First off, let me apologize to Ryan for the O/T drama, but this is going to affect us all... that being said, I will procede: Dammit!!!! These people with no souls have been hitting eBay now! I had an expensive item up for auction since I need the money, and it had a reserve of $1850, but with a buy-it-now of $2100. So, the buy-it-now remains in effect until the $1850 reserve is met. Therefore, the buy-it-now remained open as an option. Well, some Nigerian fokker just did the buy-it-now, and is now pulling the "my-agent-will-pick-up-will-you-accept-a-cheque" BULLSHIT Is the high-reserve-high-buy-it-now now a thing of the past for trying to close an auction on eBay??? If these creeps are going to plague eBay, then these high-priced auctions will never close!!! Getting them kicked off eBay will do NOTHING, anymore than any attempts at keeping them from e-mailing you. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THIS??
You can stipulate your payment terms in your listing. I would think if you say minimum of 10 feedback points, and cash, bank transfer or Western Union only, you can cancel the sale and get your fees back from ebay. Tell them its a scam and they didnt adhere to your rules. I know it takes time, but what can you do? I think you can request immediate payment for buy it now items, meaning no time for the mail to bring a check. I put a couple of cars on Craigslist this evening, in 1 hour I have received 15 scammer type emails. I would not use the buy it now in the future. Good luck!!
I had the same thing happen to me recently with a set of $100 Caprice hubcaps. 'My agent will send a check for $3000. Cash it and send me the remaining funds with the merchandise.' Yeah, lemme get right on that! I still have the caps, the price is now $50. Anyone?
Specify: "No Checks,No Third Party Checks,No Cashier's Checks,No Personal Checks." "No,I will not cash your Check for $10,000 and wire you the difference. And I will not help you smuggle you dead Uncle's fortune out of the country." Pay Pal or Western Union,seem to be the safest options. Even Postal Money Orders are not scam proof any more.
You should see their checks too. They really look official. I had mad a few calls to govt agencies who had been on thee asses trail for a while. They tried to purchase a couple grand worth of my swag. Didnt send it out until the check came. Looked official. Then held the merchandise until it clerared. Guess what..Didnt clear. Not even a real check. But looked damn good. There is a also a group of asian scammers out there too who have made contact with me regarding my HD for sale. Sucks..but it is reality for sure. Mike
The next time you run an ebay auction, specify on one of the pages you have to fill out to list the item, that is a "Ship to the US only" auction, then go to "My ebay" log in, click on preferences and check the box that bars all foreign bidders from even placing a bid on your auction. If you want to allow legitimate bidders from places like Canada, Australia, the UK, Sweden, etc. you can put some text in the auction description, for those potential bidders to email you to ask permission to bid (then you can check their feedback before deciding if you want to let them bid). By the way, do NOT delete any emails from or to the scammer. eBay will probably want you to send them those emails in order to get all your fees refunded for this auction.
Didnt i just post a TECH piece about this??? Figures no one reads it...I have had them to that several times to me..You can get a refund for the listing through ebay...Something needs to be done.Ebay need to be able to verify everyone who resgitsers or its just going to continue to get worse...AND its at epidemic proportions at this poiny already..In three days I was contacted over 12 times!!! Enoughs Enough..I have written to Ebay about this..They need to get thier heads out of thier asses!!
What you do is this..DO NOT USE BUY IT NOW!! They only target the low priced cars under $3000... I havent quite figured that out yet..I think they fifure these people are just plain folks who dont know anything...I accept all forms of payment I just need to let them clear the bank first..its just that simple...No ifs and or buts about it..I Deal worldwide..dont let them shake you up...You have to be one step ahead of them always..again you can get a refund for the listing,I have been through this a number of times.....I Fuck with thier heads always..Its so fun...I had one call me on his dime..And then i went off on his ass..Much better than emailing!! These guys are fuckin idiots dude...I usually tell them we should fly a formation of B52's over Nigeria while were out that way... This is from just one of my lisrings alone...i didnt post all the e,ails for this one...thier were about three more on top of these...read the Q and A section.. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2498243841&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT
Just laying down written stipulations in the auction description won't do a damn thing to prevent these guys from "bidding". I already said I would only ship to the USA and Canada, and that payment must be made to me with a U.S. Postal m.o., or with a Western Union money wire. Didn't stop them one little bit. Just changing preferences to disallow bidders with LESS THAN a -1 feedback (like -2, -3, etc.) does not help. These guys will have a a new account almost everytime, with 0 or a negative-1 feedback and you cannot block those! Adding their username to your blocked bidders list won't affect any of the rest of the hundred scammers waiting in line, it will only make sure that one user name can't bid in the future. One thing I did wind up doing is to go ahead and change my preferences to block all bidders outside of where I say I will ship. We'll see what that does-- but I can tell you this-- everybody outside of the USA and Canada is out of luck on my eBay auctions if this is the way it's going to be. Also I have a hunch these guys can figure out an easy way of telling eBay that they live in the US instead of Nigeria, and if so, they will not be blocked yet again. Marcus, I tried to read through your tech, and maybe I didn't look closely enough, but it just seemed like you might have been telling us how to visually identify the attempted scams. I am already a pro at that, I get them daily in my e-mail, and they aren't hard to figure out. Takes two seconds. So what was the tech on preventing this crap?
[ QUOTE ] Also I have a hunch these guys can figure out an easy way of telling eBay that they live in the US instead of Nigeria, and if so, they will not be blocked yet again. [/ QUOTE ] I had a guy contact me, he said he was American now living in Africa. When I checked his eBay info, it listed PA as his adress. And of course he had just registered that day. He said his name was Richard Smart, and he wanted to buy my truck using a "cheque" draw on an American bank. Like Marcus, I just had to fuck with him. My response to him went something like this. "Richard, You're not very smart, are you? First off if you're going to try and pass yourself off as American, you should learn the fucking language! I suppose you want to send me a "cheque" for $30,000, and have me send you the balance? I was born at night, but not last night. Us Yanks are onto you scumbags. Best find another scam" I never heard back from Mr. Smart. Reported him to eGay, and the next day he was no longer a registered user.
Since I have yet to find out how to do the following, I would appreciate it if someone here could tell me: 1)How to get the bogus bidder booted (it's the least I can do, though not effective) 2)How to apply to eBay for a full refund of all fees, including the posting fees and the final value fees, since my auction was completely tampered with
I think maybe you will have to file a non-paying bidder on him to get a refund on the fees. Most of these cretins can be spotted from a mile away but some of them have hijacked legitimate accounts. I had someone from Verona Spain hack into my account and try to make listings. They had changed my password, location ect. Ebay caught them as I wasn't on there right then. They nipped another takeover in the bud later. Some of these dumbshits don't even know what they are buying. I had the two expedition rear ends on the classifieds here and another board. It must have been a search word because I got several scammers a day from those ads. And I could tell by the language they didn't even realize what I was selling. If you are selling shipable items, figure the shipping into the buy it now and they can only exercise it if they use paypal to pay for it. The buy it now won't go away until the payment is logged.
Blownolds: Step 1: Copy the Item number of the auction or cut it so you can paste it later and Users ID that bid, Go to Ebays Home Page click on Help,on your left you will see "Contact Us" lick on that then you will have a list of question options click "About Selling(For Sellers)" Click on "Problen with Buyers" click on "The problem you are having with your buyer isnt listed"Click "Continue" you will then see a link that say "Email" from there fill in the blanks..they will send you an automtated reply at first,until they are able to contact you,usuallu takes 24hours...Hope This helps.
I believe the only way to stop this particular situation is to set up your Buy It Now option as 'Immediate Payment Required'. With this option, the auction will only be ended once payment through PayPal has been processed.
Some of these scammers actually are in the USA. The busted some guys not too far from mr that were doing crap like this. They were from Nigeria and sending the checks making it look like they were coming from another country.
Go to your "My eBay" page and click on "Report A Problem" in the menu on the left side. Click on the green "Report a Problem" icon on the next page and choose the appropriate categories to get to the form where you report what happened (this is a little easier than wading through all the pages in the "help" category on ebay's front page). As I said before they may want you to send all the emails the scammer sent you, in order to get a refund of the listing fee and ebay's final value fee. Not running "Buy it Now" auctions and changing your ebay preferences to allow only US bidders is about all you can do at this time to try and stop the scammers. You could also try ebay's "Live Help" where you chat on line, live, with an ebay employee. Some of their employees are pretty good and will know who to refer you to. These scammers are a HUGE problem, and from hanging out on ebay seller discussion boards, I have heard of little that ebay is actually doing to end this problem. Maybe it's because a lot of ebay casual sellers who get scammed this way are not savvy enough to jump through all the hoops to get a complete refund of ALL the fees for the auction, and ebay then gets to keep that $40.00 auction insertion fee. For ebay these days, it's all about the bottom line, but if they keep having to have their paid employees spend hours dealing with irate sellers who want complete refunds, they may eventually realize that they HAVE to do something about this problem.
wow guys!!! i had no idea all this was going on, on ebay!! i would have never dreamed there are so many people out there doing things like you have posted! that really sucks! here you are trying to make a real sale, and they are trying to screw you over! good luck trying to deal with all that!
I think there are more things going on than this. I think some people have cracked the code for the site and manipulate auctions. I was recently watching an auction I was planning to bid on. It ended early even though there was no buy it now. Then the winning bidder won by $1, even though the bid increment was $100 at that price level. Ebay is broken. They won't fix it. Someone needs to start new and create a site that is secure for users. Something where you have to register with verifyable information so you can't simply start a new ID and steal again.
no ..You can end the auction early whenever you want if you are a seller,the reason it won only by a $1 is because the seller lowered the reserve to allow for the next $1.00 bid to win the item..he most likely told the buyer this info..to purchase the item still using Ebay..I do it sometimes..perfectly legit....No ones cracking any codes...
I had one asshole look ON THE HAMB in the classified want ads and found my want add for some 15X10 inch rims and this fucktard emailed ME saying pleze ford me tu by yourd 15X10 eench rems kind regards Boomshakalackalacka jones isn't there oil in Nigeria??can't we carpet bomb the shit outta them so they leave us alone??
It funny you mention the bombing..I usually say something to that affect when I reply to them..Like while were over that way,we should fly some B-52's over Nigeria on the way back..Sorry Nads i know your part Nigerian??
[ QUOTE ] no ..You can end the auction early whenever you want if you are a seller, [/ QUOTE ] Actually, ebay recently changed their rules and you now cannot end an auction during it's last 12 hours. So, if you have a car on auction and it has met reserve (if it was a reserve auction) and you get a good offer via email to sell it "off ebay" during the last 12 hours, you cannot end the auction, and ebay will bill you for the final auction fee. It doesn't matter if you put some language in the auction description that says something like: "I have this listed in the local paper and I reserve the right to end the auction whenever I want to". Ebay said they made this change because so many people were ending auctions early, most probably to sell "off ebay" and/or to avoid that final fee. By the way, in a somewhat related vein, the Feds have changed the rules about donating a used car to one of those charities for a tax writeoff. As of January 1st (I think) you cannot put pretty much any value on your "donation" for tax purposes. The value will be the auction value the charity can get for the car (or MC or boat or truck or whatever...)
Byrd, there are a LOT of scam operaters operating (is that redundant?) on eBay. All you have to do is go to the Safe Harbor board there at eBay in the "discussion boards" section of "Community" and see all the different scams people post on. It is a good place to learn how to CUT DOWN on these problems, but until eBay decides to take serious action, nothing will change and these scammers will still run unabated on eBay.
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