Ebay scams Payments Firstly I will go through the payment methods so that they can be understood, most scams involve an unsafe payment method and the most important key to not getting caught out is to use the safest payment method because a scammer is unlikely to accept that as their method of being paid, but there are exceptions. Paypal with £500 buyer protection - This is by far the safest method of paying for goods up to £500. The seller agrees to a contract with paypal which allows paypal to take money from the sellers bank account for 45 days from the date they were paid. If the buyer does not receive the goods or they receive the goods but they are not as described then they can start a paypal dispute. The money will be held by paypal until the dispute is resolved. If the dispute is "Item not received", the seller has to give paypal a tracking number which shows that the goods have been delivered to the buyer and sent from the sender. If they cannot do this then the buyer is rewarded a full refund of their money they paid the seller, this includes postage, there is no charge to the buyer. If the buyer refuses delivery, then that will count as not being received, an annoying thing done by someone who no longer wants the goods is to order something that costs a lot to post, start a dispute for not received then refuse the delivery. If the item is received by the buyer but is not as it was described in the listing on ebay then the buyer starts a dispute and gives their side of the story and the seller gives theirs, if paypal find in the buyers favour, the buyer will have to send the item back by a trackable means such as recorded delivery, the buyer only has to prove that they have sent it back, so if the seller refuses delivery the buyer will still win the dispute. If the buyer claims they were sold a fake item like say, a fake pair of designer jeans, they will have to get a signed letter from a designer jeans shop confirming they are fake and fax it to paypal. But if they simply lied and said the jeans have huge holes in them or the package was just empty then paypal would take the buyers word for it and the buyer would win. The item not as described dispute can only be done if the item was bought from ebay, a good reason not to do deals with strangers outside of ebay because then all they need is a tracking number to prove they have delivered the goods. If the buyer wins they get a full refund including postage and there is no cost to the buyer except the cost of returning the goods to the seller. Exceptions Non tangible goods - Mostly goods that are sent by email, or something like a phone call where delivery cannot be proved by a tracking number. Beware of something like an ipod that is listed in the information category. Heavy expensive items that can"t be sent through the post like cars and vans Paypal with £150 buyer protection - Same as above but the buyer is only guaranteed to get £150. Bank transfer - Money is transferred from the buyers account to the sellers account and can be traced as being paid. There is no protection when paying by bank transfer, so if the seller doesn"t send the goods then you cannot get your money back. The police can track a scammer down if you have paid by bank transfer, but the scammer may be using someone to do their dirty work, or may have stolen someone else"s identity. Also if you have sent the money abroad to a country like Pakistan or China then the police will not be keen to help you and if they do it is unlikely you will see your money again. Cheque - The same as bank transfer except with a cheque you can say that you did not send the cheque and it was fraudulent, so a cheque can sometimes be reversed after it has cleared if you are prepared to lie. If you do that to an honest person who hadn"t ripped you off, then they will dispute it and the cheque will have your signature on it, a scammer would not be so keen to dispute the bounced cheque. Postal order - Totally unsafe, this is almost the same as sending cash to the seller, it cannot be easily proved that the seller has received money from you. Crossed postal order - Safer because the postal order has to be paid into a bank account, so the buyer has proof that they have paid the seller as long as the buyer keeps their receipt Cash through post - unsafe, the seller could just say you never paid them Western union - Western union is for friends or family to send money to you if you are in trouble abroad, you should only send money by western union if you 100% trust the recipient. The payment can be picked up at any office in the country you are sending it to by the person who you give the money transfer control number. It is totally unsafe as you do not have a clue as to who picks up the money, if they don"t send the goods the scammer cannot be traced. Buyer scams The Nigerian phone buying scam This is very simple, a Nigerian will create an account on ebay with a simple yahoo email address, the yahoo email address is accepted by ebay as a safe email address for some reason so no credit card is needed to set up the account. The Nigerian then bids on as many expensive items as they can winning every auction that they bid on. They will then contact the seller of each auction and offer to pay by western union or some other payment method. They may ask if they can pay an extra £1000 and get cash back too. The seller agrees to sell the phone and the Nigerian sends a fake email pretending to be from western union or whatever payment method they used saying that the payment has been sent and to pick it up from their nearest western union office, a fake money transfer control number is given to make it look genuine. The seller then sends the phone off to the Nigerian and goes to pick up his money, when they get to the office and give the number the clerk will not find any record of it. How to protect against this scam Even if you know the scam it is annoying having them win your auction and having to pay the listing fees and then receive an email in really bad English asking to send the phone to Nigeria. To stop them bidding on your auction, when you list a mobile phone or other expensive item, go to preferences in my ebay and set buyer requirements to not allow buyers who do not have a credit card on file, then set the feedback requirement to about 5. Or you could allow buyers with paypal accounts only. You can get some revenge with this scam on a scammer who has ruined your auction, it will cost a bit of money, but not as much as it will cost them. Agree to send the goods and send them a package of the same weight and size but with a useless item in, don"t send anything like dead animals because it will get stopped by customs, just send a useless item. Fill out the customs form and tick the box that says other and fill in the price they paid, or higher. They will have to pay a percentage of the price they paid as import tax, in the uk the import tax is 17.5% so if a £300 phone was sent to the uk the import tax would cost £52.50 so it would be no small price for them to pay. Make sure you don"t fill in a price that is too high else they will just refuse it. Paypal item not received scam Very simple, the buyer buys an item that is sent by a non trackable posting method and decides that they do not feel like paying, but still want the goods, so they start a paypal dispute to say that they have not received the goods. The trouble with this is that you don"t know if they are scamming or telling the truth because goods go missing in the post too. The buyer of course will win the paypal dispute because you do not have tracking. How to protect against this scam You cannot protect yourself against this scam unless you send everything by recorded, and then you could be a victim of the not as described scam. The way to deal with it is to treat the buyer as if they are telling the truth every time and claim compensation from the postal service. If they keep doing it the postal service will blacklist them and investigate them. Paypal item not as described scam The buyer buys an expensive item such as a laptop and starts a paypal dispute saying that the item has arrived but it was just a brick in a briefcase. The buyer will win the dispute and be asked to return the brick to the seller, they will replace the laptop with a brick and return it to the seller. how to protect against this scam As before treat this as if the buyer is telling the truth and claim compensation from the postal service, there is no reason not to believe the buyer has received a brick and the laptop was stolen in the post. Always make sure the item is covered with insurance if it is expensive. Bounced cheque scam The buyer sends a cheque that is a photocopy or printout that will bounce, or they have got hold of someone else"s chequebook. The buyer can also claim the cheque was stolen after it has cleared and the payment will be reversed, if they do this then sue the buyer, you will very likely win without it even going to court unless the buyer can prove that they had been scammed by you, but even if they had they still lied. They will then have to pay you both the money and your legal expenses. How to defend against this kind of scam Check the buyers feedback to see if they have bought a lot of goods and the payments have cleared. Also check that the signed name matches the name on the address, in case the chequebook is stolen. Don"t send expensive goods off until the cheque has cleared Bounced cheque for collected goods scam The buyer has an account with false details that they created in an internet cafe. They bid on a car miles away from where they live and go to collect the car or some other high priced item, they have a stolen chequebook or fake cheques and they turn up at the sellers house and offer to pay by cheque, if the seller accepts the cheque will bounce straight away and the buyer gets a free car, the seller will have no idea who it was that ripped them off. So only accept cash for goods when the buyer collects. Hijacked ebay and paypal buying account A hijacked account is an account that has had the username and password obtained from the owner by corrupted hackers and then sold on to a scammer on the black market. The accounts are stolen by phishing emails, these emails appear to come from ebay, but they are not, when the intended victim clicks on them they are taken to a fake ebay or paypal sign in page and they type in their password, the page then steels their username and password and uses them to log them into the real ebay or paypal site, they are unaware that they have given away their details. The scammer who has paid top money for buying an account with both the ebay and paypal passwords now has the buyers identity, their feedback and their money. They change the password, locking the account holder out and then change the address to a temporary lodgings or somewhere where they can collect the goods from and move on without leaving a trail. Now that they have changed the address the address is unconfirmed, the address being unconfirmed is important because it means that if a seller sends goods to the buyer the payment is no longer eligible for seller protection, so if it is reversed the seller will loose their money, and the payment will be reversed. The scammer with his new hijacked account goes on a shopping spree buying mobile phones laptops diamond rings etc., everything they have always wanted as long as the original member has the money in their bank. The sellers who are unaware are delighted to sell their goods and package them and get ready to send them off ASAP, some also leaving positive feedback for receiving payment, making the buyer look even better. The scammer has to be careful though because paypal may freeze the account if his buying is too unreal. The original buyer comes home eventually, could be days or weeks later and looks at their email and sees that they have won loads of items and received paypal payment receipts. They try and log into ebay but cannot because they have been locked out and they panic, but will eventually find out how to deal with it and contact live help on ebay. Ebay will restore the account to how it was and get the original owner to change the password. Then the buyer will deal with the paypal side of things, all the money that was spent by the scammer will be clawed back from every seller. How to protect against phishing emails If you do have your account hijacked then go to ebay live help as soon as possible, don"t email ebay go to ebay live help 1. If you receive an email from ebay or paypal that has a link in it, don"t click the link unless you are sure it is not a spoof email. If you get a question sent through ebay, don"t click reply from the email, log onto ebay and look in my messages and reply to it from there. 2. Upgrade to internet explorer 7 and turn on phish filter. With fish filter people who can spot spoof sites report them to Microsoft, the site is then flagged and is checked by Microsoft, if it is found to be a phishing website then it is flagged as a phishing site and explorer will not load it. 3. Use auto fill to fill in your username and password, when you use auto fill the real ebay site is recognised and the auto fill fills in your username and password, if it is a fake the auto fill doesn"t work, so you can tell it is a fake site. 4. There are lots of websites with information about phishing and other ways to protect yourself if you are worried about phishing then you can look these up and read more about it. 5. Make sure you have a virus killer, anti spy ware, anti malware, anti Trojan software and firewall software installed. They protect against other methods of getting your passwords that hackers might use. How to protect against fraudulent paypal payments Scammers will often use their stolen accounts to buy high priced items. So when you sell a high priced item like a mobile phone or ipod, check the payment is from a confirmed address, it will say so in the paypal email when you receive it whether the address is confirmed or not. This means that the paypal address which is verified matches the ebay address where the goods are being delivered. If it is not ask the buyer to get their address confirmed, this will just take a phone call in the uk, but in some countries the addresses cannot be confirmed. Another way is to search on what the buyer has bought using advanced search. In the top right corner, click advanced search and search "items by bidder" check the box that says completed items and paste the suspects name into the box and search. If they have bought loads of high priced items and won every auction then they are a prime suspect, especially if the country where the item is being shipped to is somewhere like Nigeria where scams are common. If you are still unsure you can wait for a while before sending the goods. The victim of the hijack will usually find out what"s going on and phone paypal in the first few days and the payment will be reversed. Most of the time it is reversed within the first few days, but payments have been known to be reversed months later. If you want to be 100% certain, view the paypal payment in paypal and underneath the price details it will say whether the payment is eligible for seller protection, if it is eligible and the payment is reversed, then paypal will pay you compensation for the reversed payment up to about £3000, may be more or less now. Seller scams The Police Auction E-book scam This is the safest scam for the seller because it is not illegal, although sellers have had their accounts suspended from ebay for doing it. There are lots of different versions, but the one explained here is the most effective. The seller is selling a police auction e-book in the information category, the item is described in the description as a police auction e-book in huge capital letters, and in the title it also explains that the item is an e-book, but they put something like "IPOD NANO 4GB 90% OFF @ POLICE AUCTION E-BOOK" with a picture of an ipod nano and a buy it now price of £14.99. The payment method is paypal and immediate payment is required. The buyer who is looking for an ipod nano 4gb types in ipod nano 4gb they see genuine auctions for the ipod nano with the pictures next to them and then they scan for the best bargain and come across one for £14.99. They feel they have got to get in there quick, so without reading anything, they click on the link and click buy it now and are asked to pay immediately. They pay because they feel they must get it before anyone else does. Because they have bought intangible goods, they are not covered by paypal so unless the seller refunds their money, they have lost it. The buyer most of the time feels embarrassed when they read the description and they see that even the title says its an e-book and leaves positive feedback making out that they knew what it was and wanted the e-book. Others feel like they were caught fair and square and leave a positive or neutral. For those that know they"ve been had and are not going to accept it the worse they can do is leave a negative. They don"t even have the sellers address because everything is done through paypal. Even those that do want to leave negative mostly don"t because they will get one back, so the seller ends up getting quite good feedback. One seller was and probably still is making over £20,000 a month with this scam, each time getting suspended and coming back with new accounts. How to not get caught by this scam Read the description and check out the sellers feedback etc. The lame sentence in description scam The sellers of these scams are not very bright and end up going to prison. An expensive item is listed like a mobile phone or laptop. Hidden within the description in tiny letters are the words "you are bidding on a photo of this item", the seller then sends the buyer a photograph by email to the winning bidder. How to avoid this scam If you are buying an expensive item then make sure the seller has buyer protection, or the seller lives close by so you can go and see the goods and pay them cash and collect them. Otherwise read the description very carefully, other lame sentences include "you are bidding on the instructions" or "you are bidding on a link on where to buy this item". If you do get caught by this scam, report the seller to the police. The buying off ebay scam The buyer asks the seller a question about an item, the seller offers to sell the item at a very good price outside of ebay. The buyer agrees and is sent a paypal invoice. The buyer pays and the seller sends a pile of rubbish by recorded delivery, the buyer cannot claim that the item is not as described because they bought it outside ebay. How to avoid this scam Don"t buy outside of ebay unless you know and trust the seller. The second chance offer scam The scammer looks around ebay for high priced auction items that have sold and sets up a new account with a name similar to the seller, the account has a yahoo email address and of course false contact details. The scammer contacts the person who lost the auction and offers a second chance offer pretending to be the original seller. The buyer is unaware that it is a different ebay member and agrees to pay usually by western union. How to avoid this scam Check the second chance offer is genuine and from the same seller and don"t pay with western union ever. Shill bidding The seller creates another account on ebay, if they are smart they will register the account in a different town with a false address, but usually the shilling seller is not very smart and the shilling accounts can easily be spotted. The seller uses these accounts to bid on their own auctions and up the price. How to avoid this scam Check that the seller doesn"t shill. Look through their other auctions and completed auctions to see if there is a common bidder that bids on all their stuff. If you suspect someone then use the advanced search feature to search items bid on by that buyer and check the completed listings box. If they are a blatant shill bidder, then the shilling account will show as bidding on lots of different goods from just one seller and rarely winning. If you suspect someone then report them to ebay, ebay can check if the shilling account was created from the same computer, if it is then they both get banned On expensive items the bidders ID is hidden to protect from the second chance offer scam, but you can still work out from the statistics if they are shill bidding or not. Ebay might soon hide the ID in lower priced auctions. The less blatant shill bidding sellers keep the bidders ID private in their auctions and register the id on different computer in different towns and keep creating new shilling accounts. There are some huge shill bidding rings, big groups of sellers that use lots of ids to shill bid on each others auctions, once you become good at spotting shill bidders you can spot these too. If you come across an auction where the bidding ID is kept private and there is no good reason for the bidder to be kept private, then assume it is being shilled. The cubic zirconia diamond ring scam The scammer buys some solid gold cubic zirconia rings and sells them on as natural diamond rings claiming the diamonds are VVS1 quality. Cubic zirconia is flawless and cannot be told apart from diamonds except with a diamond tester so the buyer is unaware. Cubic zirconia is very cheap so the profits made by this scam are really high, if the buyer does complain the seller apologises and refunds the buyer avoiding negative feedback. How to avoid this scam If you are someone that buys a lot of diamond jewellery it is worth buying a diamond tester, an electronic diamond tester costs around £50 and can detect cubic zirconia with ease. And if you do find the ring to be cubic zirconia, leave negative feedback. Gemstone scams Most natural gemstones can be synthetically made, synthetic gemstones are called lab gemstones. Most lab gemstones can be bought very cheaply and will be a perfect example of its natural counterpart, usually flawless clarity. A flawless natural gemstone such as sapphire will sell for a lot of money, but if it is lab created it will sell for hardly anything. The scam is to sell the lab created gemstones as natural, this is a bad scam because the synthetic stones are very hard and sometimes impossible to tell apart from natural stone. There are many other gemstone scams, such as selling one type of gemstone as another etc. How to avoid this scam Read up on gemstones, do not buy a gemstone unless it comes from a reliable source or you know enough to trust your decision. Fakes and counterfeits A seller of fakes, is not always an evil scamming person. It could be someone that has spent a large amount of money on what they thought was the genuine product and is selling them on believing them to be genuine. After a while they will get contacted by someone who tells them the item is a fake, but they turn to the supplier who is experienced at convincing people they are genuine and will keep the seller convinced that they are selling the genuine article as long as possible. Sometimes the seller will see how much money they are making from the product and spend all their money buying more. By the time they have realise they are selling fakes it is too late. They have sold thousands of pounds worth and they feel they might as well carry on until they have sold the last lot and then not buy anymore and to be more careful in the future. However, some sellers carry on selling the fakes once they are corrupted by the money they make and have huge feedback scores from selling nothing but fakes. Fakes can range from anything from designer goods and brand name electronics, to razor blades and camera cases. Even firmware that is used in electronics is sometimes pirated firmware also the driver discs, pirate software too. Fakes are a big thing on ebay, nearly every brand name memory card sold on ebay is a fake and most of the sellers are not even aware they are selling fakes because they are advertised so blatantly on irresponsible wholesale directory websites. The manufacturers of these items are said to be the most evil people in the world, they use child slave labourers to produce the goods, they also deal in drugs, weapons, prostitution, people trafficking and fraud and all the money goes to buy weapons for terrorist organisations. A good reason not to be caught out. How to avoid buying fakes for sellers It is usually ok to buy wholesale brand name products from suppliers in the uk, but be sure to check out the wholesalers reputation, don"t just buy from them because they are in the uk, they might just be someone trying to offload their fakes they bought. Do not trust wholesale directories to verify the wholesalers that advertise on their site, there are some good wholesale directories that verify websites carefully, but others are happy to let any scammer advertise with them, even scammers that will just keep the money and send no goods. Always suspect that the goods may be fake if they are brand named goods, even cheap brand name goods and spare parts are faked. How to avoid buyer fakes for buyers Check the sellers feedback, look for neutrals and negatives that suggest that the seller is selling fakes. Remember most people will not be fooled by the fake and will leave positive feedback because of the cheap price. Others will know they are buying fakes and are happy to buy them, the seller will also give refunds to those that discover the item is a fake, so they get away without getting any negative feedback. Because of all these things, you will only have a few negs or neutrals to help you. This is why if you do find out you have bought a fake, always leave a neg, even if they do refund you. You can also report them to trading standards, trading standards might ask for the goods to be destroyed. If you start a paypal dispute and the goods need to be destroyed, you might be able give them the tracking number for the place where the goods are destroyed, they allow this if the goods are proved to be fake. The hijacked seller account scam As I described earlier a hijacked account is an account that has had the username and password obtained from the owner by corrupted hackers and then sold on to a scammer on the black market. The accounts are stolen by phishing emails, these emails appear to come from ebay, but they are not, when the intended victim clicks on them they are taken to a fake ebay or paypal sign in page and they type in their password, the page then steels their username and password and uses them to log them into the real ebay or paypal site, they are unaware that they have given away their details. The scammer who has bought a hijacked seller account gets to list non existent goods using the sellers good name. They will usually list things such as mobile phones and laptops, stuff that sells quickly and for a lot. The scammer is usually limited in some way, like they will not be able to take paypal payments or they will not have access to the sellers emails so cannot deal with the orders, so they may have something in the description saying to contact them on their new email address, where they will do the deal. The scammers listings are usually copied from other sellers accounts, you may have heard that the scammers will use stock photos, but this isn"t so, most of the time they use real photos because they have copied them from other sellers or they have taken the photos themselves in shops. The victim will be locked out of their own account and will receive emails telling them that their mobile phones and laptops have been listed on ebay. By the time they find out how to deal with it, many will have been scammed. It is not nice to be the owner of a hijacked selling account because the scammer will leave the address as it is, the people who have been ripped off may turn up on the doorstep of the owner of that hijacked account. So it is important to know about avoiding having your account hijacked. How to not be scammed by a hijacked account scammer The hijacker may or may not have paypal as the payment method, but will not be able to accept it. When you go to checkout they will say that their paypal isn"t working and please could you pay by bank transfer or western union, if they do don"t pay. Only pay by paypal with buyer protection for expensive goods, in fact always use paypal it is easier quicker and safer. You can spot a hijacked account sometimes by looking at the goods they are selling compared to what they have feedback for selling. If they have feedback for selling key rings and pens, then suddenly they are selling loads of brand new laptops ipods and mobile phones then it is very suspicious. How to avoid having your account hijacked. If you do have your account hijacked then go to ebay live help as soon as possible, don"t email ebay go to ebay live help 1. If you receive an email from ebay or paypal that has a link in it, don"t click the link unless you are sure it is not a spoof email. If you get a question sent through ebay, don"t click reply from the email, log onto ebay and look in my messages and reply to it from there. 2. Upgrade to internet explorer 7 and turn on phish filter. With fish filter people who can spot spoof sites report them to Microsoft, the site is then flagged and is checked by Microsoft, if it is found to be a phishing website then it is flagged as a phishing site and explorer will not load it. 3. Use auto fill to fill in your username and password, when you use auto fill the real ebay site is recognised and the auto fill fills in your username and password, if it is a fake the auto fill doesn"t work, so you can tell it is a fake site. 4. There are lots of websites with information about phishing and other ways to protect yourself if you are worried about phishing then you can look these up and read more about it. 5. Make sure you have a virus killer, anti spy ware, anti malware, anti Trojan software and firewall software installed. They protect against other methods of getting your passwords that hackers might use. The blatant non existent goods scam A seller sets up an account and lists goods they don"t have, expensive things like mobile phones and laptops. You win the auction pay and they keep the money and don"t send the goods. How to avoid being blatantly scammed Do not buy expensive to good to be true goods from sellers with low feedback. Only pay for expensive goods if they have paypal buyer protection, or if you can collect the goods and pay in cash. The payment in advance scam The seller advertises goods that are to be released at a later date and promises to ship the goods to you when they are released. Items such as games consoles and concert tickets are among the favourites. The buyer pays the seller by any method and the seller happily takes the money. The buyer waits and never receives their goods, the seller is long gone and it is passed the date to start a paypal dispute and the seller will probably want to be paid by postal order or bank transfer anyway. How to not get caught out Only buy items that you will receive within the 45 day paypal dispute period and only if they have buyer protection. If the seller seems reputable, contact them and ask if they accept credit card, if so pay with a credit card. Miss describing goods There is a lot of money to be made from mis describing goods. Examples Describing an item as antique and giving a false story of its history, for example, selling a screw and saying it is from the shipwrecked titanic. Selling electronic items without their packaging and stating the specifications as much higher than what they are. The buyer may be unaware that they are using a slower device. For example a seller gets a 3mp camera and takes it out of its packaging and scrapes off any labels saying 3mp, they then sell it as 8mp, the buyer may not notice that the quality is lower because they may be blinded by the belief it is very high resolution. Selling jewellery with lab created gemstones as natural gemstone jewellery - see the earlier description of this. How to not get caught Just be aware that not everyone is honest, if someone is selling Britney Spears knickers (not that you would buy them) then consider the possibility that they may not be telling the truth. When you get the goods be sure that they are exactly what was advertised before leaving feedback, and pay with paypal to cover your back if they do turn out to be not as described. Misleading titles lots of people think it is acceptable to use a misleading title, it isn"t and they will lose a paypal dispute if they are using this. An example would be to list a ring as a gold diamond ring and then in the description put that it is gold plated and simulated diamond. How to not get caught Read the description to make sure that it matches the title and pay with paypal just in case the true description is well hidden. Seller not wanting to sell The sellers item sells for less than what they wanted, but they don"t want a negative from the buyer so they tell the buyer they have sent the goods. The goods never turn up and the seller claims they must be lost in the post and promptly gives the buyer a refund. The buyer sympathises with the seller and is happy to be refunded, so leaves positive feedback. How to not get caught If you win an item at a really good price then it would be worth paying for recorded or special delivery if it is expensive. Always ask the seller to send it by recorded delivery and offer to pay more than what it costs even if it is not an option. If they are honest then there is no reason why they wouldn"t send it by recorded delivery, it will be harder for them to say it was lost if they refuse to send it by recorded delivery. So if after refusing to send it by recorded delivery the item gets lost, then it is quite obvious what has happened and you can leave feedback to reflect that. You can also report them as a non performing seller. The real goods shipped scam The seller lists ipods laptops and mobile phones on ebay with no reserve, the seller offers uncrossed postal order only as the payment method, but does have the goods and has bought them from a legitimate wholesaler. The seller lists about 200 of these high priced items that take a while to be shipped, so they get feedback which says "Amazing bargain, took a while shipping but got here". People will see the good feedback and contact the buyers to check out whether it is for real and they will report back that it is, then trust this seller and bid themselves. The seller will be getting almost the normal selling prices for these items that they are selling for 99p with no reserve. The seller is using a business post address or temporary lodgings so the payment address cannot be traced to their real address or who they are. When the seller has sold say 150 legitimate items, they then start listing 1000"s of items that don"t exist at no reserve, there are so many different types of items that all 1000 auctions will finish in about 2 weeks. Because of the feedback saying "took a while to get here" nobody will worry. The seller will cash the postal orders and move on, leaving thousands of people with no money and no goods. They can be traced by their ebay account, but this info could be stolen bank details that they have used to set up the seller account. How to not get caught by this scam You have to ask yourself why someone would not be accepting paypal, or even cheques or bank transfers for expensive items when they will be missing out on a lot of customers who will want protection for high value goods. It may be because they don"t want to be traced, so the goods are stolen or there is some kind of scam. You could get lucky and get a bargain with this type of scam, but its not worth the risk because it could also be a seller selling stolen goods. Cheap goods scam The seller quickly builds up a reputation selling goods on ebay from a supplier, the goods are all for £2 and they are selling them at half wholesale price. When they run out of goods to sell, instead of stopping sales they switch to postal order as their payment method and list £1000"s worth of cheap goods. People buy them at a fast rate and the seller just keeps the money and sends nothing. The seller thinks that because it is a small amount that the buyers will not bother chasing it up and the police won"t want to know, but it isn"t so. How to avoid this scam Make sure the seller has buyer protection. And if you do get caught by one of them, contact other customers and get together and report them to the police. mugging scam The seller is either using a hijacked account, or they just need money desperately. They list a car or other expensive item on ebay, when the buyer turns up to pay for the car in cash they are robbed, sometimes at gunpoint or even badly beaten up by a group of thugs. The location that that you go to collect the car obviously isn"t the sellers house, it is just a chosen location that is out of sight of the public. How to avoid this Always visit the seller to view the goods before you agree to buy. If they know that you are coming to view the goods then they will know that you aren"t bringing any cash. If they do not allow you to see the goods before bidding or buying then don"t bid at all, if they allow you to visit then you can make up your mind about whether you can trust them or not, they are not going to rob you when you have turned up with no cash. How to check out the sellers feedback Checking the sellers feedback is quite important, even if you are protected by paypal you can still get a lot of hassle and end up with abuse and negative feedback just from buying from the wrong person. The first thing to look at is the feedback score and the percentage. If the score is high, say 5000 and the percentage is good, say over 99.5% then it is likely they can be trusted, but a good seller can have a lot of unfair negatives, it is just the luck of the draw. Next is to read the comments, don"t just read the negatives, read the neutrals as well and look for follow-ups to positives, these can sometimes be revealing. Like if someone leaves a positive and then underneath they have left a follow up to say the seller refused to honour warranty. When reading the negatives, try and decide who was in the right. A buyer is meant to give the seller a chance to put things right, a good seller is one that will replace or refund faulty goods, it is not fair for the buyer to leave negative because the goods were faulty without giving the seller a chance to put things right, other negatives could be retaliatory from buyers that haven"t paid. And some are just downright unfair, like the buyer that didn"t like the item that they bought even though they chose it, or the buyer that bids high and then leaves negative because of the high price, or the buyer who"s country the seller won"t ship to. If you check a sellers feedback and they have a negative that says that the seller didn"t send goods and didn"t contact the buyer, check out other negatives see if there are others that say the same thing, if they do then that is a seller who doesn"t really care about their customers. By reading all the negatives and neutrals you can get a picture of what the seller is like and whether or not they deserve your business. Check the feedback the seller has left for others and look for signs of abuse, a seller that can turn nasty is one you don"t need when things go wrong. There are lots of sellers that do not leave feedback until the buyer has left feedback for them. This is ok if the seller is an honest one, but if they are not they will leave you a negative if you leave it for them no matter what. Because of this some buyers do not want to leave anyone a negative unless they have already received positive from the seller. This is unfair for the seller that leaves feedback first, so they change to leaving it second. You may think that a negative feedback as a buyer will affect you as a seller, but most people are sensible enough to read the comments and see that it was a retaliatory negative. If you don"t want to get an unfair retaliatory negative that may affect your selling, create 2 accounts. Create 1 account as your selling account and another for buying, now when you buy you can leave as many negs as you want and you won"t have to worry about it ruining the feedback of your selling account. Retaliatory negatives as a buyer is probably a good thing, sellers will not refuse to sell to buyers, the big sellers don"t even see the buyers feedback until they have won because they don"t have time to check it, and even if they did they would not want to turn down business. If they see a buyer has lots of retaliatory negs, then they will not want to upset that buyer and give them the best service. So you can see, retaliatory negatives for your buyer account is a good thing. Checklist of not getting caught As you can see, in most cases the scammer does not accept paypal with buyer protection. Some sellers cannot offer buyer protection because they have not received enough feedback or have not verified themselves in paypal. So to be fair to these sellers you could pay with paypal that is backed up by a credit card, this way if they withdraw their money and there is a problem you can do a chargeback against paypal. But if the seller is selling high priced goods and has less than 10 feedback then it would be less hassle to avoid them if you can get the item elsewhere. 1. Check the seller offers paypal with buyer protection |
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