posted on August 8, 2006 06:34:03 PM new
Hi, long time no here but I had to run this by you folks as many of you have consideraly more experience than me on matters like this.
A 50" plasma tv, $16, no reserve AND a 1 day listing AND offering off ebay BIN.
About 48 other expensive items are being offered in a similar fashion, including a speaker system valued by the seller at nearly $10,000.
Checking their first several past feedbacks (100%) shows mostly inexpensive items being sold.
What do you all think? Is it just me that this sets off alarm bells for? I'm almos tempted to bid, but either its a potential sweet deal, or just money lost to a scammer.
posted on August 8, 2006 06:50:37 PM new
I just tried checking with live-chat. They had a look for a few minutes and didn't seem too worried. Their only suggestion was pass on the info to trust and safety.
If a scam, and if some suckers did pay, a hijacker would most likely be long gone before the t&s types even got to an email from me.
posted on August 8, 2006 07:00:43 PM new
There are several red flags on this auction that scream scam. US seller on UK site. 16 pound opening bid on a 1 day auction with no reserve. Yet BIN price is in Euros. He gives an email address that is most likely not connected with the seller i.d. And to top it off, a plasma t.v. is the most fraud oriented item on Ebay. Some unlucky guy answered a spoof email, had his account hijacked by a Romanian, and probably doesn't even know it yet.
If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic
posted on August 8, 2006 07:05:49 PM new
i'd say the sellers account has been hijacked. the items they sold back in July say they were located in Vail, Colorado and were mostly $1.00 items...now all of a sudden they are selling high dollar items and it says the item is located in London, UK and the seller is still registered in the USA.
posted on August 8, 2006 07:23:37 PM new
What blew me away is when live help only said report this to T&S. Are they really unable to do anything on the spot? to immediately pass the info on themselves?
No skin off my rear, I'm not going to bid on anything. But it really fries my grits that at a time when bidders are disappearing faster than new ones are appearing, ebay is giving new bidders the AOK to go ahead and scammed. Only scam them quick!
Scammers, I'm sure, are well aware of how fast (did I just say ebay and fast in one sentence?) it takes ebay to react. Even if they only collect a hudred, a thousand dollars on one hijacked account, that's pure profit. Closed-down the hijacked account? Just move on to the next one, and so on. Ebay inserts more red tape you-know-where to make things more difficult than they should be.
posted on August 8, 2006 07:29:28 PM new
So should I bother reporting this to trust and safety? Does anyone know a quicker way to shut the listings down?
20 out of 48 listings have bids now, total of 48 bids.
[ edited by bcpostcards on Aug 8, 2006 07:31 PM ]
[ edited by bcpostcards on Aug 8, 2006 07:32 PM ]
posted on August 8, 2006 07:30:14 PM new
ok everybody. go to the auction. at the bottom of the page is a "report this item" 8 lines up from the bottom. right under "what else can you do?"
posted on August 8, 2006 08:34:04 PM new
Ha! Got so wrapped up in this I forgot I had listings of my own ending soon.
Great article glassgrl! Thanks for passing that along. This scammer seems to have used almost all the tricks discussed.
Thanks everyone for chipping in. I've done all I can. The rest is up to the powers that be. Hopefully the listings will be killed before they end, but I'm not counting on it.
I did check their seller's list a couple more times:
at 7:53 24 items had 51 bids.
at 8:10 25 items had 55 bids.
Wish I had action like that, but then, I'm not a scammer with non-existant goods.
posted on August 8, 2006 09:59:27 PM new
Unbelievable...this guy has at least TWO scammed accounts! Just ound another one. Had a late dinner here and coming back to check on things I noticed that there was one less listing, now at 47.
Curious to see if ebay had nuked it I checked their completed auctions (if ebay-nuked it wouldn't be there, period). It was there AND self-ended. Geez I hope someone didn't money transfer them 800 euros.
Looking over the ended listing I happened to notice that in the other sellers cross-promotions listings the EXACT SAME TITLE!
Going on to check the new seller's listings shows what I think (haven't checked) are the exact same 48 items. Have reported a few of these add'l listings; feel free to do the same.
New seller was in Fresno, CA, apparently also now in London. Wonder how many more hijacked accounts Vlad currently has?
Like tomwiii has said before, "Que Grande Huevos!"
posted on August 8, 2006 10:22:05 PM new
agate, these aren't my accounts, so I can't shut them down. I think if the true account holders were around/at home they would already have discovered their accounts had been compromised.
posted on August 9, 2006 05:39:33 AM new
Thanks for the article link, Glassgrl. I did a quick search on Plasma TV and found many listings that matched the fraud criteria 100%. Can't eBay hire 5th graders to root these out? (They could then graduate to full-time eBay programmers)
plasma under books. look at all the plasma tvs for sale with user id kept private and please respond to the AOL addresses.
FOR THE BEST BUY IT NOW PRICE
MAIL ME AT:
[email protected]
+++++++++++
And please before taking any action and for buy it now price please contact me here: [email protected]
+++++++++++++++
(LOL free worldwide shipping from Romania) If you look for a fast and 100% safe deal, free shipping and the lowest price, you just find it.
Before BID ON IT please email me at :
[email protected]
++++++++++++++++
Please e-mail me at [email protected] to receive information about shipping and payments terms.
posted on August 9, 2006 05:22:53 PM new
Thought I'd fill everyone in on what happened. Btw, there are 2 handy links below. It might be an idea to save this page to your favorites, under a title of something like "report account theft", and it'll hopefully make reporting other cases less of a chore.
When I found the second hijacked account, associated with the first, I went to the help pages and found one with a special "account theft" live chat link. Here is that page. Make sure you let them know right away that it's NOT your account that you suspect has been compromised.
The person I spoke with was several IQ tiers above the ebay home page, chat types. Very fast typer, and on the uptake,, also seemed to sense that they also actually had some power to do something other than duck and weave. They quickly said it's good to report the hijacked accounts there, but it's also necessary to send the basic into to T&S after all.
Here is a shortcut to that page (you suspect that a listing is fraudulent_you didn't bid_continue) so people won't have to drill into it like ebay usually makes you. There will be a space for the listing number and, as this is from the item I reported, you will likely have to replace any item number showing with the one you'd be reporting. Space there for the message too.
About 3-4 hours after the chat, and after sending the email, POOF! all listings (48 on each of the two accounts)were nuked and both seller's lists were back down to zero count. I must say I was greatly impressed with the speed of ebay's response in this case.
Now if they could only address other seller's issues with the same efficiency.
Thanks again everyone for your encouragement and help. Can't hit them all but we made a difference in this one.
[ edited by bcpostcards on Aug 9, 2006 05:24 PM ]
