I won two auctions on eBay from the same seller. This was a new seller. I was cautious. The seller did not accept PayPal but would accept credit card payment. During the course of the auctions (the seller had about 25 listings of identical items) the seller received 2 positive and 1 negative feedback.
I didn't pay for the items right away because I was suspicious and then 1 day after winning the auction I received e-mails from the seller, telling me that they would send me the items and I would only have to pay for it until after I received it and checked it out. I thought this was strange so I sent this message on to eBay and asked them to investigate. I also e-mailed the seller, asking him if I understood correctly. Then I got a second e-mail from the seller telling me the same thing again and giving payment instructions - Western Union, account numbers, ect). I forwarded all this to eBay.
Now all the seller's listings are gone - the ones I was watching, the ones I won, and the one I didn't win. eBay e-mailed me telling me the watched items were removed, but never e-mailed me explaining that they removed the 2 items I won but hadn't paid for yet. I'm glad eBay took action, but find it odd that they never actually responded to my request to investigate the seller. The other thing I wonder is if the positive feedback was bogus and if so, did eBay do something about that. Is this common practice?
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I'm not sure, but it's possible it was some kind of scheme where you would get an item paid for with a stolen cc# and then pay via WU, eventually the stolen CC would catch up to you and you'd be out the money and the item, maybe something like that? As for the positive FB, could be orchestrated or maybe they just haven't been scammed yet, just rec'd the item?
I'm not so much interested in the scam. Obviously eBay agreed that it wasn't above board.
I'm just surprised that eBay never responded to my e-mails when I forwarded them all the pertinent info to check into this includiing orignal e-mails from the seller. And I am surprised that eBay removed the items from my WON section with no explanation.
But I guess it should be expected because it is so darn hard to get any response form eBay.
eBay doesn't respond to any emails really and even when they do the form responses are often horribly off mark to what your asking. Keep in mind your email is probably getting 10 seconds of looking at before they reply. If you expect good customer service from eBay your going to be sadly disappointed.
Anyways this is absolutely a scam no doubt about it. As others said the items are likely purchased with a stolen credit card. If the person tries to ship the item to you I believe the best thing would be to refuse the package and make sure you get proof that you refused it though others may have advice on whether that is the best thing to do.
GotRocks said:I'm not so much interested in the scam. Obviously eBay agreed that it wasn't above board.
Oh I don't know.. It could have gone either way. It might have been the money laundering scam mentioned (you get shipped a stolen item). It also could have been that you emailed eBay about it, they checked some email, and then some auto-bot decided it didn't fit the standard way they do business and closed the auction for absolutely no good reason.
Regardless, as long as you're paying via CC, you're protected.
They quote "privacy reasons" to brush off any questions about what they did or will do. Just be glad they actually did something to the seller because some people don't even get that far.
I didn't pay. Though I agree that if I had paid by cc I would have been protected. I got suspicious of the e-mails, sent them to eBay and all the auctions, past and present, disappeared. No explanation.
I think eBay has gotten too big and they can't manage their customer service properly.
Nevertheless, this is done and I am ok because I didn't send any money and now all records of this event are gone from my viewing.
Message edited by: GotRocks on 2009-10-26 01:45:56 CDT
eBay never has had customer service with personal attention. If you want that attention, sell something on the VERO list or hack someone's account and put a bunch of items up well below the average selling price using BIN. You will get plenty of attention and emails from them
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