The only time someone attempted to scam me was with a bike that was selling at a too good to be true price. When I asked to see the bike, which was local, it was suddenly in the UK. If I wanted it I should just send the money and he would ship it. Right.

EBay does not handle complaints, bad users very well as far as I can tell. They have made it almost impossible to leave negative feedback. I was selling some brakes and the winning bidder never paid for them and wouldn't respond to messages. I was unable to leave negative feedback, and his eBay profile rated him 100% and included no bad reviews. I doubt if I was the first person that he scammed but how would other sellers or buyers know if eBay doesn't allow negative feedback?

I am surprised to hear these things. I have bought a lot of items on ebay and have sold two expensive items including a high-end Litespeed dual suspension mtb. I did not get my money on either item until the buyer was satisfied and it took about 3 weeks. For sellers without an established track record, they hold they seller's money for as long as 30 days on big ticket items. They are also quite strict about the description of the item being sold. They have lots of procedures in place to stop this sort of thing from happening. I have gotten a couple of duds on stuff I bought, nothing major. When I did get a dud, I re-read the description and the flaws were mentioned, I just didn't pay attention or they were subtly mentioned. The adage of "Buyer Beware" is always true. If you think you got a $200 light for $21, maybe something was wrong. True, you were not bidding on a Teddy bear and I'm sure ebay will refund your money. Ebay seems serious a protecting the integrity of their system.

Yup. A couple of years ago they shifted heavily toward the buyer. Sellers can't leave negative feedback. But the logic is reasonable. Sellers don't ship until they've been paid --so no one is damaged monetarily when buyer backs out. There were apparently loads of cases where sellers sleazed out, got negative feedback, and then retaliated on the cheated buyer by leaving them negative feedback. Buyer got cheated AND rec'd negative feedback. Apparently that was way too common.

musical instruments on ebay are famous for one side or the other being a scammer. Sellers that ship an empty guitar case, or buyers that take the guitar out of the box and show ebay a picture of an empty guitar case. Actually, real life scammers used to show people a desirable item, and then when the money was exchanged they would "put it in the original packaging" and the person would later find that it had been replaced by a brick or something.

I thought seller always holds the item until being paid. Why would you ship it if they haven't paid? Are you required by eBay to ship it within certain days even without being paid?

In ~2000 transactions (90% as a buyer) I've never seen a seller ship before being paid. Nor would I do it.

No, but if you're a seller without a lot of ratings, paypal will hold it in your account and not allow you to withdraw it until the buyer puts in positive feedback even if you don't ship until the money is in your account. Paypal will freeze your account (or at least that portion of it) in those circumstances.

When the buyer pays and ebay receives funds, they email the seller and instruct to "Ship now". Seller ships the item, ebay has the money, ebay releases the funds to the seller when the buyer has received the item and is satisfied. It is simple and seems to work. As a seller, I had to patient about my money. On the other side, as a buyer of a high-end bicycle, I would not want it any other way.

They must have more lenient funds release policy on smaller items. You will get your money back from ebay. As a former banker, all I could think of is massive amount of money they have piled up somewhere from lagging payments on all those transactions. They daily investment of those funds provides a strong source of revenue.

I guess that explains why you get emails and other notifications from eBay to leave feedback right away. The last few items I bought were small and I didn't get that, but a few larger ones I did.

A curios question for those of you who sell on eBay: how come many of the feedback comments different sellers left for buyers are exactly the same, verbatim (such as "Great communication. A pleasure to do business with")? They definitely are not the same seller with different user ids.

I'm unhappy to report that I was scammed again on eBay, by 3 different sellers in a row (I highly suspect it's one same person), all selling bike lights for attractive prices. Like the previous one, they had good feedback since last fall until very lately when almost every feedback is complaint about scam--no shipping or no reply. They have some 400+ feedback and 96%+ positive (could be 97~98% before the recent negatives). I suspect they already had the plan in mind when they started selling with a new account: sell for 10 months and get enough positive feedback, then finish with fraud.

I didn't expect to encounter so many scams within such a short period. Lesson: don't be fooled by too attractive prices.
:cry:

What slays me is the scammer actually shipping anything. WTF? Just swap emails for a week or so, collect lots of money, then dissapear. Why ship socks? Still, makes me laugh, though I do feel for anyone that has to deal with the fraud.

I'm guess what happens is that the persons account gets hacked. Someone was legitimately selling stuff and shipping it, their account gets hacked by a new person, the new person is a scammer.

My guess is that the seller can go longer before ebay shuts them down if they give a tracking # and maybe ebay can find out if the package doesn't weigh anything, so they throw in items that don't cost them anything. They have a tracking number, the package shipped at 0.5lbs, with 3-5 day shipping it takes ebay a week to figure out that they're now a scammer, whereas if they didn't ship at all or shipped empty packages it might only take 2-3 days.

Seen 33rd post,

So how does/did, E-bay/pay-pal CYA in those situations?

I think you're right. I sold a freewheel on ebay a couple weeks ago. It is my one and only ebay sale. Paypal held my money until I provided a tracking number. The money was released 3 days later, as is their stated policy.

My stated policy for selling is no returns. My unstated policy is this: if you think I misrepresented the item, you get your money back. In the case of that particular freewheel, I'd probably have paid return shipping, too, if the buyer didn't like it.

After checking each of the 4 sellers' history, I don't think it's innocent seller being hacked: each and every one of them went berserk just about 1 year after registering the account. They all had around 300~400 feedback. That seems to be the pattern. They became unregistered after eBay removed them for fraud. (FYI: seller1, seller2, seller3)

Huh...well 2 of them are 1 year. One of them was started in September. That is...something, though. Sounds organized... :-(

I wonder if such individuals were ever actually caught and prosecuted, aside from being removed as sellers. Who knows, could be that these recent 3 scammers are actually the same one last December who never left.:rolleyes:

When it comes to bike parts. Don't buy anything off of E-Bay, Amazon, or any of the other similar sites.

What's wrong with Amazon? As much as possible, everything I buy there is either "Sold by" or "Fulfilled by" Amazon. If I do need to order from an outside shop, Amazon still backs up the purchase.

When it comes to advice, don't believe everything you read on internet forums.

I've bought a lot of stuff on Amazon, both from Amazon and from third parties through Amazon.

I've had a few problems with things from the third parties, but the moment I tell Amazon about them they (Amazon) will bend over backwards to fix it, which usually means immediately refunding my money if that's what I'm after. And then Amazon itself will work it out with the third party if needed.

If somebody want to make a list of sellers to avoid because of the likelyhood of being scammed ... I'm with you -- Amazon does *not* belong on that list.

Even though Ebay is a big online auction place to shop, there is a lot of scams and Ebayers who try to steal money from us.

Be careful !!



http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=395235

yeah its pretty hard to scam on ebay.
most likely the seller just made a mistake.
ebay will just refund you and charge the sellers CC.