Slashdot Mirror
When Good Ebay'ers Go Bad
An anonymous submitter sent in: "This guy "Stewart Richardson" had over 6000 positive feedbacks on eBay, held a fake estate sale, and scammed around $250,000 out of people before disappearing. 'There seems to be little doubt among his would-be customers that Stewart Richardson pulled off one of the most remarkable con jobs in the almost seven-year history of eBay, and U.S. federal investigators agree.' Some other links: a messageboard and ebay itself. I was scammed on eBay for $3600 a while back. I was able to get my money back because I had a bank issued cashier's check. I had written "For Deposit Only" on the back, and that was crossed out by the recipient. The bank teller should have been suspicious, but was not, and cashed the check. The idiot who had it cashed wrote his bank account number on the back of the cashier's check, and also wrote his Dad's business bank account number on the back and stamped it with his Dad's signature. In the end, the bank reversed the payment, and took the money out of his Dad's account. When his Dad found out, the idiot was in some serious trouble, but I got my money back. There were a few other's scammed in the same transaction, and they recieved about half of the money back after the police started to put the pressure on these guys. The story is much more involved, so I won't go into the rest of it."
UAnd I refure to type it again..
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
I always wondered why anyone would trust EBay auctioneers with large amounts of money. I mean, it gets to a point where a few negative feedbacks aren't going to make up for loss of any serious dough. Anyone else have scam stories?
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
What with all the pr0n and scammers out there.
Whoever thought that buying things from anonymous auctions was a good idea needs to get her head examined.
It's a little like responding to spam as if it were a real advertisement. Stupid, and foolish.
...since I am not an ebay costumer: is it possible to create fake identities and buy stuff from yourself in order to pump up your approval rating? Does ebay have any safeguards against this? I could see this type of fraud as very detrimental for online auctions in general...
Reminder: find a new sig
Rather humorous, this feedback entry. I'll obscure the email just to limit spamharvesting on it, but you can see it at the EBay link.
:)
-------@aol.com (25)
Jan-22-02 12:48:53 PST
1055398606
S
Praise : Complete Fraud! Took all our money and never received any product
So evidently AOLers WANT to be defrauded?
are the people who watch auctions, and message the losers at the end telling them they have the same product, and get money from them that way...you can't exactly leave negative feedback on that...
How Jaded Are You?
E*Bay gives the buyer a paultry sum (around $100) for insurance. What a joke.
Clearly, E*Bay facilitated this crooked transaction and should bear the blame and should cover the loss.
Can you imagine Cristie's or other auction houses NOT delivering the goods after auction?
Why is E*Bay allowed to operate under a different set of rules?
And I've never trusted PayPal anyway...
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
If it's worth spending $40 for shipping, it's worth spending a little more to ensure you're getting what you're _expecting_!
If the seller won't use an online escrow service (www.tradenable.com has worked well for me in the past) then DON'T BUY THE PRODUCT!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Trust no one! Nothing personal, just business.
I hate to say it, but I wonder if the double- and triple-selling he did is more common than you'd think on eBay. Saying the winning bidder didn't pay and contacting the second-place bidder by email seems to counter most of the eBay "safeguards". Does anyone know of other instances of this?
Of course, if you actually buy something this way, you're on your own. I always tell the seller to re-list the auction rather than do this.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
It's a classic scam. Build up a rep for being honest, upright, soforth. Once everyone trusts you, you can strike it big with little difficulty. It requires a lot of patience, but police and government officials in Third World (and some first and second world) countries have been known to use it. Instead of taking measly little bribes all the time, make yourself out to be "incorruptible" and wait for the big one.
The big question is: Did this guy plan it from the beginning? If he did, I applaud his patience and cunning, while also disapproving of the result of his actions. If he decided on the spur of the moment to do this, i.e. let temptation get the better of him, I have nothing but contempt for him.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
"If Mr. Richardson's eBay sales ultimately prove to be fraudulent, the scam would rank among the costliest frauds ever perpetrated over eBay."
Were there bigger frauds on ebay? Anybody know of the other biggies?
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
when you pay someone $700 for some porcelain mice, you're pretty much getting ripped off whether or not you actually get the goods.
I bought one very high ticket item on EBay once (admittedly this was a while ago), an expensive Sony video camera. Before I mailed off my $1900 cashier's check, I got the other person's phone number and actually spoke to them. In this way, I felt I had at least some recourse in case something went wrong. Fortunately nothing did, and I have happily used my TRV 900 for years now.
The point is that the more information you have about your seller, the easier it will be to go after them in case something goes wrong. People can hide via email, but by phone it's much harder.
-- What is this Earth thing you call "slow"?
I think you answered your own question in your post. Simple, for money of course. C'mon, the guy made off with $250,000. I don't think there is anything else on this Earth that would turn a normally law abiding citizen into a criminal any faster then a desire for money. Enron anyone?
I posted to
Ebay is not operating under different rules. Auction houses take physical possession of the goods and auctions. Ebay acts more like a progressive classified ad. You wouldn't sue the newspaper would you (unless you are in California and then you sue EVERYBODY!)
With a system like ebay where the transactions are completely up to the seller and the buyer, it's bound to have these types of scams running all the time. Unless some company develops a more secure way of conducting internet auctions, I never plan on spending more than I can afford to lose, it's always a gamble, even if that person you're buying from has 25 smiley faces ratings underneath his name.
It is a shame that scammers such as this give a bad name to an otherwise good service. I still believe that the overall risk to buying/selling on Ebay has to be minimal. I think that I am willing to accept the risk and not get involved with big ticket items that should not be sold online in the first place.
I love figure skating. Where else can you see young nubile girls with their legs spread wide coming at you butt first.
Yum.
I've bought stuff off of ebay a number of times and never had any problems, but I'm always pretty meticulous about checking the seller's info, and i don't ever spend more than a few hundred dollars on anything from ebay. ;)...
Plus, I don't buy figurines off eBay either
When I buy from email, I do not purchase more then $200 because that is all ebay will give me from fraud (and they have a handling fee for that). If I find something that I really really want (or rarely need) that is over $200 - I tend to just pass on it. I just bought an mp3 player for $45. I am not really worried about it not working because I can afford to have $45 in limbo and if I get scammed, I can get it back - NP!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Oh wait, checking email... .. WHAT? I paid $1000 for a figurine and didn't get it? DAMN!
-- Dan
I've never had a single problem with eBay purchases. I pay right away, and get my stuff... well.... soon enough not to complain in any rate.
However, it's like prisoner's dilemma. Betraying is a much harder temptation to resist as the reward gets bigger. Even spending thousands on eBay is risky, let alone hundreds of thousands.
That wouldn't have helped in this case because he would have talked to you on the phone from his business.
Escrow, Escrow, Escrow.
From eBay's escrow information page (the last link):
What is Escrow?
Escrow is when a buyer places money in the custody of a trusted third party. The money is then paid to the seller once a specified set of conditions, that both parties have agreed to, are met.
How does it work?
Very simply. The Buyer pays into escrow. The Seller ships the item to the Buyer. The Buyer approves the item. Funds are paid to the Seller. It's that easy.
Is the service only available for items that close over $500?
Based upon historical data, eBay recommends that buyers and sellers use escrow services for transactions greater than $500.
So, if you buy something over $500, and pay for it using escrow, the seller does not receive payment until you have determined that the item was shipped and works properly.
Use escrow for any serious purchases. Don't rely on eBay's fraud program -- it takes months to get them to do anything and they often want ridiculous amounts of documents "proving" that the item was faulty.
Informed consumers make these issues moot. Don't buy from a seller who won't use escrow, and add in the extra fees as a cost to doing business via eBay. If you don't use escrow, you assume the risk if the product isn't what you wanted (or doesn't arrive at all!)
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Here a few more links to anti-PayPal sites:
paypalwarning.com
paypalsuit.com
boycott-paypal.com
And here is Google's return on the query "paypal problems".
I wonder if this class action suit is for US residents only, as there are 13 million members, a good number of whom live outside the borders of the States. I recall the HP/Panasonic CD-R drive class action suit a year or two ago and being Canadian I wasn't able to partake in it.
For those of you who want to sign up for this suit, here is the link to the lawyers registration form.
And you can prove it to yourself by purchasing his Immortality Device.
I principle I am sympathetic, and just that much more suspicious of online auctions.
But in secret I'm laughing my ass off at the image of a angry rampaging mob of porcelain figurine collectors. To each his own I guess...
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
I heard that he ran off with the money and started a new life with his wee forest folk and the nightie bear
I hate to use a terrorism analogy, but this is classic sleeper strategy: join a community, establish your reputation, and after a while you become immune from suspicion simply because people "know you". eBay users know to be suspicious of people with 0 feedback, and they're told by eBay management that people with high (~1000) feedback are "reliable".
If you're considering making a significant purchase over the Net, think about who you're dealing with. Even if they do have thousands of people shouting their praises in positive feedback, you should ask yourself - how much can you really trust an abstract online handle?
Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
I used to leave positive feedback for strangers as a joke - "Cuba makes the best! thanks!!!" for a cigar seller, "you're right! your bowling pin trophy looks great on my headboard - thanks!" for a stylish furniture seller, "hang in there! FUNNY poster! poor kitten!" for a guy selling skulls and such, etc., etc.
Around that time, other people were too busy for such fun and nonsense, creating networks of accounts, all of which were leaving each other positive feedback. It was possible to have an account with a lengthy history of perfect feedback, even though a transaction had never been completed.
Many of these accounts were weeded out, some because they were used for fraud, others because people spotted ones with all the feedback happening in a couple days' time and asked questions.
But the requirement for an auction existing to match positive feedback left was only added about two years ago. I'm betting hundreds more bogus positive accounts exist and are sitting idle, waiting to be used...
#define USEPAYPAL 0x01
#define USEESCROW 0x02
#define GOINPERSON 0x04
int whattodo(long price);
int whattodo(long price) {
if (price <= 60) return USEPAYPAL;
else if (price <= 10000) return USEESCROW;
else if (price > 10000) return GOINPERSON;
}
/* Code is protected free speech! Don't think otherwise */
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
I wonder why someone would pay "$700" for some mouse figurines. I mean really!
The point here isn't that Ebay fraud is evil. The point is that sites like Ebay enable people to waste money on such frivolities as .. "Collectible Figurines." Anybody who would spend $20,000 over Ebay (read the article for confirmation of that one) for figurines is a waste of otherwise perfectly good carbon. This will probably be modded as a Troll, but I don't care. It's the truth.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
I beleive that eBay has bid bots that work in the same way that the sellers do in an effort to pump the bids up to the max bid without going over. I will tell you why?
Several months ago a friend got suspicious when he won an auction for a no-name retro video game. He was suspicious because someone had bid against him with an "updated or changes username" and always bid some strange amounts at varying time intervals. The stranger would come on, bid, and then wait for some period of time to up the bid a little more. Then in a last two days the stranger bid exactly one dollar below my friends max bid, triggering it and getting all the money out of my buddy.
Most people would say coincidence. I thought so too, so we made another experiment with another seller. Another video game and we put $100 as the max bid on the game. This game wasn't rare or collectible in the slightest. As the auction went on, a similar activity occured. This time in the last hours of the auction the bid got bumped in the same way. The user knew that the game wasn't worth more that 10-15 bucks and probably wouldn't want to overbid and lose all the money,so it's unlikely in my opinion that it was the seller.
The auction ended and a $15 product was sold for $96 with this strange business described earlier.
My question? Who knows what the max bid is? eBay.
Who gains when the max bid is retrieved as the selling price? The seller and eBay.
So it's in thier interest that any max bid be reached, by hook or by crook. I don't trust them, so I bid at the last minute and get things at the price I want to pay for them.
Spongebob
Computers make it really easy to copy things. That means that it is really easy to copy a scam, and perform it over and over again. So, even if 98% of people are honest, that 2% can copy their act will account for 20% of the traffic.
The problem with companies like eBay and PayPal is that as soon as someone figures out the right angle for the scam, they will replicate it several hundred fold.
I've noticed this same trend with CPC advertising, telephone fraud, and other online scams. As soon as someone uncovers even the most insignificant hole in a process, the scammers will hit the whole several thousand times. Scammers may be less than a percent of the customer base, but create most of the noise.
PS: Of the $50 I spent on eBay, $10 went to scam artists.
Here's some things you can do to make your ebay purchase a safer experience.
1. Involve the United States Post Office. Once you involve them, you have them on your side becaues they really hate mail fraud. You can contact your postmaster and he can usually start the investiation rolling. Remember, mail fraud is a federal offence.
2. Contact the seller. If the person is not willing to talk to you directly on the phone about a high ticket item you are buying, do you really want to do business with him?
3. Not to be redundant, but ESCROW ESCROW ESCROW. If you are spending over $50, isn't the extra $5 or $10 worth it?
4. Use a real credit card and not a debit card that withdraws from you bank account. Discover is probably one of the best I've used. Any problems I've had, they have immediately put a hold on the money, and credit my account with the money in question, until they can get it sorted out.
5. Use your head. If something seems to good to be true, then it is, especially on the internet.
I just don't understand why people are having this many problems with online purchases. If you follow these simple steps you will not come accross any problems that you can't get resolved. Are you guys really this trusting? Come on now, it's the internet, don't trust anyone. If you're getting ripped off like this, to be honest, you probably deserve it. Maybe you should rethink this internet purchasing thing, it might not be for you.
SIG - I love you guys, mod me to +5 then bash me back down to +2.
A few months ago a friend of mine did a little expirement. She set up an e-bay account, and auctioned off a bag of trash, labeled as a "Mystery Bag of Fun." She got bids of up to 30 dollars, but she backed out before anyone paid. My point is, scamming people on e-bay is easy; until the transactions are insured there will be scams like this.
Thanks for that page-long personal narrative, Michael. Maybe a "click the link below for more" would have sufficed?
This is exactly why you should always use your credit card for payment. And I don't mean through PayPal or BillPoint. If the seller has that high a feedback, and a legitimate business, he should have his own merchant account to process the credit card payment. If you haven't received your goods within the 60 days after your statement arrives, simply dispute the charges, and you won't lose anything.
"According to HIS WIFE, Mr. Richardson withdrew a total of $220,000 from various business bank accounts in the days before his disappearance."
there you have it...
yes folks, this is a joke.
If it offends you, get out more.
Sent from your iPad.
At the bottom of the article, his wife mentions that she found evidence that he had been gambling over the Internet, and may have gone into debt as a result.
What's funny is that when I closed the window to the story, there was one of those ubiquitous popup-adds for an on-line casino.
I find it amusing is that people shell out good money for those tacky little figurines. I find it not so amusing that some people may have lost upwards of $20,000.
Ms. Murray says she and her family have found evidence on Mr. Richardson's computer that her husband was gambling over the Internet. She says she thinks that he may have had gambling debts.
If that's true, then this guy probibally had no intention to pull a scam like this when he started out. The whole thing seems to me like the act of someone who's desprate, not patient.
1. I've never been ripped off on eBay, but I never buy big-ticket items. The closest thing I've had to being ripped off was an old book from someone who forgot to mention he was a 300-pack a day chain smoker.
2. I've never had a problem with PayPal. Just lucky, I guess.
3. $700 for porcelain mice? I hope they were porcelain-plated gold or 300 years old or something.
4. The guy will be caught because a lot of people are looking and he didn't get enough money to really make a run for it, unlike the payroll truck thief here in CA who stole (I think) 7 million from moving trucks and no-one knew until it was over.
I'm anti-thievery on moral grounds, but even if you aren't, never steal anything as measly as a quarter-million, especially so publicly. This guy deserves to lose, no matter what your POV is...
People can hide via email, but by phone it's much harder.
Harder ? Yes. Much harder ? No.
You see, there are lots of ways you can hide via phone. Wiretapping(?) some imediatly into my mind. I can also thing of at least 5 or 6 other ways, which I'll not go into details for obvious reasons.
If I can say it, don't even trust if you meet the seller in person, in his house.
This have been said again and again here. Always have some kind of issurance. My car have extra locks and a very good alarm system. Still, I have it issured.
morcego
You should use Winning Bid Pro to do the last minute bidding for you. I use it all the time. Just set up the bid you are willing to make and have it send it in 10 seconds before the auction ends. That way you don't drive the price up ahead of time. Sometimes someone has a max bid higher than yours, or is using a bidding program the same as you and you get beat. But, you put in the max amount you were willing to pay, right? You win some, you lose some. With Winning Bid Pro, you'll win more.
By the way, the program is free, I didn't write it, and get no money for praising it.
Couple Ebay's lack of insurance with Paypal's track record for pursuing claims and this is what you get.
have been warped by too many comic books/pulp fiction/hollywood movies.
Premeditated crimes are always deserving of more punishment/contempt than crimes of passion.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Here is a little news blurb about it.
It was a pretty funny aution. The seller had put up a completely white picture and said "I've tried to take several pictures of it.. but every picture comes out completely white. it's as if some power is overexposing the film". He also had a little note at the bottom of the auction "Note: Will not sell to Nazies or other evil men".
At one time, I did write a proof of concept back orifice/shell script that would scan entire subnets, and report "hits". Had I followed up with it, and used it... who knows how many you could collect? Most ebayers are windows users through and through, and it wouldn't be anything to write a "buttplug" (BO plugin, god I love how cDc names things) that just sat there waiting for the password prompts. Ebay has this annoying habit of forgetting your password, if you switch between buying and selling, and you have to re-enter it quite often (or is it just netscape/linux doing this?). Or, even if he had to go a bit more sophisticated and steal the "logged in" cookie out of the machine, this wouldn't be implausible. Voila. 99 times out of 100, he'd get joe@aol.com that only has feedback of 2, but he gets lucky this time. Bam, motherload... feedbaack in the 1000's. Decides it's his ticket out of script kiddy land, and into the realm of bigtime h4ck3rs. Meanwhile, rfenet or whatever his name is, is on vacation in the bahamas for a month. Hates the email, doesn't want to check it, just relax.
What about this is impossible? It's nothing to change your email address in ebay, so the script kiddy redirects them to another email account where he can say "please use this paypal account, or mail me a cashiers check". Hell, in the bad part of downtown, there are a dozen places that never ask to see photo ID, they just take a 10% cut. And my city isn't even that big.
Did this really happen? I doubt it, but all the pieces are in place. You have to wonder.
Given the number of years the guy was doing good business, it is easier to believe someone stole his password while he was on a business trip. I wonder if these last transactions were paid to a different account...
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Pay 700 bucks for four glass mice, kill me now and spare the gene pool.
You know what?
She purchased a laptop off ubid.com and was naive enough to send a $600 money order. When she told me that she bought a laptop overseas and all they accepted was a MO, I knew she was screwed. I wish so much that she had checked with me before sending money. She was suspicious, but ended up asking her father (Never touched a computer) instead of me. All I have is the source IPs of the emails sent and they trace back to 2 DSL ISPs in Romania. I contacted their NOC and they in turn contacted the Romanian authorities. We have also contacted the FBI and the National Fraud Information Center. Word of advice: Do not purchase anything outside of the US and Canada and avoid placing yourself in any situation where you're not covered. Paying by CC is usually the safest method because you can dispute the charge and have it reversed. Sellers, use paypal.
In my experience, the 0.01% fraud rating claimed by the eBay rep is probably about right. I've only had one or two people who seemed out and out determined to screw me. That tiny number doesn't take into account the much higher clueless/careless seller factor, however.
More than 1 transaction in 10 has had a problem for me. The most common problem is bad packaging. I've received computers in boxes with no padding whatsoever. I've gotten CDs in half-opened cases with a scratch raked across the surface. I've even received cards in nothing but bubble wrap and a flexible mailer.
eBay, PayPal and the likes are absolutely worthless about helping in cases where something arrives, but doesn't work. Sellers who promise to ship with insurance usually don't, or aren't helpful about your filing a claim. They have their money, and so they want to be done with you.
You just have to figure out what the failure rate is, and be sure you're bidding low enough to compensate. Me, I won't bid more than 90% of what I think something is worth, and I won't bid on something I absolutely need soon.
The feedback system also isn't nearly as valuable as it seems. People are afraid to give bad feedback unless the other person has already left their feedback, otherwise, they're guaranteed to get negative feedback in turn. It's actually in a person's personal best interest to leave no feedback at all when a transaction has gone bad, and I suspect the scammers know this, and don't leave the initial feedback accordingly.
Senerio 1: The guy had a heart attack while driving went over a bridge and no one saw it.
Senario 2: Maybe the guy is in the hospital for whatever illness and his next of kin isn't around or doesn't have a clue as to what ebay is.
Senerio 3: May his mother/father/whatever died and he had to travel on short notice to some remote part of the country/world and didn't leave a note for investigators as to where he went.
My point is that even though his ebay transactions were important to him, as evidenced by his feedback rating, there are a number of occurances that could happen that would dwarf ebay on anyone's priority scale. I don't know all the details, but there are possible explanations for this that would make everyone feel like crap for emmediately jumping on this guy. Just because he's being investigated for a scam doesn't mean he's guilty of it.
Remember when he was the well-behaved poster boy of Slashdot? Always there with some witty or insightful comment? Then, after a period of time, it became obvious that he was simply karma whoring in order to build up his stocks. Then one day, out of the blue, he turned into one of Slashdot's worst trolls. From first to worst in a period of days. Just like OlympicSponsor. The moral of the story is that you cannot trust anybody, even those with a "squeaky clean" reputation.
Fortunately, Siggy is now trolling Kuro5hin and no longer bothers moral Slashdot readers.
Is call forwarding not available in your area?
I know a person who bought a copy of Flash5 from eBay for $180. When they recieved the package (day after deadline) they found out it was a burned cd with no documentation.
I've never used eBay and I don't plan to start. Why would I buy something from somebody I don't know, and can't get *real* info on.
Lvl: 8, Str: 14, Dex: 20, Con: 10, Int: 14, Wis: 13, Cha: 11
ever since ebay started - this never made sense to me .. it just seemed too easy to either falsify, hack, or get .. basing a financial system on it seems a little absurd, (but then again so do banks)
...I kinda like this guy.
:)
Not because he's a thief. That's despicable.
But to know that a person has it in him to act one, predictable way for years and fool even those closest to him, then instantly change into a completely different persona restores some of my faith in human nature.
He's not a robot. He's not a brick in the wall. He's a free thinker, even though this particular manifestation was lowly.
We read stories about Blackbeard, Jack the Ripper and The Great Train Robber. They make for some of the best stories. But we rarely consider what type of people these characters are.
Stewart Richardson was one of those guys, merely under different circumstances.
Best of luck to those that were taken at recovering your booty. And luck to Mr. Richardson, wherever he may be running, because the only stories as interesting as criminals pulling off the big one, are criminals getting nabbed by The Good Guys.
Admit it. Elliot Ness in The Untouchables was a bad ass
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Winner of Auction sends money to Auction House, which holds said money.
The Auction House notifies the Seller that payment has been received.
The Seller then Ships the item using a certified carrier(UPS, FEDEX, etc.), and requires a signature.
When Item is received, Auction house contacts buyer to confirm receipt, and then transfers money to Seller.
That should solve most problems, but I'm sure there would be holes - please point them out!
I even went so far as to reverse look up the guy's phone number, and check to see if his physical address matched the payment info he gave me. Then, using MapQuest, you can even see if there's a house there (this doesn't have any practical advantage, but at least I could say to myself "I know where he lives...")
Seriously though, in buying expensive items (the item I was buying was $800), it makes sense to use an Escrow service. For a whole $10, and probably an extra day of delay, I *knew* that I would get the product in the condition described, or all of my money back... it just makes sense!
Sorry but you get positive feedback very very easily. you just email the customers saying if you give me positive feedback I'll give you some.. well there it goes, you are guarenteed 1 feedback point on EVERY sale.
Sorry but praise is for when they went above and beyond... did an excellent job and made you orgasmatically happy. otherwist it's nutral.
this is why I put ZERO value on ebay ratings except for negative feedback. someone with 90,000 positive and 20 negative is a shady character to me compared to the guy with 20 good and no negative.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wow, I just opened my browser and this is what I see at the top. I was just going to eBay to check their policies because some guy is trying to charge me $20 shipping (& "handling") for a $2 phone headset. Like an idiot I trusted his feedback rating of ~250 and didn't ask what shipping was.
The auction just said "shipping via UPS ground". So the moral of the story is, always get everything in writing BEFOREHAND.
Have to go see if he's "allowed" to do that...
www.clarke.ca
> ...there was no PayPal or online escrow services, so we employed other tactics to try to ensure that we didn't get ripped off.
I'm not sure everyone would agree that PayPal is a safe way to trade. In fact, I hardly see how there is any security built into the service. If someone rips you off, how much work do you think PayPal is going to do to get your money back? For those who feel the security of their credit cards, think again. After all, PayPal made the charge to your card and PayPal upheld their end of the deal - facilitating currency exchange. I don't see what grounds you would have to stop payment on PayPal who did nothing wrong.
For large amounts, I would much rather use an escrow service.
I love PayPal and have never gotten ripped off, but I am also aware I'm taking a risk. That's why I only use PayPal for small to medium amounts (depending on a seller's rating) and direct credit card payments and escrows for large amounts. Too bad, in this case, the seller had an excellent rating.
(it also recursivly checks any patterns of individuals found by examining their feedback ratings for patterns)
this is what i found on his last 4 auctions: all of these bids were placed on the last day of the auction
edster007 (19) $20.00 Nov-30-01 07:46:45 PST
tennisdoc (416) $21.06 Nov-30-01 12:55:09 PST
edster007 (19) $30.00 Nov-30-01 07:46:07 PST
tennisdoc (416) $32.99 Nov-30-01 12:53:48 PST
edster007 (19) $30.00 Nov-30-01 14:00:09 PST
tennisdoc (416) $31.99 Nov-30-01 12:52:38 PST
edster007 (19) $25.00 Nov-30-01 07:44:09 PST
tennisdoc (416) $31.52 Nov-30-01 12:56:20 PST
while this doesn't mean this guy (whos account im not posting
before people shout 'thats not what the article is talking about' let me point out .. that if this guy (who had over a 90 rating on ebay) WAS doing this .. he has been doing it for at least 6 months. its relativly cheap to win your own e-bay auction .. like 1% or so .. and build up false creadibilty.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
> Why would I buy something from somebody I don't know, and can't get *real* info on.
Because you can't get it anywhere else, that's why. Ebay has a TON of stuff you can't find anywhere for great prices. It all depends on how averse to risk you are. Some people play the lottery, some people use Ebay. Personally, I've had much better luck with Ebay than the lottery.
You might consider an escrow service, such as http://www.escrow.ca/. Much harder to scam somebody that way, I'm sure.
This happens all the time. The person will set up a circle of identities, set up auctions, and use another of the identities to purchase the item. Sometimes it's ony guy, sometimes it's actually a group of buddies. Normally they're small ticket items, and there are many sold in a short time period. The circular bidding buils up a bunch of accounts to high approval ratings.
In checking out someone's feedback, make sure to cross check their buyer's and seller's, and make sure there's not a short-chain of mutual purchases...
Unfortunately, if the person is determined enough, and has the time, they can make a series of auctions like this look very convincing, and it's really hard to track down...
A while ago, I bought a Dell Laptop for $1,000(USD) and it came - working with all the documentation I would ever need. I was very lucky because I didn't use any escrow or anything. My advice to all of you remaining Ebayers... please, use Escrow. I was one of a lucky few.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Maybe they should start a internet manhunt.
This is available. It's called escrow services. eBay offers it (as I'm sure other companies do) and the information is on their eBay escrow page. Of course, as it is an additional service, it costs $$$.
Were they optical? How many buttons? Scroll wheel?
From my understanding of banking rules, the only reason the original poster was able to get the cheque reversed was that the scammer had crossed out 'for deposit only'.
Had he simply deposited it to his bank account, it would have been possible to track the b*st*rd down and harass him like the other victims did, but the bank would have probably been unable/unwilling to reverse the charges.
Consider it a combination of forsight and luck.
I can definitely see the value of putting 'for deposit only' on the back of any cheque going for an ebay purchase. Anybody who refuses that should be immediately considered suspect.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I haven't seen a popup ad since I switched.
... maybe wipe my ass with. Who in their right mind spends that kind of cash in a basically annoymous system. YOu have got to be a moron to do that... duh!
I have sold minor items on Ebay before, under 500, and I have a slew of small computer items (I do hardware reviews for a leading game site... the stuff piles up after a while, might as well make some money since I am not paid any other way) and plan on Ebaying them as well. But, I would never sell something like a 4000+ dollar item that way, just not smart for either party.
You just reinvented Escrow.
If karma points were transferrable from Slashdot to Ebay.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Yeah. The way things are right now, E-bay doesn't have to take responsibility for diddly-squat -- at least that's their claim -- and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if that's the way they like it.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Huh? He couldn't have given you a payphone number? I guess you'd probably know what region he lives in, but that's it.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Maybe I've been watching too much Sopranos, but it kinda looks like one.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Only problem is for cheaper items the buyers usually try to get as cheap a shipping method as possible. Medial mail or parcel post most of the time. When you mention Fedex or UPS they begin to cry about how expensive it is. And if the item comes up missing they cry that you owe them their money back.
I very very nearly got scammed for about $1000. I was very excited about buying an Olympus E10 digital camera. i was too excited, I kept ignoring the clues of a scam.
.)
first Clue: seller ignored pre-sale email asking questions.
second clue: After I won the auction seller insisted on Western Union. When I protested at the high transaction fee ($75) on the ~$1000 purchase. He very cheerfully offered to pay it himself. Again in my niave excitement ignored this.
third : refused to accept a cashiers check
fourth : used copy and pasted info in item description
fifth : claimed to be from boston, but mis-spelled Massachusettes (I cannot spell either but I am not from there. . . )
sixth: no feedback/transaction (I figured you gotta start somewhare. .
Anyway I lucked out solely because God and Western Union were looking out for me. WU called two minutes after I confirmed and said the name I was wiring money to was on their fraud list. So while I was lucky there must have been a few before me who were not.
Just thought I would share my somewhat off topic story in hopes it will save an over eager ebay buyer from trouble.
-MS2k
It's easy to get scammed on ebay. This happened to a friend of mine.
A seller put a brand new digital camcorder on ebay. After winning the auction the seller said he wanted cash (cashiers check) but would take a credit card number for deposit and ship the camcoder for him to look at.
The seller orders a camcorder using my friends credit card from a online shop and has it shipped to him. The shipping information and the credit card billing information match so the online shop had no problem shipping it.
He got the the camcorder and was happy so he sent the cashiers check.
Imagine his surprize when he got his credit card statement. He could have returned the camcorder (it came from a legit business and it was what he wanted so he kept it.)
He lost the money he sent (~$800.00).
Be Careful
AdFuel
OK, Anonymous Submitter, please explain. You bought something costing several thousand dollars, and you didn't think to use an escrow service? Kind of sloppy.
I used to buy/sell on Ebay - mainly computer equipment and such. Now, I only do it at www.arstechnica.com's Agora section in their user forums.
Why? It's a VERY trusted community with moderators who are committed to ensuring proper sales and purchases. They frequently post a known bad trader list and deal with trolls effectively (props to Leavitron and SuperDave). Mass sales are strongly discouraged and are frankly forbidden w/out prior approval. Nothing like this story would happen there (well, not impossible, but extremely unlikely).
The other main difference is that people aren't looking to profit from sales at the Agora. They're all computer enthusiasts with extra equipment lying around, usually eager to help others who may have a need for their surplus.
Feedback ratings are also handled, albeit through seperate websites (props to Mudboy).
Bottom line: it pays to know your seller/buyer either directly or indirectly through a community and trade in a place where greed is discouraged.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
This guy actually arranged to meet two of his buyers in a Phoenix airport to take them to the estate auction. He had a real brick and mortar store with staff. The guy even left his wife behind. Escrow is the only thing that would have saved these people because even a government background check would have probably cleared this guy.
So this will only get worse when an ebay merchant dies and the heirs realize that his 9000 positive feedback is worth a quick 20grand on the black market. What's to stop that? Or a merchant themselves realize they can get a little extra retirement juice by selling their account to the mob.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Yes... I saw this for sale on Ebay last year, in a nice spanish jar with cork top no less (funny picture as a highlight no less). Highest bid was at 300 bucks or so. After wiping up the floor from my spittle from laughing so hard, I kept tracking it in it's final hours.
The auction was halted prematurely a few minutes before the scheduled end by the owner. LOL...
I don't think you are the only ones to do test auctions... *grin*
but I used that iEscrow service.. costs a little more than pay pal.. and getting your money back when the seller goes AWOL isn't a walk in the park, but at least I got my money back.. and it was never really in jeapordy. I think they got bought out or closed.
Respect to this guy man, what a scam..
,
-I can only program my video,ahh, I am not a gook, but a joook -The World is a theatre of the absurd
You've had good experiences with Discover when dealing with fraud charges and other problems? Hmm.
Discover is my primary credit card. But I didn't really think of them as a company that had really strong fraud protections. I've put some decidedly odd things on my Discover card over the years, way outside my "normal buying patterns" both in type and cost of stuff, and never had Discover show any wish for ID verification or anything like that.
Now, I've never had any fraud problems with my Discover card, so I haven't had to deal with their customer service people on that subject, but the lack of hassle in putting odd things on the card has made me think they wouldn't be as useful as other cards might be in case of fraud or other problems.
Of course, on the flip side, I had a problem with that on a VISA card, recurring fraudulent charges over several months, and that took *way* too much effort to resolve. (Is it so complicated to "cancel this account number, issue a new card on a new account number and DON'T ACCEPT NEW CHARGES ON THE OLD NUMBER" ??? They linked the old acct # to the new acct, and passed new fraudulent charges right along to the new account.)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
You can get to the max bid by bidding up the minimum increment over and over.
Let's say somebody's max is $50 and the current is $20. The increment is $1. If you bid $21 it will say you have been outbid and the current bid is $22. When you get to $50 it will still tell you that you have been outbid because bids are first come, first serve but it will then say that the current bid is $50 and not $51. You know right them what the other person's maximum is.
I buy a TON of promo and out of print CDs and albums on ebay. Stuff that I cannot find at stores even in NYC or Boston where I do shop. The reason? These out of print titles are in the hands of individuals, not retailers.
pronoblem
Scenario 4: Lost $100,000 on online blackjack and then tried to recoup it on an NFL game. Scheme failed so the got the f out of Detroit.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Would it help to prevent what you are saying by bidding $51.13 or some other odd amount?
these online auction thingys sound pretty darn fishy to me.... me? i prefer to go to a shop to buy my goods, or failing that, Loot.com and get the goods in person. Thats how I got my brand "new" iBook 600... for £850... though i very much doubt it was purchased legit.... :) oh well, it works all the same, and I'm very very very happy with it.
True, I may have been able to get the same iBook off ebay for less, but a) I was scared of losing my money b)the price will increase as more and more people bid for it...
It pays to check out your options before you buy anything, that applies to both buying online and in real life.
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
Yawn. Go to the eBay site and learn about a concept called "proxy bidding."
I've bought several (20-30) items via ebay, mostly in the $10-$25 range. So far, I haven't had any major problems.
There was one auction where after I paid the money, I didn't hear from the seller for quite a while. I contacted the outher buyers (it was a Dutch auction - single seller, multiple identicle items, multiple buyers), and none of them had heard from the seller either. There was nothing we could do at first (ebay makes you wait 30 days before you can file a fraud complaint). After a week or two, the seller contacted me, said he had a family emergency, then sent me two of the item I'd bought, for the price of the one.
</useless comments>
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Well what I am saying is that it's unlikely that the seller would know where to stop. Perhaps they decided that they earned enough and stopped. What sold me on it was when something was so way overpriced and the seller would have to know that it was and it still went almost to the max bid.
If I know something is worth $1 and I see it's going for $50 and I going to keep upping the bid? I might go over and lose whoever was legitimately bidding that much. I think it's unlikely that a seller would want to take that risk, especially when he had already pulled 5 times what he was expecting.
"Based on conversations with other buyers, Ms. Schweickert estimates that Mr. Richardson may have collected as much as $400,000 for items that were never received. The person familiar with the law-enforcement investigation says the actual figure may be closer to $225,000."
I don't get it. Why steal so little money, when you have to trade your whole life for it ? He's giving up his business, home and family. Apparently it was worth it, but I think it's a lousy trade...(well I haven't met his wife).
I mean, you can't live a good life in the US for a few hundred Ben Franklins, can you ? You need a home, cars and an addition to this you need to acquire a false identity. Unless he's moving abroad to some country where $ is gold, he'd be better off continuing his business.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
This sucks for those of us that do a lot of shopping via eBay.. but if people can con you at garage sells, this is no different..
But the trick is that using the system I described you pretty much can't overbid. Once your bid is equal to the persons max bid you stop. If you did go over then you just say it was a non-paying bidder and leave negative feedback for yourself.
Please know that I am in no way endorsing this and I have never used the bid to max method for evil purposes.
It sounds to me like eBay should implement a Web of Trust idea like GnuPG or Thawte. Everybody is associated with identities and those identities are trusted more or less depending on other people's evaluations of them. You'd also know who validated who so that there is more responsibility when it comes to saying, "This person is safe to deal with." The more effort it takes to build up your identity which is tied to some sort of official identification (gov't. issued ID, for example) the more likely you'll play right with that identity.
The feedback system is like a lame version of the web of trust idea.
I'd want eBay to keep track of trust levels depending on actual identification of some sort which people they already trust have validated in person (just like, for example, what Thawte does). And if someone ends up being a bad validator along the way, they get some of their validator power taken away.
This seems like it would at least be a step in the right direction. Maybe there are already auction/selling sites out there that do this. Anyone know of them? Unfortunately, eBay is the big-name company which gets more exposure, so it's hard (as a seller) to go to another site.
[of course its edited to protect the parties]
t ml).
l )
*the seller*,
I visited the local post office and had them verify the shipping cost. The US Postal worker said that shipped box which weighed 2.84lbs cost $5.20, from your description ("Insurance is included and required"). The US Postal worker also informed me that the item was not insured for any amount whatsoever, also when items are insured a "blue" form is attached with a tracking number. If you have the "blue" form, please send me the tracking number, to let me know that the US Postal Worker assisting me made a mistake.
[Note: After we talked on the phone, he admitted that item was not insured.]
If you have "lost" or "disposed" of the insurance
form, I am only going under the guides of the US
Postal Worker's professional experience, who has told me that this shipped item was not insured.
Futhermore, I hate to tell you that the merchandise is counterfeit as helped defined by ASUS (I reviewed ASUS's web site,
http://usa.asus.com/inside/Techref/right.h
[Note: I found this by accident, I had to flash the bios to support the AMD XP chip so I was surfing ASUS web site.]
Here's the evidence, I gather to define the Asus A7A 266 motherboard ("item") you sold is "Unauthorized" by Asus:
- There's no product serial number on the box
- Printed circuit board manufacture is not printed on the back of the board
- Bios label is square in shape
- Product serial number is not on the mainboard
The only thing that makes it "ASUS Authentic".
- Product wrapper stylizes in square shape
In response, to you posting postive feedback. The
auction ended "Jan-15-02 06:58:10 PST", I paid for the item "Jan 15, 2002 07:54:48", that is a same day payment and within an hour after winning. Of course, I should have positive feedback because I carried out my deal promptly. (Refer to PayPal #ID. #??????????????)
[Note: He was pissed that he gaved me a positive feedback and I gave him negative feedback.]
A resolution I highly recommend to completely
extinguish my legal persuit against *the seller*
would be a refund of my $107.92 and in addition $14.95 (for shipping and handling the item back to you) and $2.00 for insurance. The grand total would be $124.87, this amount maybe transferred electronically via PayPal or through a money order.
(I suggest reading eBay's User Agreement "Section 5.3 Fraud" http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/png-user.htm
If you are in the sales department or customer
assistance of *the seller*, I'd prefer to have a further discussion with your manager or someone in the legal department regarding this eBay transaction.
In light of this email, if you still need to resolve this transaction over the phone. I will be delighted to entertain a phone call which will be 100% recorded in its entirety.
*myself*
----
I sent the item back COD, he refused to accept the item. Thirty-days after the auction, I contacted eBay for a refund, I am still waiting for them to do something. Since he mailed the item via the USPS, I would have a nice case of fraud against him.
My pursuit isn't for the money, its actually against the idea that people use eBay to scam items. I have no problem spending $$$ in fraud case against him at all.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
Why not just dress up a real mouse as an American Indian and ship it?
Are payphones still callable somewhere in the US?
Actually, I hesitate to call these scams - but more on the level of "selling an article to a person that could be had cheaper somewhere else". Let me show you a perfect example:
Look up electric bicycle motor on Ebay. Now, I am going to pick an auction that doesn't "die" until the 28th so that others can see what I mean - I am picking the last one on that list - click here.
Now, look at that picture of the "dual motor" at the bottom - seems pretty cool, huh? Pretty professional, get a little kit and convert your bike to electric. Cost doesn't seem too bad (if you have priced EV bikes before) - heck, "Buy It Now" is only $1.00 over starting bid - so this motor combo, a cheap bike from WalMart or a garage sale, and a cheap gel-cel battery - and I can have my own electric bike for under $200.00!
The motor only cost $93.00...
Now - go here, and on the left hand side select Battlebot Parts - or click here to see them. Now, go down to the fourth item on that page - look familiar?
MECI sells the exact same thing for $40.00! Just above it is the battery you need (actually, you will need two of them for enough amps to go far enough - and really, this isn't the best motor system to use, but might be fun to play around with).
So, here is an example of an eBay seller using their own ignorance against them.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the "way" of our capitalistic society - middlemen, etc everywhere always scamming for a buck. You see this on Ebay a lot - cheesy CDs of "info found no where else" (yeah right, just everywhere on the internet) - these I would take more seriously if they were selling the CDs as "fruits of labor for scouring the Net" - at least then it could be seen as an internet information gathering service thing. You also see it in the multitude of "plans" showing how to build a 100" projection TV with a special lens (but, you do get the lens - nevermind the fact that plans are everywhere to do this, it uses nothing new, and the lens can be had cheaper at the local Walmart).
These guys aren't typically shut down because they do offer a real product, and actually sell it - and people love it!
Another "scam" - I have seen sellers of SDRAM bidding for memory on other auctions - sometimes within hours of their own auctions - for the same type of RAM - they buy the RAM cheap from another auction, then resell it the same day for a profit to other bidders (and typically, for much more money than they could find it for on Pricewatch).
Many times I have wondered if I could pull these same kind of "deals" off - and each time I stop thinking about it, because it just isn't in my "moral fabric" to rip people off - I would rather tell them where to get it cheaper.
I guess that is one reason why I will never own a business - I am too honest for my own "good"...
bleh.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I've been an eBay seller for 3 years. I started off selling stupid things like Apple IIe manuals. I've gotten pretty good at it too an in my 3 years I've probably sold about 1000+ items. Not bad for an 18 year old (yea technically I should only have had an account for like 2 months now). Well anyways in those 3 years I've learned 3 things: Ebay buyers are stupid Ebay buyers are stupid Ebay buyers are stupid Why? I have a form for people to fill out and return if they use a money order. 1 out of 10 of my money order based transcations come without that form and I'd say probably 1 in 20 of those come without an address on the money order or the envelope. Now lets think about this. No mention of what item you bid on, what your ebay ID is or what your address is. How do these people think I figure out what they're paying for. Worse than getting ripped off buy a seller is ripping yourself off on ebay. I try to figure them out, but most of the $$$ I just keep since I dont have a clue what it goes to. -Tim
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
I'm going to sell "Ebay fraud secrets" on e-bay.
/. and call it even.
Print out a nice laser copy of the url to this
Honestly, I like e-bay a lot. For hard to find and specialty computer hardware, it's hard to beat.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
I don't see much point in defrauding people for $250k and disappearing. That's not enough money to retire on comfortably, but it is enough money to make the guy a wanted man, and it will make it pretty tricky for him to hold a normal job.
DMT? New one for me. Perhaps you mean LDS?
Meanwhile, you have no qualms about spending fifty (or more) dollars every time a new Quake or Duke Nukem or whatever else is released, despite the fact that it is invariably identical to every other "FPS" game that has hit the shelves since the early nineties. Then, you all get together in a heartwarming circlejerk and extoll the virtues of this "new" game and, in many cases, defend it as being "educational" or (snicker) "a sport". This is, of course, not counting the $400 you also spent on a new video card in order to properly experience this re-hashed game.
The vast majority of you have absolutely no right to judge anyone else's stupid hobbies.
Still defensive? Three more words: Dungeons and Dragons.
But now we are shown that all these games are exactly that - games. A better thinking person decided to create and develop his online character of auction seller! He spent considerably less time on that, probably less money as well - and as result he ran away with a wad of cash! Pragmatism wins again.
Check it out.
eBay View User Feedback for rfenetquest
I'm sure there would be holes - please point them out!
The hole is that it costs 2%, yet much fewer than 2% of sales are scams. If you are a high volume trader, the law of large numbers will work to your benefit when you don't use escrow services.
You can see the reserve prices and max bids and all sorts of other "hidden" things if you dig through the page source...
Wanna buy a camera? I only accept cash. :D
You should use Winning Bid Pro [umklaydet.com] to do the last minute bidding for you. I use it all the time. Just set up the bid you are willing to make and have it send it in 10 seconds before the auction ends. That way you don't drive the price up ahead of time. Sometimes someone has a max bid higher than yours, or is using a bidding program the same as you and you get beat.
Thanks for the tip! Nine seconds it is!
"And like that
Complain to Ebay? "Ebay is only a venue, sorry"
Complain to Paypal? "What, your account was involved in a fraudulent transaction? We'd better freeze yours too and take the money in it"
"The story is much more involved, so I won't go into the rest of it."
Too late.
Mind you, these are this year's models, and are worth a little less.
1 _b .jpg
0 /m189_b .jpg
Main site:
http://www.weeforestfolk.com/index2.html
football player mouse, $72:
http://www.weeforestfolk.com/images/new2000/ms2
mouse with fairy, $475:
http://www.weeforestfolk.com/images/1news5.jpg
"Little mice who lived in a shoe", $428:
http://www.weeforestfolk.com/images/new200
Purchasing these on eBay and getting scammed -- $175 (article says that's what eBay's insurance pays out if you get scammed).
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Don't make the limit too short, or your bid won't make it in at all! You need some time for it to get from your machine to eBay's and get processed before the time runs out. I sometimes have to up it 15 seconds due to network congestion.
I've used it to successfully purchase a large ticket item through an eBay user and am very happy with it.
EBay says that fraud is a persistent problem, but the company adds that it affects fewer than 0.01% of the millions of transactions the auction site handles every year.
0.01%? Am I the only one who thinks that's a little low? Given that I've completed maybe 20 purchases on ebay, and was cheated on 2 of them...I dunno, I have a hard time believing that I'm all *that* different from the standard bargain-hunter on ebay.
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
I haven't touched ebay for the fact that my brother has been scammed three times in (most likely, but not sure) 20-25 buys. In my eyes that is too much a risk.
Why do you think there are so many movies and books, some of them quite good, where criminals are the protagonists?
That was my point when I accused bravehamster of watching too many hollywood movies and reading too much pulp fiction.
I guess I'm just not impressed by con men. I mean, how hard is it to be phony anyways? I sort of consider manipulating others for personal gain as the default configuration for most poeple -- at least on ebay.
IMHO, used car salesmen and multi-level marketers aren't engaging in art, anymore than someone who gorges himself on hot dogs. You may be *the best* at it, but it's still pretty gross. I admit that a lot of people (everyone, sometimes) likes to watch these things from a sense of voyeurism or atavism -- hence the pulp/hollywood reference. So I was claiming, in my post, that bh let bad taste in pulp interfere with his sense of outrage. I admit, my post was kinda rude, but I did understand the point..
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
A few months back, I was watching auctions for Dreamcast broadband adaptors. One auction caught my eye because the seller was in the same city as I was. I thought it was great, because I could potentially save shipping.
Then I watched the people who bid on it. Some guy bid the BBA up to 400$ USD. There are many actions where the BBA is 120$ or so... and the original winner who had it for 120$ dutifully followed that account in up-bidding it. The end result? A very suspicious transaction which I reported.
eBay downplayed it.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Thanks for the plug. Have some Karma.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I'm one of them! At least I try to be.
The fact of the matter is that I just flat out enjoy being an honest businessman. Why? Because, to me, it means that I'm a good businessman. Its like beating the game, without using a cheat code. Anything else is just contemptable.
I use ebay and PayPal, and I dont even lose sleep at night. Why? Because I'm the seller and I know I'm an honest person. Yes, customers try to rip me off, but I know how to cover my ass. And even if I give up a few of my product.. I'm still making great $$$. No biggie. But I'm young, single, and I only play on eBay in my off hours. I can afford to be honest. Right now I have lots of luxuries that I probably wont have 20 years from now when the mob says to me "Nice eBay account...".
Never underestimate the dark side of the Force...
Gaussboy
Magnets make the world go round!
Payphone numbers all end in -9xxx. He'd know if it was a payphone.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Often, the same game/book/whatever will come up periodically, but it's trading at above what I want to pay for it.
So, I bid "random" amounts--but they're not really random. I'll bid things like $9.55 or $19.60, because most people will put in round number bid ceilings. The rule is, of course, to bid less than one bid increment (which varies by current bid) below what you suspect the maximum bid is. If the current bid becomes less than one bid increment more than what you bid, you've found the ceiling.
Sometimes, you get "caught" with the high bid, but the original bidder will usually come back with a higher bid. I've done this perhaps a hundred times, and never ended up holding the winning bid after crossing a ceiling.
Why do this? It may not be simple, but here goes:
Scummy? I dunno. I didn't choose to put that max bid in there: they did. Nor do I ever have to weasel out if I win a bid: I will always pay if I win an auction--but that rarely happens.
eBay goes in cycles. By inflating prices at another bidder's expense and to another seller's benefit, I can usually get a better price on the same or a similar item in a week or two. The trick to successfully using eBay is to LET THE ITEM GO when it gets too rich for you. There will be other ones, honest.
I dont get it, for as long as Ebay has been out this is the first instance of this? Or something this big? You figure with all the scamsters out there this would have been done long ago or someone would have thought of controls for this. Imagine the reaming if this was a Microsoft owned site, people would go on and on about how they knew and should have done something.
At any rate. Its kinda strange how because this is one guy people are looking, tracking, and doing things to punish. But with something on a grand scale, same principle, Enron people just wander around with a blank stare and the same crook(s) get away.
Could be coincidence or could just be idiots. I saw an item that the had been listed at $22, and sat there for a week, no bids. The seller then relisted it the next week at the same price. I figured nobody else wanted it, but I bid $25 just in case. Well what do you know, some idiot comes along and outbids me in small increments until he reached $26. Which is completely stupid because the seller had more than one identical item listed! The other one had no bids, so right before the auction closed I bought the other one. This is so incredibly stupid, I doubt it was malicious. It's just hard to believe that people are so stupid, but they are, and it happens all the time. Stuff will get no bids, and as soon as I bid some idiot will outbid me. If I outbid them they will outbid me again. People are just incredibly stupid.
From the 14th of Sept, 2001:V iewBids &item=1272000907
i ewItem& item=1273489939
http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?
xxzman11xx (1) $405.01 Sep-12-01 07:04:12 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $400.01 Sep-13-01 21:35:36 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $350.04 Sep-13-01 21:34:49 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $300.01 Sep-13-01 21:34:12 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $250.02 Sep-13-01 21:33:38 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $229.01 Sep-13-01 21:32:56 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $175.01 Sep-13-01 21:32:13 PDT
roxythewolf (-1) $155.01 Sep-13-01 21:31:38 PDT
bergmueller (49) [star] $130.00 Sep-11-01 11:55:58 PDT
Why did this -1 user go and bid hundreds more than it is worth? This person
seems involved in a few Sega Dreamcast Broadband auctions. The device
itself was ~59$ USD on sega.com when they sold them, now they usually sell
for 100 - 130$ USD -- NOT 405$ USD!
See also:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?V
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"The story is much more involved, so I won't go into the rest of it."
;)
thanks for keeping the news submission so short and to the point
This sig intentionally left blank.
This is offtopic but really made the morning "stop". There was a banner for a missing little girl, Danielle. She's been gone now for 20 days or so. It made me sad and sick to think that there are people who kidnap children (there has been an arrest already). They are looking for people to help in searches. If you're in California and can help, please do.
An example is the Sept. 11 attacks. Terribly wrong, and yet also a very ingenious idea.
Another example would be the Uni-bomber. Even though I can't respect his actions, I can respect the fact that he was able to mail bombs to people for YEARS without getting caught.
Most great crimes are like this...they are terrible, and because of that many people fail to see the greatness that is there.
If I am buying anything over a few £'s in value on ebay I tend to ask for the sellers number at home and at work. I can then call them a couple of times to arrange delivery etc. and also validate the phone numbers.
I can then check the address they give me (to send payment to) against the one held in the phone book for their name and number.
I usually end up with their home address (validated), home and work phone numbers, their employers name, their job title and their e-mail address. I feel that with this amount of information if anything was to go wrong, I would be able to do something about it.
Just my 2c.
People are asking if he had a bunch of fake accounts to get a high rating. Why would he need to? He had the account for 5 years. He just got $250,000. That is $50,000 a year...not a bad salary.
Imagine: You sit on your computer all day long buying & selling things. Always be friendly, always ship promptly, rack in the ratings. Soon you have a really high rating (and it is legit). Now rip a bunch of people off and make a load of money. So easy...just takes patience
one of you wanker moderators send mail to that loser michael and tell him to close the f'n italics tag on the front page. I'm not the first person to mention it but I hope I'm the last.
losers.
AntiChristX
Daring to remain below 5 karma indefinitely
Whilst not breaking any rules, this is a rather anti-competitive behaviour that will not be appreciated by the seller or the other bidders.
You should also realise that earlier bids of the same amount take precidence. Given this, you're more likely to get the item for a low price if you bid earlier.
Actually, this is no different than being at a live auction and not jumping in until the auctioneer says "going twice". It's called not tipping your hand, and is what most smart bidders do. While earlier bids of the same amount take precidence, and I may lose an item or two this way, remember that I'm bidding the max I'm willing to pay anyway. If I get it, great. If I don't, oh well. If you don't approach auctions with this type of attitude, you'll spend way too much money in the long run. All those, "What's another $5.00" add up after a while. Buying at auction takes discipline to do well.
Troll? Who? I would never post a troll here. I have the utmost respect for good discussion sites!
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Just lurking, thanks!
If you think this is happening, how about withdrawing your bid near the end so that the shill EBay account ends up having to buy the item?
Well this gyu wanted to buy a new car, so he looked on Ebay.
He saw a two year old BMW for sale for $5!
Thinking it had to be a mistake but curious he called the woman selling the car and asked if she was the one selling the car? "yes it's me" she replied. The guy asked about the prize "five dollars just as i wrote" she replied he asked if there was anything wrong with the car or something, but everything was apparently perfectly ok!
So he got over to her place (she lived just nearby) and rang the door-bell. The woman opened the door, "I'm coming to buy the car" he said "sure come right this way" she told him and took him out to the garrage, and there stood a almost brand new big fat BMW "Ok and the price?" he said doubtfully, "5 bucks, just as I said in the phone" "ok here 5 bucks but can I just ask you one thing?" he asked "How come your selling this car for 5 bucks?" "well my husband left me last week with his secretary and I've jsut recieved this letter where he tells me to sell all his things and send him the money"
Yes. There are some in San Francisco, at the very least.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I know exactly what you are talking about, but let's be honest you wouldn't bid up to almost $100 dollars on an item that you thought would be worth at the most $50. If it's the seller, he is going to bump it until he feels he is close to the max bid, but not at the cost of going over.
I know all about proxy bidding, that's not what I beleive is happening here.
Yeah look some scam artist is trying to sell segways for 100k!!
gadgetophile.com
Umm, at a live auction, if you jump in at "going twice", then the item is no longer going to be sold in a few seconds. Others bidders can outbid you at their leisure. It is much different on eBay, where there is a "hard" limit on the auction duration, and after that time has expired, then no more bids will be accepted.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
From the Wall Street Journal:
"Ms. Murray says she and her family have found evidence on Mr. Richardson's computer that her husband was gambling over the Internet. She says she thinks that he may have had gambling debts."
Gambling, drugs, or a blonde mistress could all explain why a good eBayer would set up a scam like this.
Haven't you guys ever heard of the escrow services that ebay is now tied to ? It would help you avoid these big dollar scams. I've lost a total of $10 to bad traders over the years, because anything over $100 I use an escrow service for... Look into it if you value your money.
ElecMoHwk
CEO / Founder Dashin.org
While this was two weeks ago I dunno if you'll get to it, but you need to learn something about Shill Bidders. There's a few usenet newsgroups where this often comes up and the people on rec.collecting.coins regularly hunt down and report shills. A shill is another bidder or account set up by the seller, if they see it work once on you, they'll try it again. Look for bidders who always seem to bid on one sellers auctions and occasionally cancel bids. If their shill fails and they keep the item and pay the fees, they more than make up for those if they get you, i.e. $15 game for $96
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar