Warning of possible ebay fraud
 

20" High Quality Kalaq Folding Bike Road Bicycle Shimano 7 Speed V Brake | eBay

For about a month now, I have noticed ads on ebay for this "Kalaq 7 spd folding bike" with a price too good to be true: $98 US including free shipping from Taiwan. The reason I think these auctions may be fraudulent (in addition to the low price) is the seller keeps changing user names, always with zero feedback, the pictures are all lifted from another auction of a bike that is hundreds of dollar more, and now the seller is listed as being in Tokyo instead of Taiwan.

The auction's shipping information use to say it could take 6-8 weeks to get the bike, now it looks like the time is only 5 weeks.

So maybe that's enough time for your payment to clear? Beware this auction could be a scam.

If anyone has actually recieved one of these auction bikes please let us know, because it is a screaming deal.

good find.

the funny thing is, although it's an obvious scam, you're still baited by it.

the possibility of getting something for nothing overwhelms logic and reason. that's why obvious scams work often enough to be profitable.

http://global3.memecdn.com/bait_o_521728.jpg

Even worse, I've seen at least 15 people buy these so far. The auctions appear; and usually within a day or two all quantities on the auction are sold.

I actually sent the seller an ebay message asking how they could sell them so cheaply? Of course I never got a response. It's easy enough to search for similar bikes on ebay to see whether it's a good deal or not, and when you do, you *should* quickly realize that the pics are stolen and connect the dots.

But apparently some people just see the low price and hit Buy it Now.

*edit* so within a couple hours of my initial posting, either 4 more people purchased these bikes, or the seller took the auction down for whatever reason.

I just checked and the auction has ended.

In the past, Ebay had a button for alerting them about questionable sales, but I cannot find one anymore. When I used such a button, though, when a TranzX stem was offered as Softride, nothing happened. They never responded and the stem stayed there, offered for a Softride price (~3x TranzX).