Slashdot Mirror
Bad eBay Experience Spurs Internet Manhunt
An anonymous reader submitted an entertaining story running on the
Chicago Trib that discusses a fraudulent eBay dealer, and the
tale of his victims
tracking him down. Nothing super technical, just amusing to read
and remember that while sometimes the crooks get away, sometimes they
become the hunted. My favorite part is when they call his mom. Man
I'd love to do that to people who DoS us :)
Recently I was defrauded on Ebay myself. It was only $6.00, but I really wanted the diapers I was buying. Well, he used an Earthlink account, and I called Earthlink, and was able to get his phone number. I recieved my diapers the next day. :)
*puts on Flame Proof Suit*
Imagine how the people who get Slashdotted feel ;)
-- Dan
..next time we see auctions for 75 laptops from one seller, lets look up his info and just go steal them. Much better end result. Free Laptops.
I've been burned 3 times. but out of the hundred or so auctions I have won in the last 5 years... they don't really bother me much.
first was a $10 win on a bootleg video for my favorite band, TOOL. I sent out $10, I got back nothing. I think the seller got busted for distributing bootleg videos. I just wish I had got mine.
Second was for a Cisco 3101 dual ethernet router that was advertised to have 16 MB ram and 8 MB of flash. I got it, pretty quick shipping I might add. However it didn't have 16 MB of ram and 8 MB of flash, it had 4 and 2, respectively. With that little memory.. you couldn't route CRAP nowadays (it was a project router, but I still wanted to run IOS 12.0). Well, I wrote the guy, he apologized and said he'd send the replacement ram/flash. He sent me 4 sims from a compaq and 2 flash chips from godknowswhat. I wrote him back and told him that he sent me the wrong stuff, and he apologized and said he'd send me the replacement ram/flash. I got 4 sims in the mail, it was 4 1MB cisco sims. I got exactly what I already had. The guy was stupid, apparently he was the proprietor of a warehouse of similar stuff and was hawking it on ebay, but didn't know what it was that he was selling. I ended up buying my own ram, and I use TFTP to boot it so I don't need flash.
and last was a lot of 5 used 15" monitors, I paid $120 for the lot to include shipping. A week after my money order was cashed the guy seemed to disappear. His ebay account was restricted, his phone number disconnected, and his website was gone. The guy had a LOT of positive feedback, so I thought the guy was for real. I'm thinking he got arrested or got "cleaned" by the mob or something. It sucked but I got over it.
This is something I wrote up for someone who'd just been ripped off by an Ebay hardware seller. Feel free to reproduce it elsewhere. Yes, I do occasionally buy hardware on Ebay (albeit very carefully!) and no, I've not yet been ripped off. By following my own advice, I hope to avoid it permanently. :)
***
I've spent a LOT of time digging around for hardware (and other stuff) on Ebay, and have read a lot in and asked around in many of the user forums there, and have reached several conclusions about hardware sellers:
The ones who do so regularly are *usually* frauds to some degree, or at least rip-off artists (selling known-junk for too much $$) and are typically difficult if you get a DOA or misrepresented part. The ones who only sell the occasional one-off component are usually okay, or at least aren't selling bad stuff intentionally.
ALWAYS read ALL of a seller's negative feedback before bidding. This means going to vrane.com (http://www.vrane.com/ef.html) and using the "search feedback" form (which BTW is rigged so you can save it and use it locally, it still calls what it needs from the server) to inspect ALL of a seller's NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. Good vendors won't have more than 0.15% negative feedback. More than 0.3% negative feedback is a redflag; more than 1.0% is invariably a bad dealer or a con artist. Positive feedback numbers and content CAN be rigged via the "penny auctions"
loophole, so in itself is fairly useless.
ALWAYS read ALL of the "NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LEFT FOR OTHERS" *by* any seller you intend to deal with. How they respond to their own bad deals is a *VERY* good indicator of how they'll be to work with in the event that what they send you is defective or is not as represented.
Sellers who use *L00K* and/or bogus phrases in their item titles (just WTF is "emulator friendly" anyway??!) are the ebay equivalent of spammers. I no longer even view items with such titles.
ALWAYS check regular online vendor outlets, Pricewatch, etc, first. Typically, used hardware sold on Ebay winds up going for 150% of the new retail price, just because most people have no clue what components really sell for. (I've seen used HDs go for 300% of retail, and used memory going for TEN TIMES the local new price!!)
Sellers who start every auction with "$1.00" prices are more likely to be "pros" at this auction business than those who start with something realistic. See above re those who sell hardware regularly on ebay.
ALWAYS email the seller prior to bidding, and ask some question about the item, even if you already know the answer. The tone of the response you get can tell you plenty about how they'll be to deal with. If you get NO response, "go look it up yourself" or a CANNED response, DON'T BID.
If they take ONLY cash, cashiers checks, or money orders for hardware, DON'T BID.
BTW for categories other than hardware, the above all apply except that there are good sellers of other stuff who do it all the time.
***
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've used ebay to both buy and sell... everything I've sold has sold for much higher than I anticipated- some of it sold for more than I could be purchased NEW!
On one hand, there is the concept of WINNING- that people lose sight of how much they are spending on an item. Next people forget about shipping- which can cost as much as the item itself.
People are also cost conscious, and usually do not want to pay extra for escrow or shipping insurance... which makes little sense if you consider many people packing merchandise are far from shipping pros.
Also, there is usually no return policy at ebay... one person's "like new" condition is another person's, "almost trash," and some sellers don't even know what they are selling (ie. a photo of a Slot 1 CPU listed as a socket chip), blah, blah, blah.
Bottom line, the mantra at ebay true is "buyer beware." I think it is great these people are going after this seller, but the fact remains, if they were truly safety conscious buyers, they could have taken additional steps to protect their purchase. I wouldn't blame ebay for only reimbursing $200. If they guaranteed every purchase, it would actually encourage fraud!
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
You don't send a guy $3000 with a payment method you can't stop for a product you've never laid eyes on. If the guy won't take a check and won't take payment through an escrow service, screw it. It's not worth the risk.
eBay didn't do anything wrong here.
Speaking as one of the people having been ripped off by this seller, I just want to note that this "seller" was a complete asshole. A few weeks after not sending any of us merchandise, he claimed his mother passed away, a claim later proven false when we spoke to her. What a jerk.
I don't know why people are promting this blind faith in PayPal. Anyone can get a verfied paypal account, and lots of scammers do.
There's this thing called an Escrow Service which removes the risk from a transaction. You should use it anytime you couldn't live without the money you are sending off. If you bought a $2000 computer without using one, you are either stupid or richer than I am. Yes, it costs the buyer money. No, PayPal is not an escrow service.
The only thing that PayPal seems to provide is a piece of mind that you can go and post on PayPalSucks.com when you get ripped off, instead of blaming the guy who ripped you off or yourself.
The great thing about eBay is the "garage sale" aspect, not the fact that it's an ad board for real businesses. There's lots of people who have only sold a few things and haven't got around to a PayPal account, and if you are careful you shouldn't have any problem.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It might seem like a slap in the face, but there's a couple things to remember here:
One, eBay doesn't really make money on auctions from scammers. eBay bills monthly, and I doubt the guy is really sitting around with a credit card just waiting for eBay to charge him. I work for a company that charges our members monthly, and going after people with insufficient funds in their account is sorta like asking a VC for charity. So that pretty much puts eBay out the $175, plus the costs of investigating the fraud.
If you look at PayPal's financials, you can see that PayPal paid out $5.5 Million out of their $31MM in revenue in 2001 for "transactional losses" i.e. Fraud claims. In 2000, before they had their shit together, they paid out $11MM, $2.5MM MORE than their revenue for that year!!! I'm sure that eBay has a similar amount of cost in terms of Fraud Liability, albeit perhaps slightly less, since their credit card division (eBay Payments) is a bit smaller than PayPal. So while $200 is a pathetic insurance amount for a $3k notebook, it's better than nothing.
Two, my advice is that you should never buy anything on eBay over $200 using anything other than a credit card. Even if the guy has 2000 positive feedback, it's just asking for trouble. With a credit card, you can always initiate a chargeback, and 99.9% of the time, you'll get your money back.
Caveat Emptor. It's the name of the game, if you don't know the person you're buying from.