[Trombone-l] New eBay Scam

[David OLIVER]

I've got another one for you Chris that you probably know about.

I've ended up as a losing bidder recently on a couple of bass guitar
auctions. Now a days, you also will get phoney "2nd chance" offfers
and other things like that. The emails look quite real and have real
looking ebay links, but they give an email address so you go "off-
line" of ebay and their passwords. It happened everytime. MSN has
a pretty good system to detect the email origin, and if it doesn't
look real it puts it right into the junk folder, or puts a question
mark on the email icon. None of the "real" ebay emails get this
treatment, but the fraud ones do.

I've also seen phony bass guitar auctions from China where the
seller has used pictures from a real completed auction and try to
sell a phantom instrument that doesn't actually exist. The feed-
back will look real until you actually look at the people doing the
feedback. They've all left feedback within minutes of each other
and they all joined ebay at about the same time. Hmmm....
I'm amazed that the ebay software let that kind of stuff occur.
One guy in the UK got so ticked he basically posted an editorial
on the situation like he was selling something. It stayed there
for days.
Those phantom bass guitar auctions kept coming up, in fact
sometimes there where 3 or 4 at the same time - all using the
same pictures!

The best thing a buyer can do is always go through the ebay
site to communicate with the seller and always look at the
feedback in detail. You can't just look at the number of feed-
backs and percent, as it can be totally bogus now. If you get a
second chance offer, first check the original selling page and
checkout the buyer and his ratings. If all looks well, there is
no need for a second chance offer. Also communicate with the
seller via ebay - is he/she really offering you a second chance?

I miss the "old" days of ebay from when I first joined around 8
years ago. I amassed some nice trombones (and now bass
guitars) from it, but it's like Chris wrote in closing: "If it's too
good to be true, it probably is".

David Oliver
Broomfield, Colorado USA



>From: Chris Waage <chris.waage at gmail.com>
>To: Trombone-L <trombone-l at samford.edu>
>Subject: [Trombone-l] New eBay Scam
>Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 05:36:32 -0500
>
>I have stumbled onto a new scam on eBay, and fortunately have been able to
>work with eBay's staff to help shut down a few of the auctions.
>
>The auction listing has several easy-to-spot "red flags":
>
>1.  The first part of the auction states:
>EMAIL ME AT
><insert e-mail address>
>BEFORE YOU BID
>SO WE CAN DISCUSS THE TERMS OF THE SALE
>OR I WILL CANCEL THE BID !!!
>
>2.  The body of the auction also contains a very attractive "Buy it Now"
>price, but the auction does not offer the Buy it Now option.
>
>The auction always contains very convincing text. For example, I have seen
>one offering an Edwards B454 with a solid, accurate description.  There's
>also one for a Shires medium-bore tenor which lists correct part numbers 
>for
>the item.  The scammers are copying auctions that have ended and using the
>text and photos to run their scams.
>
>What happens when you contact them?
>
>The scammer then e-mails anyone who wants the item instructions on wiring
>the money overseas using Western Union.
>
>Once again, if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
>
>Chris
>
>--
>Chris Waage, Bass Trombonist
>chris.waage at gmail.com
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Trombone-l mailing list
>Trombone-l at maillists.samford.edu
>http://maillists.samford.edu/mailman/listinfo/trombone-l