WARNING - Don't believe the adverts!

[mud4fun]

I have just had another bad experience in selling something on ebay. This is now the third bad experience in seven sales so the odds are quite high.

Despite the current UK advertising campaign by Ebay I'd suggest ignoring them. They make out everything is so straightforward and simple - it isn't. There are many illegal or corrupt peope using ebay for various reasons and it is not a safe place.

My latest problem is this:

I was selling my Land Rover project via ebay and the winning bidder had zero feedback and 'private' feedback rating which immediately caused me to wonder what he was about. My terms of payment were very clear and I expected either cash, paypal or cheque and I expected the winning bidder to collect the item. I recieved the following email shortly after the auction ended:

I will like to buy your {Land Rover Defender WOLF

project vehicle}that been posted on the ebay.i will be

very much happy if you can sell it for me,i have seen

the price and it is ok by me.i have made arrangment

for the shipment of the{Land Rover Defender WOLF

project vehicle}as soon as we seal this

transaction.but there"s one more thing i want you to

understand before will proceed this

transaction,there's A client of mine in UK is owing me

some fund in (£6,500}and i have inform him about this transaction and he told me that he will send you a cheque drawn from UK bank in your name and as soon as you receive the cheque and once the cheque is clear,You will deduct the cost of your {£3,250.00}and my remaining balance will be send back to my shipping company via western union money transfer for immediate shipping arrangment.

The reason why i want you to send the remaining

balance to them,is i have some items that i buy in

italy in which they want to ship for me with your{Land

Rover Defender WOLF project vehicle}as soon as the

cheque clear from your bank,so that they can come to

your house for the pick up in your house and the rest consignment i have in italy.the reason i can't tell my cleint to issue me the cheque direct is is that it takes 2 to 3 days for a cashier's cheque to clear in your country while because is cheque from uk bank and it takes a longer time for a cheque to clear in my country in holland.i will want you to reason with me and i need your asistance in this situation because this is the only way i can collect my money from my client,if this is okay with you do get back to me immediately with your full name, contact address and phone full number for me to instruct my client to issue the cheque in your name by tomorow.hope to read from you soonest. Thanks And best regards

Ben

Not only does this not conform to my agreed selling terms but it sounds very illegal, money laundering sort of thing? The winning bidder was also registered in the UK when he is clearly in Italy.

The email is clearly auto generated and of dubious origin, the values and auction description being automatically populated.

Ebay need to sort this out, they must be able to put some forms of protection in the system to stop this happening? it appears not and their payment dispute process is a joke! Ebay have charged me already for this transaction (a considerable fee) and yet I haven't sold it, it is now up to me to prove that the winning bidder was a fraud which ebay won't even consider until weeks after none payment!

Trust me, selling on ebay can be far from easy - never believe the adverts!

[neo]

Just out of interest, whats is this "buyers" name??????

[Sonic]

I know what you mean the advert suggests that the whole ebay experiance is a easy and fun one.

In my own experiance just lately it has been a real pain in the *** and i've even considered termornating my membership and never going back. Not only that but just lately it seems to be getting worse with crooks and scams getting more and more common not only that but i think that most new users just couldn't give a toss about ebays rules or anythig else.

[mud4fun]

Buyers ID was jeneva_inc but he had created that ID just before the auction ended. He had also set his feedback rating as private.

I'd recommend refusing anybody with less than 5 feedback ratings and immediately deleting any bids from buyers with private feedback ratings - after all what are they hiding?

Thing is I was watching the bidding carefully and I would have deleted the bid if I suspected anything but this guy made the bid within 60 seconds of auction ending!

[Hillman666]

Nuts! The same ebayer has supposedly won my mountain bike which ended today! [] Looks like Im in the same situation as you then mud4fun! [8)]

Ive had no contact as yet from him though. How long did he take before he made contact with you? [?]

[Hillman666]

Jeneva_inc is no longer a registered user! [!] That happened quick! He was a registered user when he bid on my bike earlier this afternoon![8)]

Its so annoying that people feel the need to do things like this. It ruins it for everyone else.[!][!]

[Hillman666]

Mud4fun -

I have just been granted my final value fee back straight away. [] I went and filed a non-paying bidder alert and because he is no longer a registered user ebay will credit back any final value fee straight away. No drawn out waiting period in order to get your final value fee back.

I urge you to do the same as Im sure your final value fee was a lot higher then mine!

It still a pain when you get [)]'s like that causing problems. Ive just sent someone a second chance offer on my bike so fingers crossed it sells. []

hope you manage to get your situation sorted quite quickly. []

[mud4fun]

Cheers Mate, I filed a non paying bidder report at about 5:30pm, the email I received arrived within 2 hours of auction end.

I am just about fed up with Ebay, this is not the great experience it used to be. I am seriously thinking about bringing this to the attention of the UK press who I'm sure would delight in bringing ebay down right in the middle of their expensive advertising campaign!!!

It would be interesting to know how many people suffer from such scams etc, for me it is a real pain because I need the money quickly from my sale and now I have to re-list or offer it to other bidders which will now take several more days to get sorted out.

The annoying thing is that I'd been offered a good price the other day by somebody unrelated to ebay but I refused because it would be unfair on the bidders to end my auction early - I don't know why I bother being so considerate or obeying ebay rules and regulations when ebay don't bother to enforce or regulate their own system properly against the fraudsters.

[ChrisB]

This is a worrying trend. I currently have a 1:1 car up for sale on ebay, but was very careful to specify that anyone with low or negative feedback rating should contact me first - people still bid with a 1 or 2 rating. I'm also suspiscious as none of the bidders have contacted me to ask about viewing the car or asking any questions - this is after I put in large red letters several times that buyers are advised to view the car or at least ask questions before bidding, as they are bidding to buy and not kick the tyres / change their minds later etc.

I have clearly stated in the auction I will deal only with cash or Paypal buyers who collect the car in person and also reserved the right to end the auction early. Luckily I have set a reserve on the car and have a non - ebay person interested in the car, so I doubt it will reach the reserve judging by the bidding at the moment.

I am concerned about last minute snipe bids from buyers with dodgy feedback profiles. If this happens I won't be able to remove the bids before the auction ends.

In light of what people have posted here I am tempted to end the auction 10 minutes early if it hasn't reached the reserve - whilst not strictly "fair" I would expect any genuine buyer of an £8K+ car to have contacted me at least by email before bidding, so I doubt I will be deterring any genuine buyers.

Is it within ebay rules to request that ALL bidders on an item contact you first before placing a bid, and then stating that anyone who does not do this will have their bid removed?

I have been lucky so far, but I don't like the way ebay is going - more fraud, higher fees and less protection for genuine sellers - maybe it is time ebay had a wakeup call....

Chris

[netsmithUK]

Seen these sort of emails before - its obviously a stock template, where they just do a global replace on the item title and value - I guess thats why the formatting is a bit odd and sometime the it just doesn't quite make gramatical sense

maybe we should make out own spoof ebay ad and spread it via the internet/email. If it were funny enough enough it would be around the world in 48hrs and probably get more viewers than their advert []

[mud4fun]

LOL, nice one NetsmithUK! That would be funny but sadly we'd probably get into trouble.....

You would have thought they might havespent some time and had the email written in correct English and properly formatted? Considering the bidder had registered as a UK user the English was so bad it had to be from a foreign user and made it obvious it was a scam. I still don't see how it works though? I assume the cheque his 'friend' would send me would be from illegal funds? I wouldn't send him anything until that cheque cleared anyway so I would get my money??? odd scam and in theory I could keep the difference and not send it to him - although you wouldn't really take that chance knowing that the whole thing was probably illegal and run by the mafia or something.....

ChrisB, my auction was also for a 1:1 - a Land Rover, again same sale criteria as you - cash or paypal, local collection etc. The winning bidder who was a fraud sniped the auction too near the end for me to remove the bid.

The fees are also very high now and it is almost not worth it. I reckon I could have sold the vehicle via one of the Land Rover magazines for a cost of about £50. Instead it has cost me over £300 in fees (£80 listing fees, £120 final sale fees and £150 paypal fees!) plus the trouble with the non paying bidder.

I also have a load of workshop equipment such as engine hoists and stuff to go up yet but I think I will put them up via BIN option only and require immediate payment via paypal. That way anybody that bids and doesn't pay doesn't cause a problem as the item is still listed. True it will limit the market but if the price is fair then it should still sell?

The winner bidder had used the email address of benny_macman@yahoo.com and we all know how easy it is to create a new email address. As paypal only use the email address to verify if the person has changed identity the system is worthless.

Ebay need to put in place some serious verification checks even for buyers. After all, sellers have to submit bank details etc to prove that they are legitimate why should we not expect the same of buyers?

Ebay should either require Credit card number and address info which they can then cross check or bank out details and name which again they can check (after all they use this verification already for sellers). It might not stop all the fraud but it would certainly cut down on the number of people abusing the system. It would be easy enough for Ebay to check if that credit card/bank account had already been used on other ID's?

[ChrisB]

Hmmmm Mud4Fun, I think I may be ending my auction 15 minutes early if it hasn't reached the reserve or the high bidder looks suspect at the time - pain in the derriere, but I can't afford to get hit for a few hundred in e-pay fees for no sale.

My car is advertised in several other places and I have people interested so its not the end of the world - its just a shame that ebay now seems to be attracting the scammers in larger and larger quantities.

If you are selling an engine hoist and engine stand I might be interested as long as its possible to fit them in a hatchback (golf), and you don't live too far away (I live in SE London). Don't suppose you have a decent MIG Welder up for sale too do you []?

Cheers,

Chris

[mud4fun]

Hi ChrisB, Sadly I'm too far away from you as I'm right up in North Lincolnshire.

As it happens I have a brand new (4 years ago) and never used top of the range SIP MIG welder, can't remember the model of the top of my head. I never used it as most of my welding was done by a proper welder friend from my engineering days. I bought the new set for use in home workshop but then job move, house move and wife/kids have postponed any further 1:1 vehicle renovations so I'm having to get rid of most of the stuff I won't be needing.

I have a huge 2 ton engine hoist, engine stand, axle stands, MIG welding set, compressor etc. Sadly all of it is BIG HEAVY DUTY stuff for use with Land Rovers and trucks so it won't fit in a hatchback!

You'd need a pickup truck like mine [].

I'm going to stick it all up under a BIN only option for £1K I think. Just going to wait until I have sorted out the problems with my existing sale first [] Got my credit back for the final value fees and I've sent second chance offer to next highest bidder but haven't heard anything back from him either! []

[ChrisB]

Hehe - sounds like its probably overkill for work on a Mk1 golf and an MX-5 [], and as you say I think the distance probably makes it uneconomic for me to collect sadly.

The SIP welder sounds good too - I'm just starting out with welding, but could do with a decent MIG for car bodywork.

Anyway, getting a bit off topic - good luck with the equip sale - I think if you stick with the BIN you should avoid a lot of hassle.

Cheers,

Chris

[PTV70R]

Hi Guys,

Firstly just to clear up this persons scam, the cheque you will be given will more than likely be stolen. If your lucky (or unluckly depending on your view) the cheque will clear, your give him your item and the extra cash and he promptly dissapears. When the account holder (or their bank) realises the cheque is fraudulent it is you who comes under suspicion and gets their name added to the Banks database of customers who have received a stolen cheque. You should remeber that bank accounts are provided for your own private use for your own funds, not for anybody elses use! In the worst case scenario if the funds from the stolen cheque are still in your account (this is complicated but can happen even if you think you have removed them - it all down to the order funds are paid in and out) the Bank may remove them and return same to the paying bank, leaving you out of pocket.

The moral here is never accept cheques via 3rd parties, they could be stolen or you could be aiding money laundering. If you do accept large cheques from strnagers get your bank to special or express clear them. This way you get a definate answer as to whether it has been 'paid' rather than 'cleared' - a cleared cheque has not neccessarily been 'paid' and could still come back unpaid !! The term 'cleared' really means 'cleared for interest and charging purposes' not 'paid'. I.e. the bank will give you value / interest on the funds normally 3 days after it is paid in but if it comes back unpaid you are relying on the post so it could be 10-14 days before you know it is not paid.

Secondly I would personally avoid selling any large, high value item using paypal. You could be paid and release the item only to be told weeks or even months later that it was a fraudulent payment and you would have to pay it back. This is a very easy scam - the person uses a debit card to make payment and gets the goods. Later it may be found out that he used someone elses card so the card holders bank charges it back to paypal who write the money off to bad experience - Ha Ha, not really they come knoocking at your door ! Some dishonest people have even been known to use their own card and then lie to their bank claiming they did not and because there is no signed sales slip guess what, yep its their word against yours and you lose ! This is more common for retailers via mail order type sales. Card holder not present debit card entries can be charged back up to 120 days !

Hope I have not put you off too much and sorry for a long post but if it helps anyone avoid a loss its worth it !!

PS I have done over 200 e-bay trades since April and only 1 non payer (plus one looking doubtfull now).

[mud4fun]

Cheers PTV70R, I guessed there was something fraudulent about the cheque thing anyway as soon as I read the email. I tried to report it to ebay as a none paying bidder (one that didn't want to pay via agreed terms) however ebay won't allow you to post such a claim until 7 days have past!!! what a joke! in the end I waited until the guy was no longer registered user and got my money back straight away.

There is no easy way to report these sorts of things to ebay either. I guess ebay don't care as they make their money even if there are such illegal activities.

I just think that there current advertising campaign here in the UK is wrong, it makes it look so easy and trouble free and that is far from the truth.

You need to have your wits about you when dealing with ebay and many of the general public are not aware of such fraud.

Most of us here on TC use ebay all the time and we are well aware of its shortcomings but most of the general public are not aware. I think it is wrong of ebay and they should make it clear the dangers involved. That thing about checking if the seller has negative feedback on their advert is downright silly, we all know that most people won't leave negatives in fear of getting negatives back. Also these fraudsters either hide their feedback or they simply keep registering under new ID's to keep their 'feedback' records clean.

[ChrisB]

Thanks for the info PTV70R.

I ended up pulling my auction with 10 mins to go - didn't want to take the chance of getting hit for big sellers fees and then be out of pocket. To be honest it didn't look like it was going to hit the reserve anyway.... so its ended up costing me just over a tenner in fees.

I think the resposibility should be on ebay to verify people that register for the service by requiring a UK bank account that can be verified or a credit card. After all Paypal already offers the facility to do this and tells you if a users account has been verified successfully.

Ebay don't want to do this because they are afraid it will put people off using ebay if the application process is too involved.

Unless they do something soon, pretty soon someone in the press, or someone who knows someone in the press is gonna get badly scammed.... then the proverbial is gonna hit the fan P.R. wise for ebay.... and they had better have some **** good teflon suits when that happens.....

I think I am willing to take the chance with small items, but I doubt if I will bother listing a big things like my car again.

For more specialist items these days imho you are better off finding the appropriate forum / website (nearly everything has them these days - you just need to do a bit of research). At least there you are likely to encounter more normal individuals with a reputation to maintain, and often these places have for sale sections you can post in.

Until ebay tightens up their registration rules or allows sellers to customise their auctions to avoid this kind of thing it s going to continue. If ebay don't tighten up the registration process I would like to see options for auctions where you can set things like the ability to automatically EXCLUDE people from bidding that don't match a minimum standard profile set my the seller. For example you should be able to specify that a user has been registered for a minimum amount of time or has a minimum feedback rating.

I would also like to see the option to setup a "register of interest" as you see on some auction houses. This means you have to register an interest in an auction and be given the OK by the seller before being able to bid in the auction.

These kind of options give the seller the control and would prevent malicious people from bidding on an auction at the last minute with no intention of paying.

I still think there is an opening for a large company to setup competition to ebay and learn from their failings (of which there are many).

Chris

[mud4fun]

Nice ideas there ChrisB, I was thinking just that same thing this afternoon. It would be so easy just to set a flag to prevent anybody with less than a specified number of feedbacks from bidding. I'd also like to prevent zero and negative feedback bidders and those that have their feedback rating set to private. I can't see this being that difficult for ebay to do. Lets face it Chris (NetsmithUK) could probably knock this up in a weekend [] )

As ebay also own paypal they must surely have access to the paypal records so that would also prevent anybody bidding on a paypal only item if they didn't have paypal?

I'm sure it is actually quite easy for ebay to tighten things up but that would mean losing money. I guess until the press take action and pick up on a scam then ebay will sit and do nothing.

Their advertising campaign will actually, if anything, bring this tighter control more to the forefront. Ebay have not understood that greater public awareness of their service will also lead to greater public desire to find out the nitty gritty details about how they operate and what fraud is going on. After all, before their advertising campaign a surprisingly large number of the general public didn't know what ebay was and didn't care. Now they know and now the UK press will have something else to 'make up' stories about.......only in this case they don't even need to 'make up' the stories [:0][}]

[Neil_S2000]

This is a well-known scam, not just limited to Ebay either. I'm a member of a real car website and the classified ads on that board have received mails like this, try putting an ad on Autotrader with an email address and you will almost certainly receive one or more of these mails. Most of them come from Nigeria or Eastern Europe. The sad thing is some people actually fall for them. Even if they send out 10,000 of these mails and only get one car out of it they have done very well....how hard is it to send a mail?

The best thing to do is specify that anyone with 5 or less feedbacks mail you first, if anyone with less than that bids without mailing you, just cancel the bid.

[ChrisB]

Point taken Neil, but as Mud4Fun says whilst its easy enough to remove bids from suspect bidders earlier on in the auction, a lot of these people now use snipe software.

This means you can still get some toerag with no intention of paying, sniping your auction at the last minute and you won't have time to remove the bid [V]. You are then stuck with a non payer and all the hassle of getting a refund from ebay as they will take your money as soon as the auction ends 'cos they see it as a genuine sale....

Referring back to one of my earlier posts the only way to combat this is to give the seller more automated control over the bidding process in such a way that you can prevent people from bidding who don't meet your criteria - automatically.

Personally where cars are concerned I would never part with the car until the money was safely cleared in my bank account - the seller would also have to turn up in person to sign the V5 with suitable proof of identity.

Cheers,

Chris

[The Slayer]

This might seem a silly idea - but why not limit our sales throught the club only and say ****** to e-bay [)][] just a thought??

[mud4fun]

LOL, nice idea in theory Slayer but sadly the club is a narrow market. I was selling my 1:1 Land Rover and I don't think there are that many LR fans on here. Ebay has a HUGE audience so chances of selling at a good price are higher even with the annoyance of scams etc.

Even r/c cars don't sell too quickly here. I've had parts or cars up for weeks sometimes and yet when I've moved them to the bay they sell within days.

PS. How is the Isle of Man? I visited there a few years back and I remember it rained the whole time and the ferry crossing was hilarious. There is a huge swell just outside the harbour mouth and most of the people on the ferry were chucking up as the boat was going up and down by about 30 feet....I was enjoying a stroll on the deck after a full cooked breakfast - great fun [8D] other than the fact our mobiles didn't seem to work for about 90% of the time....

[Pellandine-sports]

Ian I sold my Frontera via Ebay but as part of the blurb I invited serious potential buyers to contact me to view the vehicle. I don't know about you but I would not buy a car on Ebay....I'm a get the overalls on and get under type of guy. Nor would I chance incurring fees on an item that was likely to fetch £4500 only to be faced with a tyre-kicker. Three buyers travelled to Glasgow for a look and I struck a deal with the guy with the most cash in his pocket. I then cancelled the Ebay listing and had all fees refunded. In effect I had nationwide advertising for free.....probably a bit naughty from Ebay's viewpoint, but it'll not hurt them in the grand scheme of things...........unless we all do it!!!!!!!![:I][]

[ChrisB]

I did the same with my ebay car sale - stipulated that anyone was welcome to view the car at anytime - in fact I positively encouraged it!

Still, none of the bidders bothered even contacting me, which is why I was suspicious and ended up pulling the auction.

I think I will put the car back on at a reduced price, but make sure I am careful about removing low feedback bidders or people who don't check out. After all it is as you say a cheap way to advertise []

Chris

[mud4fun]

To be fair, I did get an awful lot of interest, over a hundered emails asking me questions. It was such a shame that the winning bid went on within 60 seconds of close of auction and I never had time to remove it. However, I'm hoping the second chance offer will come thru soon.