OT: Almost Getting Scammed On Ebay (be careful!)

[Ash]

I decided to sell an item on ebay for the very first time the other day.
I've bought several things from there over the years.
I've been trying to liquidate some of that Dr. Pepper prize I won last year into cash so I put that brand new camera up for sale.  (the one I was going to sell to Skaboi)

I suppose I should've thoroughly read ebay's security section before putting it up for sale.
Here's what happened within an hour of starting my auction:

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I received a question through the "Ask Seller a Question" feature.
The person's ebay name was do11y7.
They wanted me to immediately drop my auction and buy my item from me for $500 stating that they wanted it as a gift for "her husband".   (Keep in mind that I'm asking $350 and I'm taking a loss selling it at that price)
I wrote back and told them that I would only send them the item upon receipt of payment in full. They wrote me back saying, "OK!  Payment will be sent!"
(You can read this correspondence if you scroll most of the way down on my Ebay auction page)

They then sent me a spoof e-mail from Paypal claming that I have new funds in my Paypal account.
Of course, the money never arrived.
I forwarded this e-mail to Paypal and they confirmed that it was indeed a spoof.
The fact that the buyers address in that Paypal spoof email was listed in Nigeria also gave it away.

I even checked their feedback and they had somehow fabricated false feedback from other users making them appear to be legitimate.
How could it be real feedback from other ebay users if they're truly scam artists?

An hour later, I received another phishing scam in my inbox!
This one was from a different user by the name of smoky203 and his English was so bad, I immediately knew it was a con.

So basically, within hours of posting my very first auction, I was the target of two phishing scams on Ebay.
Fortunately, I noticed them right away and did not click on any links.
Needless to say, my first impression of selling on Ebay has been horrible.

I'm so glad I didn't click on any of the links in any e-mails I received.  I only talked to them through Ebay.
If I had clicked on a link, there's no doubt that my computer would be infested with a trojan, keylogger or some other type of malicious program.

I reported both of them to Ebay.
Odinn, you're into all that scambaiting stuff.
You look into should nailing those SOB's.

Right from the beginning, the whole deal just didn't feel right.
I'm glad I was cautious.

How about you?
Ever had any problems like this on Ebay or any other site?

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

It bugs me that evil bastards spend their time doing this kind of stuff.  Thats a heck of a story.
-Ed

[The Burgomaster]

I've bought and sold hundreds of items on Ebay, so I'm very careful.  One time I did get an e-mail that was supposedly from someone whose auction I was bidding on.  When I opened the e-mail, it turned out to be related to a completely different auction for something that wasn't even close to what I was bidding on.  The e-mail offered to end the auction and sell me the item at a good price if I would pay for it right away and bypass Ebay.  I did some investigating and discovered that the item was not even listed on Ebay.  I e-mailed Ebay all the information and they confirmed that it was a scam.

[Scottie]

Ebay can go to hell. I try and try and try to talk to them to figure s**t out since I got a ton of crap from phishers and they haven't responded once with constructive answers. Paypal too. They can both go to hell. Whoever though that e-mail-based customer service was a good idea can go where I want e-bay to go too. Not a single good experience with e-bay.

[LilCerberus]

I ran into something simular a few weeks ago.
I had been looking around the web to see if I could find a bios update for this old A7A-266, & I wound up on this site called esupport.

I got emails & phone calls saying they had an update for my machine for $39.95, but that's all they would tell me. They wouldn't answer any of my questions, such as the version number, file name, release date, etc.

I'm still worried that I might have a bug in my machine.

[Ash]

I've always been under the assumption that Ebay was particularly strict when it came to fraud of any kind.
Apparently, from reading several posts in the Ebay forums, it's terribly rampant and getting worse.
You'd think that Ebay would have this problem totally locked down but no...they don't.

And Scottie, you're right about it being a royal pain in the ass to contact Ebay about anything.
Now they have a "Live Help" option where you can IM chat with an Ebay representative but each time I've tried to use it I get this message, "We are experiencing high volume, please try again later" so basically that new feature is useless.

Also, remember what I said about that user having fabricated feedback?
I found this:
eBay has recently changed its policies to allow sellers to remove negative feedback from buyers under certain conditions. This, coupled with the ability of users to inflate their positive feedback ratings by using automated systems to generate false "sales" with positive feedback, has led to a condition where large sellers can assure themselves near-perfect feedback ratings.

Read here for more about Ebay controversy

As for Paypal, I've never had any problems with them.  Then again, I haven't had to contact them for anything...yet.  (knocks on wood)

[BeyondTheGrave]

The biggest problems I had with E-bay is after I paided for the item It would take weeks sometimes a month for the item to ship. I'm not talking about preorders or how long it takes to get to me house they just didn't ship it. I would write the seller asking has it shipped and they come up with  loads of exsues. As soon as I make compliant to PayPal though the package seem to ship within a day or two of the case being made against them. Thats just bad business.

[The Burgomaster]

For the most part, I have purchased comics and pulp fiction novels (Doc Savage, The Avenger) on Ebay.  They generally arrived within a week or so of when I paid (I normally use PayPal).  The only ones that took longer to arrive were when the seller specified in the listing that there would be a shipping delay.  Whenever I sold stuff, I made sure that I got to the post office to ship the merchandise at least every Saturday.  Often, I would be at the post office 3 or 4 times a week.  If the seller ships via media mail, it might take 10 or more business days for the shipment to arrive.

[Andrew]

After a while you get a feel for dealing with online scammers.  If I get any sort of notification from Paypal or Ebay (or other), I never click on links in the email.  I go to the site itself and then check my messages or notifications.

On a normal day, even with the server's spam filters set a little high, I get two or three scams - usually Ebay or Paypal, but even ones for banks and such.  I also have had Nigerian scammers emailing me about buying Badmovies.org T-shirts.

As always, be careful out there.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Obviously, E-bay is good for some people, but I'll probably not get an E-bay, because of all the phish related to E-bay that I have been getting. As for the Pay-pal, I have an account, which I used years ago, but I haven't used since.