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:
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.