eBay Fraud Vigilantes

firstadopter.com writes "New York Times (free registration needed) is reporting that users are sick of internet fraud on eBay. With lack of help from the company, they are taking the law into their own hands and closing down auctions they think are obvious scams."

Comments

Re:Expensive Electronics Cheap Scams, not taken do

[MoonBuggy]

You make a very fair point, but unfortunately the sites they link to are near always scams run by the people eBaying the links. Several times at work people have told me they're on a list to get x, y or z item cheaper than we are selling it - I enquire what site the list is on and type it into the browser only to find it's mysteriously disappeared off the web. Having said that, if the person selling it doesn't own the site in question then they are not in the wrong since they may earnestly belive that all of the people will recieve their items at 5% of retail value.

Bidding qualification?

[LostCluster]

One reason why people are able to place a $2.5 million bid to try to kill off an auction they think is fraudulent is that it doesn't cost anything to place a over-high bid on eBay.

Maybe eBay should set some threshholds at which point bids require a deposit in escrow in order to justify a large bid, money that is returned if the bid doesn't win, but is lost if the transaction doesn't close because its withdrawn while being the high bidder.

Re:What were they expecting?

[synergy3000]

I've put faith in those online auctions and have not been scammed in over 150 plus auctions. Mostly sales, a few purchases. If you are careful with who you buy from and walk away from deals too good to be true you should be fine. As for readily exploitable mechanisms like Paypal its a fricking bank account. If you lose your check book, your credit card number or even your SS number you can get exploited. Its not like it is all that much easier through paypal. Email scams have been asking for bank account numbers and what not in addition to paypal passwords. Run and hide in a cave and have no contact with the outside world and then your "financial assets" will be safe.

Ebay has fallen a long ways i n my book

[cpex]

I liked ebay when it was just people selling second hand items, businesses selling surplus etc. Ever since the ebay business model sprung to life ebay imho sucks. Sure they let something like a cell phone faceplate go for $2.00 that you would pay $15 for in the mall. ut then they hit you with a $8 to $10 s/h fee, and you get it in an envlope with 0.95 postage marked on it. They are just using the shipping and handling fee to insure their profit. And good luck if something is broken or incorrect when it comes back with these mega sellers of cheap crap, they glady will take the negative feedback point as it will be lost in the thousands of others were they didnt screw up. And the scams are unblievable. Instructions to build your own projection tv, wholesaler list. errr

Re:What were they expecting?

[Penguin's Advocate]

I've used ebay and paypal to buy and sell a lot of things, and never had any problems whatsoever. Then one day my brother decided to buy a computer on ebay (which I do regularly). He found a good system for a good price, looked entirely legit, plenty of positive feedbacks for the same or similar computers, my friend built a similar system for himself for around that same price. So it looked legit, but my bro is now out $1060 with no computer and the guy has disappeared, and the weirdest part is, the guy contacted my brother 2 months later, after fraud charges had long been filed with paypal, ebay, and the IFCC, and told him that he was embarrassed by this and promised to ship the computer the next day, which of course he did not. But WHY would he do that? He didn't ask for more money or try to sell anything else, he just promised to ship it after we'd already done everything we could think of to get him.

On that note, don't ever buy anything from StudentCompSolutions.com, Jeff Bellisimo, or jeffyjimmy@*.*
And if anyone lives near 5150 Argus Dr. in LA, and would like to pay Jeff a visit for me I'd be much obliged.

Start a new E-Bay

[randomErr]

Vigilanties usually don't fix a problem. They almost always make things worse. If one person is saying an auction is real and another says they are fake then who should you believe? The answer is no one, go other to Yahoo! Auctions or somewhere else.

E-bay will have to restructure and get rid of these fake auctions or die.

So which will it be e-Bay?

Re:I used to vigilante too

[PhotoBoy]

I run a webmail system and I caught someone signing up multiple accounts and creating fake auctions on eBay. He had about 50 accounts when I caught him. I tried reporting the accounts he'd created to eBay but they didn't reply.

So instead I locked all his accounts and put an auto-responder message on them. This auto-responder would explain to the sender that the guy was a con-artist and that they should not under any circumstances send him money.

I wish I could have seen his face when he realised he'd lost all his correspondance with people he was planning to con.

Re:Expensive Electronics Cheap Scams, not taken do

[EinarH]

Yup, it's a pyramid scheme. They call it "a matrix" but it's the same shit in a new wrapping.

Some of the schemes invlove selling of ebooks other are driven entirely like a pyramid with people entering at a low cost, below $50, and then relying on the "members" (fraud victims) marketing the scheme to get their goods.

Examples of schemes like this:
Electronicmatrix.com or Ezdeal4u.com

eBay great for the right stuff

[tomatoguy]

I've been on eBay for I think 5 years now (feedback rating of 530+), buying memorabilia for a particular marque of British auto. Like another poster I buy pretty small things and out of nearly 1000 transactions I've had only a couple items in my "Stiffed" file - 1 from a seller who (apparently) died, 3 or 4 lost in the mail, and a 2 from a seller that was woefully disorganized for their volume. I've paid by PayPal, US$ cheque and cash, and only 1 payment went astray and it was a cheque that I cancelled. I have sent money to various spots around the world that would make people a bit leery, but anything like this is a gamble. I deal in a niche, not in the mainstream consumer products market, so that's probably why my experience is so good. Nobody's wanting to get rich off the stuff I buy. People chasing "deals" on the same stuff everyone else is chasing will always be targets for the unscrupulous.

Re:I used to vigilante too

[haraldm]

These FUDs against "fun bidding" are void, at least here in Germany. According to German law (Fernabsatzgesetz), you can devoid a remote buying contract within 14 days without any specific reason.

As far as eBay, these folks don't take their own terms and conditions serious. I don't remember how often I reported one specific seller due to duplicate auctions (still forbidden according to the German terms and conditions). All I get is form e-mails. A day or two later, the seller usually changes all but one of the dupes completely, and continues as usual. This specific seller also attempts to bully people in order to avoid negative feedback. eBay did nothing about it. The point is that eBay has a monopoly, and the lack of competition makes them talk not act.

Re:It's a scary world

[dasunt]

It's a scary world when you have to include a disclaimer such as "Yo, it's a joke -- no need to start a super-secret file on me." in a Slashdot post making parody of the president. The Patriot Act has proven far too powerful and unjust.

On Kuro5hin, there was a comment during the anthrax scare about how to assassinate the president of the United States by infecting the vice president with an infectious disease.

The poster of that message received a visit from the United States Secret Service.

From the analysis of that tale, it seems that if you are flagged as a dangerous individual (through, presumably, religion, association with certain political groups, region of origin, etc) and make a nasty comment on a monitored website, the powers that be will investigate.

Scary thought indeed.

fraud

[austad]

Recently, I was looking for a new stove for my kitchen remodel. Over the course of 2 weeks, I found 2 DCS 36" ranges. Typically around $5000. Both sellers had several hundred positive feedback. But their previous items were nothing like the stoves, little trinkets and crap. So I figured the accounts were hijacked.

I emailed the sellers, and both of them offered to end the auction early and sell me the item for $3k, and include free shipping. This thing weighs 700 pounds, and one of them said UPS would ship it and hold it until they get the Western Union money transfer. I looked at the headers in the emails, and every one of them came from somewhere different. A portscan of the originating machine revealed that it was an open proxy, and they were using this to use yahoo mail and hotmail.

Needless to say, I didn't send them any money. One of them wanted to use a specific escrow service. I looked at the domain info, and it had been registered only 4 days before. And they only took western union. Shady as hell.

This is why I propose someone start a site called thugs4hire.com. If you get ripped off, you can send someone over from a network of thugs to beat the living crap out of the scammer.

Re:I used to vigilante too

[mkro]

Cool, you host a free webmail service, and you read peoples e-mail when you are suspicious?
So, how many people from my company/IP would have to register before you feel justified to start reading our mail?