eBay scam

just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone here who uses ebay:

my husband got an email from "ebay" yesterday, looking like a message from a seller, saying something like "make up your mind if you're going to pay or not". he was pretty sure he hadn't forgotten to pay for an auction he'd won, but clicked on the respond button to find out what item it was for. it took to him to the ebay sign-in, but just before he was about to type in his details he realised that on his work computer they should have auto-filled.

the scam email is EXTREMELY authentic-looking, and the email address they're using is "mem✧✧✧@e✧✧✧.c✧✧" so it really is convincing. the other way (which my husband didn't notice at the time) of telling it's a scam is that the email was addressed to him by name, rather than by his ebay user name.

damn, that should member (at) ebay dot com

Thanks! Pretty standard phishing method, though. Paypal messages that don't link to paypal.com happen quite a lot too...

I feel taking down all these false-advertising knaves selling "600Mbps USB 3.0 Wireless WiFi" adapters that are old useless stock. I bought one and it is actually has the old USB 2.0 black block in it and wouldn't get past 46Mpbs on a speed test. Wankers.

I got scammed on eBay awhile back... ordered a pair of boots (the price was weirdly low, granted) and the seller gave me the package tracking details. The package traveled very slowly across the country, from east to west, and finally arrived. The package contained: a small pink rabbit key chain, worth maybe 25 cents.
I was able to get the money refunded by eBay, but it was an interesting scam. The tracking number, and watching the package's progress made it all feel legit.

My partner bought a suspiciously cheap but beautiful looking brass teapot (with a very misleading pic!) from a Chinese e-bayer that turned out to be the size of thimble.

People still buy from eBay? I have t used it in years.

shopping for records recently i almost got caught by a scammy seller who was selling photos of albums rather than the actual records themselves

lol! it's so hard to report these rogue sellers as well, most of them probably aren't breaking any of their rules.

I like bidding for second hand stuff and buying cheap multipacks of Rubicon pop and bales of industrial toilet paper. Can't do all of those in any other single site as far as I know.

Ha, yeah, I saw a guy recently with a really detailed description and tons of photos of an OOP box set. He had photos of the packaging, discs, liner notes, everything, all in good shape. Almost missed the fine print that all he was selling was the box and not even the box box, the cardboard shipping box that it came in.

People still buy from eBay? I have t used it in years.

I'm so sick of Amazon hegemony that I've moved back almost completely to eBay... but sadly sometimes my eBay purchases show up in Amazon packaging

i've definitely bought some band memorabilia from there recently.

the 'giving a tracking number to make it look authentic' is a common scam, and unfortunately my friend got taken for one on Craigslist and used Ca$happ so there was no way to recover the money. made sure to tell her not to do that shit again.

What was interesting about the boot ripoff I described upthread was that the seller actually had a pretty good rating.. but most of the recent reviews were like "WTF why did they send me a pink rabbit?" It's like they spent all this time cultivating trust and goodwill just to flip and try to rip off a handful of buyers before eBay shuts them down

weren't there some people that would literally sell a "joke" for a quarter in exchange for a positive rating and all they'd do is email you a joke, so they could build up positive ratings?

There was that weird scam a year or so ago where all these folks were receiving mysterious packets of seeds from China (my gf's mom included)... everyone freaked out and thought it was some kind of bio-attack but when tested there were just seeds from flowers and harmless plants. And in the end it turned out all these Amazon sellers in China were doing it for some arcane ratings hustle which I still don't understand.

I read two separate articles about that whole thing I and I still don't think I understand how it benefited those sellers at all.

a tree was planted and that benefits us all, jon

lol

I saw a guy recently with a really detailed description and tons of photos of an OOP box set

Was that the Al Adamson 'box only' listing? I saw it but didn't read the content.

No, this was for a Grateful Dead box set back in January or so. It disappeared pretty fast, so someone much have called it out.

I did have ideas of selling autographed Slayer cds and then just signing them myself and saying "I didn't say WHO autographed them"

I was just yesterday looking at an OOP book on eBay and nearly pulled the trigger before reading the details more closely and realizing they were only selling the slipcover from the book in question.

Liiiiiiike...what does this gain you, really, in the end? I don't know that it's worth needlessly antagonizing strangers like that these days, people are fucken nuts.

I was chatting with someone on mIRC from Singapore once who was bragging how he was selling fancy computers to buyers in the US and he didn't even take the first step, he would just pocket several thousand bucks and send nothing. he had a negative three rating on eBay, with zero positive reviews and his account was pretty much suspended after that, and I'm not even sure he got to keep the money from the sales or that he made much doing that, and all he said was "yeah well I live in Singapore so they can't arrest me for fraud I commit in America"

I'm a very dumbly honest e-bay seller, not that I sell that often. Once I was selling a Nook Glowlight e-book reader with a scratch on the screen and someone bid it up to £60 + in a rush of blood and I messaged them to cancel the sale because it wasn't worth that much.

I think the payment goes into a sort of escrow account, and is only released to the seller after the shipment and transaction are complete and everyone is happy. I guess shipping/tracking something worthless buys a little time in the hopes of eBay releasing the payment?

xpost heh yeah I used to be the type that would probably list the item in worse condition than it really was as I was afraid to over promise.

once I sold a playbill of In the Heights that was autographed by Lin Manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson (and many others), the two of which went on to Hamilton.

It was beat up, creased, stained, etc, and I listed every flaw imaginable to a micro level. someone still paid $80 for it even despite those flaws.

What was interesting about the boot ripoff I described upthread was that the seller actually had a pretty good rating.. but most of the recent reviews were like "WTF why did they send me a pink rabbit?" It's like they spent all this time cultivating trust and goodwill just to flip and try to rip off a handful of buyers before eBay shuts them down

This is often someone whose password got compromised and the scammers are trying to nail a few people who aren’t paying attention.

I’ve made a significant chunk of my income from EBay (and now Reverb) most years since 2000, sellers like to complain about the companies but I’ve just priced the possibility of getting shafted into doing it.

I sold two of an item and one guy wanted a refund but I accidentally refunded the other guy so I screwed myself out of $60 a couple of weeks ago, that was cool.

As soon as you place your order we will start to prepare your system. Your parts are selected and then a Master Engineer with industry level experience, expertise and qualifications will begin to assemble your system with the finest level of skill and intricacy. We have the ethos to provide quality above all else, this is why we only use new or 100% certified components in your build.

I'll be just slightly impressed if this 2nd hand new pc I'm buying doesn't fall apart before it arrives on my doorstep.