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Want to read about all of the scams on Ebay ?
Start here on the Safe Harbor Discussion Board:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum.jspa?forumID=107
Read about:
Hijacked bidding accounts - Hijacker bids on auctions to set-up the over-payment and refund scam by paying with a counterfeit money order or counterfeit Cashier's Check. Hijacker doesn't care how much he bids on an item because he has no intention of paying for it with REAL money.
I have personally seen laptop computer auctions sell for $10,000+ ( seems like there was a scammer Gang War for THOSE laptops ! ).
Hijacked selling accounts - Hijacker lists items that he doesn't have and has no intention of delivering. After the auction ends, hijacker directs the buyer to pay HIM rather than the actual Ebay user whose account was hijacked.
Ship Now, Pay Later - Scammer sends a fake Paypal message to the seller indicating that the scammer has authorized Paypal to pay the seller AFTER the seller provides a tracking number after shipment.
Counterfeit Cashier's Checks
International Western Union Fraud
Fake Ebay Sign-in Pages - The way that scammers get your Ebay User Name and Password by either sending Spoof E-Mails or by HTML Code on an actual auction page.
One Cent Buy-It-Now Auctions - The way that scammers build-up their Feedback Rating to give them the appearance of being a legitimate and experienced buyer. Most of the One Cent Buy-It-Now auctions are for electronically delivered e-books.
Fake Second Chance Offers
and the list of scams just goes on and on.
Here is MY experience as a seller who was victimized by a scammer:
Here are the FACTS of my case:
I auctioned a set of 20 Harvard Classic Shelf of Fiction Books.
The auction had 4 legitimate bids from 2 bidders up until the last 9 seconds of the auction.
The high bid was at $155.00 ( and based on what follows next, the high bidder had a maximum proxy bid of $175.00 ).
With 9 seconds left to go in the auction, a bid was placed by a 3rd bidder for $177.50, and the 3rd bidder won the auction.
I was happy and confident that the winning bidder would pay because he had a 99.4% positive feedback rating and a new feedback score of 1,977.
Ebay confirmed the sale as follows:
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Congratulations flipper2flipper! your item sold!
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Dear flipper2flipper
Congratulations! The following item just sold:
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Item name: Harvard Classics 20 VOL Shelf of Fiction -BLUE SET 1917
Sale price: $177.50
Quantity sold: 1
Subtotal: US $177.50
Shipping&handling:
US Postal Service Media Mail: US $15.00
Insurance: (not offered)
Sales Tax: (none)
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Details for item number: 7042646301
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Sale Date: Thursday, Jun 22, 2006 21:00:12 PDT
Listing format: Auction
Buyer: ABCDEFG ( edited for privacy )
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Next day, I get the following message from Ebay:
The results of the following listings have been cancelled due to bidding activity that took place without the account owner's authorization:
7042646301 Harvard Classics 20 VOL Shelf of Fiction -BLUE SET 1917
We have temporarily suspended the bidding account and we are working with the account owner to prevent any additional unauthorized activity. Since the account owner did not initiate these bids, fees resulting from the listings in question have been credited to your account.
Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to automatically relist these items for you. Instead, to relist these items you will need to start from the beginning of the listing process, either through the "Sell Your Item" process or through your third party listing service. We know that this is an inconvenience and we apologize for the negative impact it may cause you. We are working on tools to allow you to relist your items without starting from the beginning, but they are not available at this time.
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end of message from Ebay
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I looked at the buyer's bidding history, and his account was definitely hijacked. He placed bids on 59 auctions within a 5 minute period ( including mine ) and every bid was a last minute bid 9 seconds before the auction ended.
And .... Because Ebay deleted my auction, I could NOT offer those books to the second highest bidder for his $155.00 bid ( which was his winning bid before his proxy bid of $175.00 kicked in after the bid from the hijacked account ).
That is not fair to me, since the $155.00 was a legitimate bid from a legitimate bidder, and I would have been happy to sell the books at that price.
I appealed this deletion of my auction to Safe Harbor requesting:
WHY did you delete my auction when it had 4 OTHER BIDS on it ( besides the fraudulent bid ) ..... I would like my auction UN-deleted .... so that I can offer these books as a Second Chance auction to the 2nd Highest Bidder.
I can't make a 2nd Chance Offer if you deleted my whole auction !!!
I am formally requesting that this message be given to the Safe Harbor Director for resolution.
The "reply" from Safe Harbor was what I expected ( a NON-reply ... sigh ).... they merely repeated the facts that had happened .... and they didn't answer my request to have my auction UN-deleted so that I could make a Second Chance Offer.
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