the scammers…
Same story as many others posting here, only I keep sending daily e-mails to eBay demanding they refund both the listing and final fee. Don’t know if I just wore them down, but after 3 weeks they issued me a credits for both. Since then I use eBay to find items from eBay stores with 800 numbers, then call and order the items direct. No eBay and PayPal fees!
You know, I was surprised when I tried selling my first big ticket item on eBay — a digital camera for a whopping $125. Scammers appears out of nowhere, and 3+ people tried to have it shipped to Nigeria. Totally out of control. Maybe the best thing would be a secure eBay / boutique site with qualified buyers.
all nigerians r f****** dog shit morons just like th ecolor of thier feces.
Can someone please explain to me how the spam in the first message works. I too have received them, and decided to respond to them so I could find out the daily life of a Chinese man.
My idea was that they get you to pay, you don’t receive the item.. Simple.
In one case (I have spoken to a total of 4), I pushed them to try and prove their legitimacy. Now, if I were to get them to send me the items first, and I pay when I have the item in my hands, where do they scam me? I don’t know.. Maybe they are using stolen credit cards to purchase the goods then sell them, maybe they are creating a stepping stone to get access to more gullible clients, I really don’t know. I have pushed one to the point where he will send me the item and I pay when I have it, I still don’t intend to do it because there is definatally something not right about the deal, I’m just trying to figure out how.
I am from a South Asian country. we usually don’t get the chance to use ebay because most of the items are US/Canada only. One time I got a chance to bid (my first and last time that I used ebay) and won, it was a mobile phone. I was honest with the bid and really wanted to buy it. but when I won the bid, the seller shouted at me, because I had 0 feedbacks and the seller had mentioned to inquire b4 bid from him. At that time it hurt very much, I was so new to ebay and also I was honest with my bid. we dont have paypal here, and the seller couldnt accept credit cards (I offered to pay with CC), and I couldnt send with TT because here we have tight regulations for foriegn currencies outflow, that means we cannot send money out of the country except Medical and Educational purposes (thats how I was told when I inquired from Western Union)
So I explained the situation to the seller, and offered to do him make his ebay store page ( I am a professional web designer) FoC, to cover his ebay costs. He was furious and left me Neg. Feedback. Thats the end of my ebay activities.
now…. if only craiglist had auctions….
….
….
still waiting….
i’ll never use paypal or ebay again, i have been actually burned quite a few times by paypal charge backs…
Keep ranting about how #*)(# stupid Nigeria is and the word will get out, and then people will associate Nigeria with the lousy bastards they are and never deal with them.
Sorry to hear about all yer problems with Ebay.
I think those who posted the honest and good advice are right.
But the fact is, with 200,000 new sales perday… they would have to have 2,000 scams per day just to be at 1% problems…
And since like 99.999% are fine… it’s just a basic business model that it’s not worth the cost to fix such a small leak.
Like Submarines… They all LEAK and pump water out all day long…. why? because it costs too much to make them truly water tight.
Ebay is like a submarine… it will sink… people will get soaked bad on some auctions… but it will still stay afloat for many years and most will never have a problem…
PAX
As long as eBay is making money whether you do or not, they would not be inclined to stop the scamming. Seems like the only winner all the time is eBay. Too bad.
[...] Think eBay is safe for sellers? Think again, two items auctioned, both hijacked by Nigerians….further proof that eBay is now nothing but a e-cesspool of scams. Ohh, and any response from eBay? Nope….nothing. [...]
nigerians are fucking scumbags and they all deserve to die
Ok, enough with the nasty posts….lets stay focused on the real issue….eBay being stupid about dealing with these scams.
You say scammers have “complete control” of eBay, and yet your article doesn’t give any credible evidence to this point. No statistics, no investigation into the claim, no test to prove or disprove it. It seems like reactionary FUD to me.
Scammers go after high-dollar items. Electronic devices like computers and iPods are their #1 target, but in comparison to the total number of auctions on eBay, they interfere with a negligible amount of total auctions, including auctions in the electronics segments. This is nothing that would even scratch the surface of complete control. And of those auctions that scammers attempt to interfere with, a small fraction of them ever succeed. It’s the “fraction of a fraction” situation.
What this is is one person’s stories of being targeted by scammers, and over-reacting to the situation.
The reason why eBay doesn’t take it seriously is probably because you revealed to them that you have all knowledge necessary to avoid these scams. But you don’t have the necessary knowledge of eBay and you mention nothing about an appeal for all funds to be refunded, which of course you should send. eBay may be fools, but they do know a bit about customer support, and not everyone there is a heartless bastard towing the company line.
i thought it was kind of funny that in email#1 the website was called ussvd. Battleship USS VD ready for duty sir!…
This is such a horrible and frusturating topic. In the summer I tried to sell a PSP, it took 7 times. All previous 6 times were scammers hoping that I would “fufill” there son or daughters birthday wishes by sending a PSP to Nigeria. To make a long story short, I got billed with a heavy bill for listing the items, even after appealing with eBay.
I havent used eBay since.
After a quick search of the current “completed” listings I was not entirely convinced that my own situation was an abnormal event. Just conduct your own search under HP or Compaq notebooks and limit things to anything which sold for over $4000, you will have a nice long list of scams to keep you occupied.
Dude, just be patient. Its not like you have to pay your seller fees right away. Once the Nigerian’s accounts get banned, they will give you a FVC (FInal Value Credit). Just report all emails/accounts, and wait, for me it took about a week.
the two auctions listed there — do you even state that you will only ship to the US? I’ve seen other auctions that have gone wildly out of hand ($1,000’s more than the item’s worth) besides yours, and they don’t mention anything like that either.
What I mean is you put that information in easy to read text stating what methods of payment you’ll accept and strictly where you’ll ship it to. Most of the stuff I sell on ebay are electronics (digital cams, computers, tv’s, etc) and have never had a problem — maybe i’m lucky? maybe it’s cause I put a lot of details in my auction description (not just the ‘pre-filled’ ebay info) saying where I will and will not ship and exactly what payments I’ll take and from where? I don’t know — but it can’t hurt to try to do a little more than to just expect ebay to do everything
Whenever I sell on eBay, I only sell to U.S. buyers.
By doing that, I reduce my chance of such things happening to me.
i don’t know what’s worse, the experience that you had with ebay, or the horribly racist comments on this article.
Not trying to state the obvious but the account from which the bogus bid came from was located inside the U.S. and had positive feedback so restricting the location from where bids were accepted from would not have solved this problem. The real issue is the number of hacked accounts, even a simple search yields several which have been active in the last 48 hours…. and a in a larger search I found over 100.
Kara, the more I investigate this issue the more it has absolutely nothing to do with race and everything to do with both eBay and folks in Nigeria thinking this type of behavior is acceptable. It’s not.
my girlfriend got scammed selling her old laptop on craigslist. she figured it out only after she’d shipped it. fedex would do NOTHING to help her. they even went so far as to tell her, “well, once the package leaves britain, there’s really nothing we can do…” so i guess it’s buyer AND seller beware.
my girlfriend got scammed selling her old laptop on craigslist – those pesky Nigerians. she figured it out only after she’d shipped it. fedex would do NOTHING to help her. they even went so far as to tell her, “well, once the package leaves britain, there’s really nothing we can do…” so i guess it’s buyer AND seller beware.
sorry to have commented twice. this site doesn’t let you delete. i’m a moroon….
I had the EXACT same thing happen to me when I sold a Nintendo Wii around Christmas. The second time I put up my auction I had to put tons of restrictions on it such as requiring immediate paypal payment.
It was totally bogus and I should have put in the time to make Ebay refund me.
Anyone who does not think something is fishy with an email asking to send it to Nigeria is pretty stupid. I feel bad for them, I hate the Nigerians, but they are stupid.
I’m a nice enough guy that besides my knowing this was a scam, I didn’t want to send someone in Africa an NTSC Wii.
Hey Folks,
As RJ says, stop the “fuck ALL Nigerians” comments. I’m a development economist and specialize in corruption. Nigeria is corrupt for one big reason: OIL. Guess who pays for the oil? Americans, through Multinationals that pump it. (Specifically Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Italy’s Agip, and ExxonMobil and Chevron from the U.S. Read the Feb 2007 National Geographic story here:
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0702/feature3/
So — the corruption that has arisen from oil has spread to other areas in society. The 419 scams are a tip o the iceberg, of course, but the government is so corrupt that nothing is done.
Besides the local solutions (being careful on eBay), I suggest that you take out your anger on the US Depts of State and Commerce, since they are more interested in an “ally” and “business partner” than protecting the people of Nigeria and — through them — us.
Hmm. Makes you wonder if Ebay’s gone into the “service” game, and hires a few of these folks to increase their service fee revenue..
YUP this happened to me too. Then ebay tried to make me pay for the fee’s i never did and they sent me to collections. Ill never pay it because it cost me 120$ Screw ebay.
Kal’s comment, “The other thing I hate about Ebay is that unless you have a PayPal business account, you can’t accept PayPal payments.” is inaccurate. You do not need a business account to accept PayPal, so long as that PayPal account of the payer is secured by a bank account rather than a credit card. A business account is required only if the payee wants to accept credit card based payments.
I had the worst time of my life trying to sell a PS3 during the holiday. It took me 7 times to relist it because of Nigerian fraud. I complained to ebay but still had to pay the relisting fees which totaled $145. Everytime I would relist it, the PS3 was losing value. I ended up going in the hole 30 dollars over the deal. Now was that worth sitting outside for 2 nites in 10 degree weather, I think not. Why can’t ebay shut these Nigerians down?
eBay and PayPal wont help you when there is a problem. They have no financial or legal reason to so why expect them to be helpfull.
eBay wont ever clean itself up as long as its making money the way it is.
A Nigerian also tried to scam me on autotrader (I was selling the auto). I received a fake cashier’s check and everything. It was fairly obvious, but I took the check to a bank anyway just to see the response I got. Yep, you guessed it….BOGUS.
I have heard about these naughty Nigerians for a while now, but the worst I heard was about a guy to lost some cash to one of these scams, got real pissed and went to Nigeria to find the culprit. He never came back. True story.
eBay really need to step up their security and user filters. If not, someone should create a better auction site, that will encourage eBay to change.
Dudes, you gotta send your stuff via USPS. If you send a check and you do not receive something back, go down to your local USPS and file a complaint. There are postal investigators who will go and lay the law down with the cheats. If the cheat cheated youout enough, it becomes a federal felony. Three federal felonies, and the person goes to jail for life. No if, ands, or buts. Jail for life. Pound you in the ass prison.
Something for the rotten scum to think about.
Okay, if these Nigerians are so STUPID, how are they outsmarting all these rocket scientist North Americans and scamming them for money and products? Call them any dirty name in the book, but skip on stupid. They’re out-smarting a LOT of folks.
Sellers are not the only ones being screwed on ebay so are the buyers.
Approx 3 weeks ago mass ebay accounts were hacked to sell videos/dvd collections and ebay was very slow in notifying us buyers the accounts had been hacked by a third party.
I know of over 35 people that thought they were paying genuine sellers for goods from ebay and turns out scumbags from China are hacking into ebay accounts and selling goods cheap and quickly take the money and run quick.
They send you pirated copied DVDS all in chinese subtitles etc so there’s no chance in hell ebay or paypal even listen because you receive the goods.
ebay has serous security flaws, don’t use that site.
[...] read more | digg story [...]
HARSH!!!
[...] read more | digg story [...]
I love the ebay complete control department comment; essentially distills to “this is one story from one bad experience on ebay due to the victim’s own inability to control all fraud attempts against on the big ship ebaypop”. Don’t make me laugh. Hundreds of comments down the line; “this happened to me”…”wow this very same thing happened to me” and “omg this happened to me too!” and “I can’t believe the same thing that happened to you happened to me”.
Gee, doesn’t sound like an isolated incident from an ignoraminus to me. Further, ebay markets itself to the lowest common dumb seller denominator; as such, a person selling on ebay should have absolutely no responsibiility whatsoever to be a security expert or fraud spotting sleuth. It disgusts me that anyone (or anything…you’re probably a borg from the eBorg mothership) would suggest otherwise.
Typical blame the victim idiocy; a lone individual using a service has more responsibility to prevent fraud than the service that facilitated the fraud in the first place because of it’s unrestrictive buying and selling practices? You epitomize the reason nobody should buy or sell anything on ebay ever again.
I put a laptop on ebay a few weeks before Christmas for some extra money. I had it set for paypal and US only. A sniper wins my auction who had a reputable amount of legit feedbacks. Next comes the email to ship to Africa for my son along with the fake paypal email with a few hundred extra bucks for my “troubles”. I imediately reported to ebay and second chance offered the next bidder who was the real deal and that transaction went smooth. Meanwhile ebay deletes my ended auction and tells me to file a non paying bidder request. I attempt to do this yet ebay’s own form filling page denys me because my auction doesn’t exist. So I email ebay directly with all my email evidence attatched and ask for a final value fee refund since they double-dipped me for the 2nd chance offer also. Canned response, 10 day waiting period. 13 days later I try to close the dispute yet there is no clickable button to do so. Many emails over the next few weeks to ebay with many canned responses so I give up. My credit card is automaticaly billed but I don’t care, I just will never use ebay again I decide. 2 days ago I get an email from ebay that my final value fee request was granted (almost 2 months later) and my account balance has a credit balance of $17.31 What am I supposed to do with ebay credit? It’s not like I can spend it other than creating more auctions which I probably will never do again.
It is extremely unethical of ebay to allow the scammers to flourish and make the victims jump thru hoops to recoup their fees. Plus they cornhole us with paypal and the 2.5% they steal. Screw ebay and the scammers.
Don’t you get it!
eTHIEVE adores those higher final value fees!
If it weren’t for the thieves in there eSHIT would go broke!
That said, do YOU think they care?
I HATE eTHASH and payUP.com
scammers prey on not just eletronic goods sellers but any seller for that matter. i had a similar experience with a buyer from germany with this email address hipspring1894@aol.com for a second hand designer bag.
The person who contacted me, joern klein, said her husband would pay me via paypal. And he did using another account/email address hipspring8941@yahoo.com
sneaky.
shipping address wasn’t germany… but the philippines. i got duped. shipped the item after payment was made, and stupidly wired money via western union as requested cos he paid me a few hundred bucks extra. after all that was done, payer asked for reversal of payment at Paypal.
Paypal did a reversal of payment without investigating, even though i sent all the transaction details and email correspondence between the buyer and i.
i was piffed that paypal misled me into thinking that there’s dispute resolution. when i disputed the case, paypal just sent me a bunch of rules and regulations. scripted responses. they don’t care.
[...] Another supposedly great web-based service surrendering to those crazy Nigerians and their kin. One look at the comment thread of all sorts of people who’ve have some bad eBay experience, this is a strong undeniable suit. 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. [...]
Ebay should allow the user to choose what market they want to operate in. If a person only ships within the USA it means that in 99% of all cases they are only interested in offers comming from USA IP numbers. Problem solved.
Of course – ebay management are a bunch of idiots who just happened to get lucky. But we all knew that. I hope google, or someone else with brains, sit down a make a system that works.
Do you realize those links take you to your actual account?? I mean, I followed your links and am greeted AS rrittmuller, with complete access to your account. If you care about that, I’d rethink your links. Just trying to help.
The links don’t really go to eBay, they are just page captures of exactly what things looked like before eBay *cleaned* things up. If you try to do something it requires that you log in before it will let you.
PS, thanks for being concerned!
I have always had problems with ebay. And because of them i have a negative rating. I have successfully purchased 2 items from ebay and had 2 gone horribly bad.
1. I was bidding on a foosball table. I won the auction and contacted the person about delivery. He lived in the same exact town as I did so I asked him If i could come pick it up. The shipping coast was a crazy 250 ( more then the item) and i offered to pay him some money to just pick it up. He said no and wanted to ship it(to make a huge markup). The item had to ship to UPS large items facility which was further away from me then this person’s house. I tried to contact ebay to get this negative comment removed. To no avail.
2. The second was I was bidding on Poker Chips. I lost the bid to someone else so i went and bid on another set. Which I won and had successfully delivered to my house. No problems other then the company DHL lost it in transit and it took 3 weeks to get there. Then I was contacted that I was the winning bid on the first item cause the high bidder didn’t pay so he defaulted to me. I said I went and won another bid on the same item and do not need it anymore. So he negative commented me, which i argued with ebay about to no avail again. Now i cannot bid on anything cause i get booted every time for having a -2 score.
OMG, can I relate to your problem. I have recently used eBay to try and sell an iPod and my wife used it to try and sell a notebook computer. Both times, we used buy it now and both times, we had the Nigerian scam attempt to get us. We didn’t budge. I, also had my account hijacked. Someone was trying to sell a car using my eBay account. I will never use Ebay again until they fix their security issues. It doesn’t seem that they are all that concerned, so it will probably be a very long time before I use them again. So, it looks as one of the big NET giants is going to go down in flames unless they fix the problems they are having.
Well A few months ago I was selling a laptop and it sold for $900. The winning bidder told me to send it to Russia. I told him that was fine and I would send it the second the money hit my bank account. A week later the money had gone through so I figured there was no way I could get ripped off, so I sent it. A couple of weeks later I received an email from paypal stating that the money I received was fraudulent and that I had to pay them back. I tried all I could to not have to pay but in the end they told me “We are sorry, Good business practices will help you avoid this in the future” so I ended up having to pay back pay pal and I never saw my laptop again. I tried to contact ebay about it but they never wrote me back. I called the post office and they said it was still in transit. I asked them to put a hold on it, they said “sorry we don’t do that anymore.” I am very dissatisfied with all three business’. I learned the hard way that they don’t back up any of their customers.
Gee, I was thinking of buying stuff on ebay, but after reading the article and all the comments, I’ll pass. Thanks for the info.
I had the same issues trying to sell electronics on eBay. Eventually I listed on ebonza.com and they didn’t have hardly any nigerian scammers. I called to see how they did that, and they said they built a way to identify and block IP blocks frequently used in areas where scammers are highly concentrated. Toronto, Lagos, etc… Anyone know why eBay doesn’t do this? I mean, how much serious business can come from Nigeria and Romania?
Shame on me too for using ebay. The “manure” that happens on ebay while trying to sell stuff is so true that you better take heed. From the end of Nov. until the end of DEC2006 I tried selling 2 PS3 which I had to repost 5 times until I got a legitimate winning bidder. I kept getting my auctions won by people wanting me to send the merchandise to Africa or Argentina and fake Paypal “you’ve got new funds” emails, it was ridiculous. BTW, ebay only credits your listing fees 1 time, after that you have to pay ebay no matter what, and their “customer service” is strickly through email only, so all replys from them take a couple of days to get to you. So, after the dust settled and I paid ebay/paypal fees, I came out of the deals with no profit greater than 10 dollars. I no longer use ebay for anything whatsoever. My consolation was that the 2 PS3 I bought I actually stumbled upon a stack of them when I went to buy a laptop at BB one morning and did not waste my gas and my time hunting those consoles down like a lot of people did to make ebay money.
HAHA!!! Look at this one I had!!
This is an email I sent back to Ebay showing their idiosity!
I had purchased some DVD which turned out to be counterfeit and faulty!
Hi xxxx,
Whilst I appreciate your reply to the issue at hand I feel ebay should
re-assess in their own interests the fraudulant activity from sellers, and
indeed the unclear response you have committed to me:
I quote from your response below:
“Unfortunately as you have already filed through PayPal you will not be
able to claim through eBay’s Standard Purchase Protection Program.”
HOWEVER!
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/tp/isgw-buyer-protection-steps.html
Clearly you can see step 6 obviously preceeds step 7, in essence it
recomends users to go to Paypal first!
And on that you base your response that you cant offer protection to buyers
following your reccomendations.
And paypals response?:
“As you have been refunded for transaction xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx we will not
be able to investigate further.”
I await your response.
xxxx
I had been refunded immediatly by Paypal before they even investigated the issue heres another one I sent them!
=====================================
HERES MORE FROM SAME DISPUTE
I have attempted resolution via Paypal.
I had a refund carried out however (ill cut to the point here) the DVDs I ordered are in breach of copyright they are copies (fairly good at that) on trial (8 season boxset 64 DVDs) from season 1 which contained 8 DVDs only 4 worked. Paypal issued a refund and at sellers request I was to return the DVDs, well the cost of that is €45.
I will not be subject to fraud and therefore I will not send these items back can you help portray this message to the seller?
If he/she wishes to receive the goods the seller can pay.
Can you alternatively put me in contact with someone who can resolve the issue as I dont want these DVDs and I dont want to pay for shipping, anywhere, incidently the goods were marked as location UK they came from China.
Below is a copy of refund email from Paypal.
any other mails etc are available at your request.
=====================================
and more
Protection Services Department
PayPal, an eBay Company
Original Message Follows:
————————
Form Message
customer message: Describe the nature of your complaint: ‘Following very
prompt action from yourselves (paypal) for a refund carried out on April
2xth for ebay item number: xxxxxxxxxx which I thank you for your prompt
action.
It has however come to light that the postage to return this item is
€45 from xxxxxxxx to china as requested by the Seller
xxxxxxxx@xxx.com.
I would like to make it clear that I will not pay for the returning of
the above item (xxxxxxxxxxxx) as I would be at a great loss as a result of
extreme miss-representation on the sellers behalf regarding this item.
If this is not cleared up I can disclose further details regarding this
item/matter.
If you require me to furnish you with further details of the items there
is no problem whatsoever. However make it clear that I will not be
forced to pay without good grounds to do so, as a result of the seller’s
mistake and miss representation.
I hope I have made myself as clear as possible on this matter for now.
I attempted to portray these feelings to the seller via email with no
reply.
Kind Regards,
xxxx
To: eBay Complete Control Dept ABOVE!
Hmm should you be replying to these types of posts? go and help someone getting scammed instead of surfing!
Anyway:
Your quote:
“You say scammers have “complete control” of eBay, and yet your article doesn’t give any credible evidence to this point. No statistics, no investigation into the claim, no test to prove or disprove it”
HIS Post was basically a test it was a Live test!
His statistic is this happend and hes only a light user of ebay as per his statistics!
Credible evidence is this article!
How can HE test he is not ON your server or have access privelages perhaps some of the scammers do!
ALSO:
What this is is one person’s stories of being targeted by scammers
Yes it is….Freedom of speech.
ALSO:
“The reason why eBay doesn’t take it seriously is probably because you revealed to them that you have all knowledge necessary to avoid these scams”
WHAT! scams are possible then? WHY is that! And how can it be avoided they contacted him and did that to his Auction…how…
ALSO:
His refunds were mentioned!
ALSO:
“This is nothing that would even scratch the surface of complete control”
Err when someone can do this to an auction it is complete control of that auction??
is it not?
If they had complete control of ebay then they may request you dye your hair pink and wear wellies into work tomorrow…
Your argurment is flawed!
Have a nice day!
Joe above:
If you have a receipt for the 900 you paid paypal.
“Best Business practise” (whatever that is?) could also state that customers entrust Paypal with their money.
In essence someone elses money/account was used fraudulently then the responsabiity for that money is not yours but Papals…considering the amount I would have that checked out my son! >:I
i.e. if they (paypal) are unable to manage transfers is such a manor deemed secure for the purpose of use then you are not to blame!
Taken from
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html
Regardless of the previous paragraph, if we are found to be liable, our liability to you or to any third party is limited to the greater of (a) the total fees you paid to us in the 12 months prior to the action giving rise to the liability, and (b) $100.
Well basically ebay provide what… a service…a webservice to allow people to buys and SELL so the charge is for the service to sell….
You are the customer….you shouldnt have to pay for a substandard service which prevented you from utilizing the service as expected!.
If they cannot gaurantee a service you shouldnt gaurantee payment for the service
The whole thing needs a facelift! too many people are having bad experiences!
They need to protect their own business I suppose there trying but with regards to some of the above responses Ive given and read they can be too hard on people.
There’s no way eBay can monitor that many auctions for what would appear at first glance to be a legitimate user. I would bet that the rightful account owners simply don’t choose strong passwords, and are, as a result, easily hacked. I vote that letting eBay and PayPal know and seeing what they’ll do about it should come first before slamming a very successful company/idea.
wow.. after reading all this I’m glad i was timid about starting up e-bay/paypal accounts…
I’ll stick to buying stuff at retail outlets
Best way to sell laptop online is with Craigslist not EBay. Also why r u so down on Nigerian Scammers they are just trying to make a living.
all Nigerians are ****** stupid idiots. they burned me out of $ 270 last year
Ebay sucks. So does paypal. I sold a few products on Ebay and got chargebacks from Paypal even though I sent the item out. Anyways two people bought, one person did a charge back and the other guy used someone’s stolen account to buy from me.. anyways when I got payments from him and then the chargeback from the other person.. Paypal closed my account and my balance is at -400. .. Good thing I actually got $300 out of that in time to my Bank.. anyways I know how paypal works.. I reported my CC stolen so they can’t pull anymore funds from my bank account for what I “owe” them..
Won’t be many buyers, but hey – at least they will be legit.
Frankly, I don’t owe them anything. Between paypal and ebay, I think they are helping the scammers. From now on I will be doing the good old “snail mail”..
They try making a living stealing – I dont buy that. I don’t give a crap as to why they do it, I want to be able to use the net free of fear of being scammed. Just the amount of spam is bad enough – that wastes just time. Now they’re taking my money too? No thanks. And hell, slam them down.
[...] Yet Another Reason Why eBay Is A Total Joke Think eBay is safe for sellers? Think again, two items auctioned, both hijacked by Nigerians….further proof that eBay is now nothing but a e-cesspool of scams. Ohh, and any response from eBay? Nope….nothing. (Don’t even get me started!) (tags: ebay) [...]
I had the same thing happen to me when I tried to sell a digital camera. I guess these things have been happening so often now that I had no problem getting my fees refunded from ebay. The second time I listed it I got a legitimate buyer and the transaction went so smoothly, it was like a dream.
[...] or auctioning on eBay. Hopefully this will help you be more aware of what lurks beyond the window. See for yourself @ The Daily Techno-Babble Socially Bookmark eBay – Just dropping the ball.. or watching it roll [...]
I sold a Car stereo on eBay last year. The eBay part was fine, the paypal part was not. I received payment no problem and sent out the stereo by courier, the buyer specifically didnt want insurance to keep the cost down, this ment that the parcel was not tracked to the point of delivery, only to the first depot.
The buyer put in a claim for non-delivery because he claimed it was never delivered, even though i had proof of postage paypal reversed the payment. Thankfully my account was empty at the time and i cancelled my card so they could take no money from me. Quite simply they never gave me the chance to put my side of the story to them.
I did phone them, but they were not helpful, they just said i had to provide proof of delivery, proof of postage was not good enough, even though i had paypal and ebay emails top prove the service the buyer wanted. If the buyer agreed to no insurance then why wasnt that good enough for paypal?
It’s a bitter’n’sad reality to read here all the f-words addressed to poor Nigerians who were never trained in good manners and clean business. Who is looser and who won in this situation? I feel that as an artist and a seller of art originals on eBay I can only fall when people are loosing the confidence in this auction server. I have also received a false check for 5.000 EUR (btw.from Ireland!) but did not stop selling. My last transaction failed on my ignorance of American delivery conditions (only UPC and FedEx could deliver my parcel having the longest dimension longer than 105cm but they are 10x more expensive than the normal post). But we became friends with my potential buyer from Minnesota.
I’d be happy if you all will not loose the trust in good people. I think that eBay policy is good to protect us. Best wishes and kind regards. Jan from the Czech Republic
[...] is being overrun by scammers. Since eBay doesn’t allow auctioneers to filter bidders by feedback, scammers are making [...]
The Romanians are just as bad on eBay. They steal text and photos from expired listings and run scam auctions. They no longer ask for Western Union transfers, because (after 6 years) people are finally getting smarter, so instead they use phished bank accounts and ask for wire transfers.
I wrote to a Hungarian bank when a Romanian was trying to scam a John Deere and transfer funds there. They told me to “file a report with local police and have them contact us.” So they won’t investigate a hijacked account unless there’s a police report.
thescambaiter.com has hundreds of hilarious reverse-scam stories and audio too.
Check it out.
i want to be selling ipods on the internet
I haven’t sold on ebay for years.
Too much crap now.
I’m even thinking of not buying anymore. Some sellers have multiple accounts and bid on their own items just to raise the bids.
Think so too.
Would buy or sell anything at ebay.
To much crap there.
I used to sell on ebay but, it is junk now. It is such a hassle and a lot of scams go on. Just like DocZayus said, there are some people who bid on their items to raise them.
IMO, such things are the “luck” of some kind: some people getting scammed by Romanians, Nigerians, Ukrainians, etc, while many people are buying and selling for years without any problem.
P.S.
Currently I’m writing an article for my about eBay fraud. I definitely will add a link to this post.
hey Rob,
I have also had the same problem w/ these stupid ******* Nigerians and I am getting so pissed off w/ this that I want to drop a bomb on Nigeria. Sorry, just had to get that anger out, wasn’t serious . . . yet. What I wanted to know was how you contacted ebay and gott he refunds, like how you got an actual person to talk to you via ebay. All I get are those stupid atorepsonse emails that dont help one bit nor do they have anytihng to do with my question half the time. Thanks again, can’t wai to make a legitimate sale, Tony.
my mom uses ebay for boyd’s bears and jewelery, she actually has a great feedback record. she just goes to her specific places on the site. i can’t remember the last time i even logged in, much less bought/sold anything.
I tried selling a PSP on ebay 4 times and just gave up. Ebay really sucks.
I just had this happen today but over craigslist. My friend was selling his laptop and he needed to have me handle the money since he did not have a working paypal. I sent the money request off and then got a fake paypal email saying the payment was in for the item “A Laptop” and that I was to ship to Nigeria. As soon as I saw Nigeria I pulled the plug and refunded the money that was still in processing. I then got another paypal saying I had received a second payment. I went ahead and sent these both to paypals automated fraud system at spoof@paypal.com and both came back as scams. I went ahead and told the seller this and am waiting back a response. Oh the best part. ITS THE SAME PERSON AS HERE. The address they are using is below. Its all going to the same place, just some small variations in the address. My friend was rather happy that I knew what I was doing since he was ready to ship out the laptop. Remember, send all paypal emails to spoof@paypal.com if you are unsure of their origin. Also look for the use of “reply-to” addresses which in my case was a completely different address.
Address Scammer Used.
Name: Adeoye Ayodeji
Address: No 32 Adeyinka Morgan Street Off Liberty Road Oke Ado
City: Ibadan
State: Oyo State
Zipcode: 23402
Country: Nigeria
OMG! if i didn’t read this, i would have fallen for it. UGH!!! I was going to ship it out today and had some doubts about it. the Address i need to send it out to is:
Olatunj Martins
No. 6, Afani Layout Challge Ibadan
Ibadan, Oyo State, 23402
Nigera
I wanted to double check it and THANK GOODNESS I SAW THIS SITE!!!! I would have fallen it too… they said the same thing about the shipping and paypal crap.. ugh… THANKS FOR SAVING MY ASS!!!
Aha! I have had numerous listings “cancelled” while I was bidding to buy. I always wondered how/why the item was suddenly delisted without allowing the auction to complete. Apparently the problem of hackers using stolen ebay user accounts is too common.