BAD SELLERS:
COUNTERFEIT OR FAKE ITEMS--it's a regular to see auctions for "new mint sealed" items but what you get are bad fakes or bad bootlegs everything from video tapes to CD's to designer items to upscale namebrand items to autographed items. If you're looking for an AUTHENTIC Whatever, you'll be sure to get it OUTSIDE of ebay from the company itself or other reputable dealer. Don't bother wasting your money at ebay. People lie on the auctions and you don't now whether it's the truth or not until after you receive your bad fake item.
THE-TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE-DEAL--You see them all the time. 3 nights in the Bahamas for $10/nite. NOW, COME ON!! Do you really think that kind of deal exists??!! Before you leave the Bahamas for home, THEN you SEE THE BILL WITH ITS HIDDEN CHARGES (fees for cleaning service, energy use, phone service even if you never used the phone except for local calls) which make your bill go over the $100/nite mark. Or how about that NEW this year's model $2,000 Apple computer that you think you can snipe for a bargain basement price of $200 or even a believable reasonable price of $1005??!! DO YOUR RESEARCH!! If you can't get this good a deal legitimately outside of ebay, what makes you think you can get a deal like this INSIDE of ebay??!!
About the only way you can get a TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE-DEAL is if the seller obtained the items by 1) stealing them or 2) receiving them as gifts. Even as gifts, it would be impossible for a seller to have a gift of 5 pages of Gucci bags to sell to ebay buyers, wouldn't it??!! I rarely get that great a gift in 1 Christmas/birthday year. One Christmas, I received a Macy's $100 gift card as a gift, but I hated going shopping at Macy's since i don't particularly adore their fashions/prices/services, etc., so I put it up for sale on ebay which finally sold for $76. NOW, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET THIS CARD AT HALF-PRICE OR LESS BECAUSE OF THE EBAY BIDDER COMPETITION AND EVEN AT THIS PRICE, THIS TYPE OF DEAL IS RARE!! If I had more than 1 of these gift cards, then I WOULD HAVE BEEN A LIAR OR A FENCER OF STOLEN GOODS OR FOUND A WAY TO GET THEM UNETHICALLY like being an employee stealing from the company. If you see a seller having SO MANY items that are TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE-DEALs, then that's a BIG RED FLAG!!
Seller says it's a promo offer for some special reason?? Tell him to screw himself and run the other way with your $$$ and change your email address!!! Sellers are on ebay to make a profit. They're not there to lose money. If you can get it at a too good to believe deal, then they're losing money. Now, sometimes, the seller actually does lose money and sometimes the buyer gets that unbelievable deal, but nowadays because ebay is soooo well-known by millions of people who are looking at the same auctions you're looking at, and now because there are WAY more scammers than years ago, I'd recommend HIGHLY that if you see a THE-TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE-DEAL, STAY AWAY FROM IT OR BE PREPARED TO LOSE YOUR MONEY and/or get phished/spammed/hacked in your email (and/or phone).--MISREPRESENTATION, THE MOST COMMON SCAM: The most common scam is misrepresentation of the item. Do they have a picture of the item and is it just the company's pic they took off a website or a pic stolen from another seller's ad or an actual pic of the item they own now in their home setting? This is especially true in the electronics fields, computer fields, car fields, etc. where alot of items in these fields on ebay are just used junk DOA which basically don't work. A seller doesn't have to say his electronic item or computer item doesn't work. After all, you didn't ask, right? Or a seller can state "as is" Or a seller can say "not tested" Or a seller can say "don't know anything about it" This is one of the most unethical type of selling. Early on, other ebayers just posted that oh well, since they were scammed this way and it was legal, they would sell it to someone else on ebay the same way. Well, listen, i find it unethical and never sold back junk to anybody else on ebay. If you want to make sure something runs, you will have to do A LOT of research which is why i say that it's easier just buying from a reputable retailer on or off the internet rather than dealing with private sellers.
-MISREPRESENTATION: MINT, NIB, EXCELLENT CONDITION, VERY GOOD CONDITION, AUTHENTIC--I got scammed on Barbie dolls when sellers would post them as mint or NIB (new in box), etc and i received smoke smelling items with heavily damaged boxes and dolls. Never trust a seller's description. They'll lie on the auction ad and on the email. So i paid mint prices for a bad condition item. This is why if i want to make sure about quality, i usually just go to http://www.craigslist.org to buy it. I can just go to the seller in my area and look at the item before deciding to buy and right there rate exactly accurately what the value is. Also, many new ebay sellers don't know how to ship and your item breaks. Dealing with the seller directly to see the item IN THE FLESH and bringing the item back yourself avoids this. But be careful if you go to seller's place to see item, especially if the item is expensive (look at "Violence" section)
--MISREPRESENTATION: "AS IS", "WAS NOT INSPECTED", "DON'T KNOW IF IT WORKS", "DON'T KNOW THE QUALITY"--These terms on ebay these days is a "blunt" announcement that the item doesn't work and/or the seller is going to outright lie to you about the condition of the item. As i said, NEVER bid on stuff that you expect to work that can be DOA when you receive it. Never bid on electronics or items like that. In the old days of ebay, these terms meant sellers, (who were usually 1) ordinary people selling out of their attics OR 2) small mom/pop sellers) who sold items TRULY didn't know what the quality of the item was and/or never really inspected them but many times the item still worked. These days, because of the scammers and the majority of ebayers who don't think there's anything wrong with using these terms to replace the phrase "Your money is mine no matter what LIE I typed on the ad or email," these terms are just another way to misrepresent. "As is" used to mean you get the item "as is" whether it worked or not but if there was something wrong with it that degraded its $ value (like you receiving it DOA) and the seller accidentally said it was o.k. in the ad, then you could get your money back. These days, "as is" means no matter what the ad says, once you receive the damaged item, you can't get your money back. AVOID these types of auctions.
WILL THE SELLER GIVE YOUR MONEY BACK IF YOU TALK TO HIM AS EBAY ADVISES? YEAH RIGHT.:So if the seller sends you a bootleg or fake designer item or a torn & dirty blouse or misrepresents his auction in the ad or fails to say that it works or covers his ad with "As Is" even if he says it's "fully functional," can you get your money back if you talk to the seller? First, the seller is not obligated to give you your money back since it's an auction unless it's misrepresented and you're willing to spend the time & $$$'s to go court to go after him. From my & many other peoples' experience, unless it's in the high 3-digits or more $$$'s AND YOU CAN TRUST YOUR SELLER, it's NOT WORTH IT. YOU have to HASSLE with taking your TIME & ENERGY & MONEY by PAYING to SEND IT BACK. In addition to this, the seller DOES NOT HAVE TO REFUND YOU ANY S/H COSTS EITHER WAY. Only when the seller receives it will he give you a refund ONLY for the item. And there are a lot of cases where the scam/bad seller still doesn't give back the refund. In fact, if you send it back to him, he'll just scam someone else with it. Also, by sending it back, you've just lost your evidence if you want to take the bastard "seller" to court. This is also a delaying tactic so you don't keep complaining to ebay, paypal, etc. This is why it's so important to pay via your CC which have buyer favored policies. Then all you'd have to do is immediately dispute it with the CC company without having to speak with the seller.
Click here for a serious illustration on Misrepresentation
THE DROP SHIPPER SELLER--Drop shipping isn't really a scam as much as the seller getting in over his head in selling drop shipping products which he has no or very little control of. The MAIN problem here is the RESULT IS A SCAM such that you as a buyer suffer from this TYPE OF SELLING. The excellent FB seller has a whole bunch of these expensive doodads or gadgets or appliances for bargain prices or real deals. Usually, the seller will not put in his ad that he practices dropshipping.
Drop shipping is a popular way for ebay sellers to sell products without ever carrying an inventory. The seller sells items on ebay that actually still belongs to someone else (the dropshipper). These products are in the dropshipper's inventory; The seller does not actually have possession of the item(s). Once you and the other buyers pay the ebay seller, the seller then forwards all the buyers' payment for the items (minus the seller's profit) on to the drop shipper. The seller then supplies the drop shipper with all the buyers' names & addresses so the items can be delivered. Getting tired of waiting, you and some other buyers email the seller a couple of weeks later after paying and so he has to explain that he's a drop shipper seller and you find out that all the buyers as well as the seller are at the mercy of the dropshipper since the dropshipper has the item and controls s/h. In fact, if you as the buyer ordered one thing, the drop shipper can send you something else. Usually what happens is:
- there aren't enough items from the dropshipper for the many buyers OR
- the seller hasn't calculated ALL the expenses and gets in over his head (especially the shady dropshipping companies who charge incredibly high "fees" to sellers or the scam dropshippers who just don't deliver) OR
- the delivery by the dropshipper is too slow to keep up with the many buyers who ask for the items.
Here's a post on ebay of how some dropshippers operate:
You are listing $1000's of dollars worth of merchandise that you don't really have in your possession. So, you can only provide invoices for the items that were already paid for and shipped. Until someone pays, you don't purchase the item. There are cases of drop shippers, not shipping, keeping the money and never purchasing the buyers items. I remember one case, where the seller was probably spending the buyers monies on personal expenses, and got really backed on on shipments. She was selling 100's, but only shipping maybe 50% of them. The negs racked up, and it took close to four months before she was shut down. She made thousands! Probably came back under another id, who knows? I was aware of two ids that she used to do this, both with similar feedback. Anyway, I don't know if you have more than one account, but this one has pretty low feedback, yet $1000's of dollars of merchandise listed on it. Might have raised a red flag at eBay. They may also want to track your income for tax reporting purposes due to the potential volume of sales, so, they will need your proper id...
In most cases, many of the buyers never get their money back.
NOTE: This "scam" is prevailing with Russian and ootUS Scammers who know buyers are aware of ootUS scams and won't send their $$'s outside the U.S. so they "recruit" U.S. sellers to "sell" their items for a commission or other free or discount (you fill in the blank). For buyers, it's hard to detect this type of scam. See "Paypal Intermediate or Agents" Scam.
SELLER RETIRES IN A FLASH OF GLORY: A seller who's sold for a long time, even with high priced items, gives confidence to buyers to bid and this is one of the hardest scams to detect. The seller may never even have planned to scam previous to the time you bid on his auction. He's basically just throwing in the towel for whatever personal or business reason and so has nothing more invested in ebay. If a scammer just decides to not want or not need to use ebay again, he'll list a whole bunch of auctions and steal everybody's money. This type of seller is rare but does exist even in the early days of ebay and would be hard to detect beforehand.
FLY BY NIGHT SELLER:: There are the scammer "sellers" who have o.k. feedback and excellent contact info, but who DELIBERATELY move from one place to another, staying one step ahead of the cops. Then when they find a new location, they start again with new i.d. scamming people until they've scammed too many people before moving to again a new location. This type of seller is rare but does exist even in the early days of ebay and would be hard to detect beforehand.
Here's a CNN article about how ebay's new software to detect scammers is not so reliable and is about the fly-by-night sellers.
Click here for a serious illustration on a Fly By Night Seller
"SELF-NARU" SELLER:: Sometimes, a scam "seller" will NARU themselves, that's right, make it seem like they've been kicked off ebay by just hanging a "NARU" sign by their name. Why? To fool the buyers who've been scammed by him into thinking ebay has already kicked them off. Later on when things are cool, the scammer UN-NARU's himself and starts scam selling again.
Click here for a serious illustration on a SELF-NARU Seller
SELLER "PASSED AWAY":: Sometimes, a scam "seller" will pretend to be a friend or family member responding by email to you saying that the "seller" has committed suicide, died of natural or accidental causes or violence. Only Texas and California have online databases to check up people who have passed away. Naturally, you don't want to pursue a transaction that is low on the totem pole compared to a death, but you have to be wise to a scammer, too.
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