i think someone tried to SCAM me... EBAY, ofcourse

ok, so i listed a basket case 51 Chevy truck on Ebay a week and a half ago with a buy it now of $750. less than 24 hours passes and after getting 3 or 4 bids somebody hits the "buy it now". he says (via email) that he will send me the money in a cashiers check right away. according to his Ebay profile he is in Florida some place. he tells me he is going to send me extra money so that i can give it to the trucking company when they come to get the truck. he tells me to get ahold of him when the funds arrive and he'll give me the contact info for the shipper so i can arrange a time for them to come get the pieces of what used to be a truck and a half. i was a little cautious right from the get go.
well a week goes by and no payment. i figure great, some dousch bag hit the buy it now and does'nt have any money. he did have ZERO feedback which made me nervous right away. i email him and ask "whats up". next day still no message from him so i send another email. still nothin till 3 days later (this past monday) when he sends a message saying i should have the money that day. i go out to the mail box and sure enough, there it is.
before we go any further lets back up to Sunday (the day before the check arrived). i contact Ebay and tell them i have a non-paying bidder and fill out thier neccesary info. it says that normaly they wait 7 days before refunding my insertion fees ($50 in this case) so that it gives the person a chance to make good on thier commitment to buy. so i enter all the info and instantly i get a message saying that the person is no longer a registered Ebay user and that they refunded my insertion fees immediately. so i went ahead and relisted the truck right then. this is on Sunday, the day before the cashiers check arrived.
so i'm on my way to my volunteer job Monday afternoon (at a women's shelter in town) when i got the mail and the check. the check is for $2800. remember the "buy it now" was $750. there is a short letter with instructions on where to wire the money via Western Union to a shipper in the FUCKIN UK!!! the letter (like his emails) where oddly worded, as if by someone who does not speak the langauge very well. that and the zero feedback are the first things that sent up the red flags in the beginning. did i mention that the letter was sent from the UK and NOT from Florida. oh, and the cashiers check. it's from a bank in HOUSTON TEXAS!!!
beyond all that, if you look very closely at the check it looks as if something had been taped over the signature area and then it was photo copied. albeit from a very high quality color printer but you don't have to look too hard to see the lines.
so they think i'm gonna deposit this check and immediately send the difference from my account to some bloke in the UK?? i don't think so Tim. i was born at night but not last night. why would'nt they have just sent the monies to the shipper directly, especialy since it had to go from the UK to the states and back again. maybe i was'nt suppose to notice the post mark that said "Royal mail London south). maybe i was'nt suppose to notice that the supposed shipper was using a HOTMAIL account either. i would think a reputable business would'nt be using HOTMAIL as thier email provider but who knows.
another fishy thing is the name on the email account used on Ebay was "biajo patrick" and the email was "biajoalone05@yahoo.com" but the name on the cashiers check is Jerry Weil (prolly some poor sap who had his checks stolen) and the name i was given for the shipper was "James Michael" with an email address of autoshipperjames@hotmail.co.uk and a real address of "507 Richard Road Holly Oak, Londan, SW2 9HL United Kingdom".
i post all of this info in case somebody else has had dealings with any of these names (prolly alias') and to hopefully prevent anyone else from getting scammed by them. and maybe some of our English brothers want to pay a visit to 507 Richard Road.
well i have'nt let the bastard know yet that i am on to him but i did ask him why he did'nt send the money directly to the shipper. i've gotten no response to that question and it's been more than 24 hours since i asked it. he might be suspiscious that i am on to his little scam but who knows.
i need to find out who all i should inform of this though. i'm sure Ebay would like to know about it but i'm not sure how or who to contact in thier organization. i figure the post master might be interested in this since i'm sure it is concidered mail fraud seeing as they used the US mail in an attempt to break the law. not sure who else would be interested or who i should tell but i'm sure you fine folks will let me know so that i can get them involved. i don't hold any dillutions that they will actually be able to apprehend these scum bags but if i can be a pain in their asses i'm willing to do whatever it takes.

so just when you think this whole thing is over. it's not. remember that i relisted the truck sunday evening? well i get back from my volunteer job monday evening to find out that AGAIN somebody has hit the "buy it now". i'm thinkin, "SHIT, i'm not askin enough or something". then i check out the buyers info, and i'll be damned if this guy is'nt from the UK and has ZERO feedback also. here is what he had to say in his first email to me:

"Hello i just got the confirmation from ebay that i won your item through buy it now,so i want to know if you still have this item for sale and also i want to know the present working condition of this item,the final asking price and also to know if you accept certified us cashier cheque cos the payment will be coming over to via cerified us cheque.so as soon as you get this mail and accept my offer i want you to get back to me with the following informations sothat the payment can get to you very soon
YOUR FULL NAME
YOUR FULL ADDRESS
YOUR WORKING EMAIL ADDRESS
YOUR PHONE NUMBER
All this information are requested sothat the payment can be forward to you asap "

i'm thinking this was probably a scam as well but i was even more pist that this jackass hit the "buy it now" and obviously had NO IDEA how Ebay worked. he asks about it's working condition AFTER commiting to buying it. WTF??? i emailed him back saying:

"have you ever bought anything from Ebay before???
ofcourse i still have it. you have committed yourself
to buying it by hitting the BUY IT NOW option.
where are you from and how do you intend to pick up
the vehicle???? the price is $750 as you should well
know from hitting the BUY IT NOW option.

contact me ASAP so we can work out the details of
this deal."

to which he replied:

"Nope i havbe never bought anything from ebay before but i lived in united kingdom and also i have my own local shipper that will handle the shippment down from your door step to it final destinations in united kingdom ,so i need your full information sothat i can forward you the poayment asap"

after that i was just tired of the whole thing and emailed him back saying "nice try buddy. better luck next time but your not scamming me."

what are the frickin odds???? two people trying to scam me on the same auction, both from the UK and both hitting the "buy it now" within 24 hours of the auction being posted. i don't think the second guy even looked at or read the auction cause it would have been OBVIOUS that the vehicle was a COMPLETE BASKET CASE with no drivetrain what so ever. "what is it's working condition" he asks. i always list things with a VERY thurough description and a ton of pics. i had about 24 pics in that auction. what a RETARD!!!

well after getting the SECOND bogus buyer i did get an email from an interested party that was going to hit the "buy it now" but was beat to the punch by scammer number 2. he at least has a little Ebay feedback and an address in the states. we'll see how that one pans out.

can you even believe this crap. what is wrong with people these days?? i shoulda used the local auto swapper rags. that'll teach me.

 

Send him back his money as he requested. In Monopoly money.

 

just happened to me as well.....same exact situation. i posted their messages and my replies and reported both.......i have had to do this 3 times now. and the relist fees are killing me because of this crap....thanks god its a pos cavalier and not anything i'd actually care about....theres 22 hours left on this auction...lets see what happens

 

scumbags man. the world is full of SCUMBAGS!!!

 

eBay is completely out of control. Expensive too.

 

I just had my ebay ID stolen and I was supposedly sending second chance offers to loads of people. I even got hatemail from legit sellers! Ebay fixed it, That giant enormous bastard of a company read my little old emails hooked me up with a new password, I kept my 100% feedback rating and moved on.

 

same thing happend to me. what pisses me off is ebay wont do anything about it. and you still have to pay the final selling fee of $40. they will only refund your relisting fee. i dont put a buy it now on anything on ebay motors anymore.

 

Report it to eBay and move on. Whenever I get stuff in broken english, I move on.

 

ebay motors scams are running wild with no repercussions for people who are overseas. don't even bother to report it, other than the slight chance ebay will give you a refund or another free relist.

I garantee that these people send out 100 of these a week with several disposable emails and ebay ID's. if they get 5 people foolish enough to send the money they have had a better week than I do working honestly.

all ebay motors ads have warnings about scams right there in the listing but people do not read, or they are so happy to have sold the vehicle they just do it.

you can list your truck in the parts car section and save on the fees should you want to give ebay another try.

 

Ever notice how all the scams seem to be for a sum under $3200? I wonder if that's a limit before it becomes a felony or something. That scam shit will be the end of Ebay, i'm sure of it. They're not going to do anything about it, then some upstart company is going to make a site that does it better and safer and put the pinch on them. Then Ebay will do something about it, but it will be too late. That's greed for you.

 

Egay's getting worse by the day...I just lost an auction this weekend. Got 3 second chance offers...contacted the seller, none were from him.

I'm not sure what it's gonna take, but something has to change. I'm so skeptical anymore that the only reason I bid on this car was that I recognized the email address as a HAMBer.

Sucks when your auction ends 'cause of something like this and you lost any chance of a legitimate sale.

Bryan

 

I haven't done it yet myself, but you can apparently now make all bids subject to approval. That way you could weed out the scammers, at least ones with no feedback.

 

It happened to my buddy, he got a second chance offer on a Fatboy (harley) the guy wanted to use an escrow account, which is a good deal but if you look them up there are only one or two that are legit in the U.S.. He tried to cancel the wire but it was to late and got took for 8500.00. The person was out of florida also. Ebay won't do anything because he was contacted outside of the ebay mailing system. Went to the local authorities and they told him to get in touch with ebay. They argued for awhile and he told them the last time he was drinking and driving and got a dui that it wasn't the ebay police that pulled him over and thru him in the drunk tank. You'd think by now there would be some kind of checks and balances so this doesn't happen.

Kustom I think you should try and talk to ur local police and see if there is a way to track that and set the guy up.

 

lots of this going on! this was in the paper today

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/24254.php

 

Odd, last time it happened to me eBay refunded all of my fees.

Never use Buy It Now on an auto auction, or if you must then set it to bidding by approval only.

 

Heres one that happends on holiday weekends and theres one coming.
Somebody steals your ID and does a one day auction for something to good to be true. Like a motorcycle with a $800 Buy It Now. They get paid your stuck with a guy wanting a bike!

 

Scam my friend..Scam Stay away..

 

Someone hacked into my ebay account recently. I got a email from a buyer in the UK who had sent me $ for a Digital Camera and was pissing about never getting it. I then get an email from EBay. EBay canceled my password and sent me an email stating what had happened. I was out of town when this happened, and I didn't have a clue as to what was going on.

So I've got my new password. They also said to change my email password as well. Which I did.

I've gotten the bogus Money orders in the past. 2 of them for $2k each. They were good looking, but bogus. A lot of Nigerians are out there, in their grass huts, trying to scam us. That's where that scam came from. There were ties to the UK and the money order was delivered from the UAE. We're talking the land of sand folks. I even contacted the local office of the FBI in case it was linked to money laundering and /or terrorism. They told me to get a good cigar and fire it up with one of them. These scams happen daily, either they want you to cash these money orders and forward the cash via Western Union, or they send bogus money orders for goods.

For me, it's cash, or a USPS Money Order. And I've heard that there are forgeries of those out there also. The local Post office can tell a goodone from a bad one.

 

Checked it out, the zip/post code is bogus and there is no Richard Road in London. Bastards!

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newsearch.srf?

 

kustombuilder - the address and postode he sent you are non-existent in the UK - def a SCAM... holly oak is the name of a TV program over here.

the guy who tried to buy it the second time was probably the same guy..

 

thanks guys. you've just confirmed with out a doubt what i suspected all along. bloody savages!!!

 

I've seen, lately, a lot of auctions that state that they won't sell to someone with little or no feedback score. This scam is probably why.

 

I've received some of those. Some will actually clear the initial shit through banks. Never taken a big loss, it's called common sense. Sounds like you have some, most don't.. so why is it called "common?"

I guess people just sit around printing their own money now days.

 

Going a little off topic, but if the HAMB for sale, wanted area was done a little better, it could be more effective. Right now people post things and they scroll by pretty fast. You have to use the search feature to try and find something, as scrolling through the stuff page by page gets to be tedious pretty fast.

If there was multiple threads to narrow down the available sales. Titles like ford, gm, mopar, brit, jap, other, and then cars, parts, misc under those. Keep it to car stuff 65 and older, instead of allowing every piece of crap, like motorcycles, boats, fishing equipment, etc.

Course you'd probably need a bunch of volunteers to staff to area.

Maybe have a paypal insertion fee for ads.

 

Hey are those court ordered volunteer jobs !

 

you can set your preferences to not allow any bid from bidders under a set number of positive feedbacks. i have mine set a 10 , that keeps out the scammers that just set up a new ebay account.

if you have a "buy it now" on you auctions , you can also require the bidder have a valid paypal account and to send you a deposit or immediate paymant...the auction will not end until it is paid

 

I ran into a bunch of bogus ebay auctions recently . . . guess someone's account was hijacked. There was a bunch of newer waverunners, boats, ATV's . . . all listed as "Buy it now - $3200" in the ad. It was out in Kansas somewhere, so I was jumping all over it . . . until I found the string of other "too good to be true" ones. A little while after emails went back and forth, the ads all disappeared. It might have honestly been someone who had an account hijacked, or it might have been someone just trying to drum up some business for themselves . . . generating traffic to their real e-bay store via fake posts. Who knows . . . I know it's huge PITA. We almost got a '67 Chrysler Newport convertible (same as my father-in-law's) a few years back . . . outbid at last few seconds, my wife and I both bidding on seperate computers. Ugh. Ebay's more heartbreak than value on car stuff.

 

Since posting my willys coupe for sale all over the place, my yahoo email has been blowing up with the exact same offers as the originater of this post stated. I have an asking price & then some chode offers $8,000 more than my price & wants the money sent somewhere else. I thank god that I had heard of this stuff beforehand. I mean, shit; you think you sold a car, cash some bogus check, forward monies out of your account which is real, then a week pass' & the bank says check was no good & want there money back. Hell, you lost money & possibly have your dream car dissappear too 'cause they've picked it up already. It's very disheartening when you already bit your bottom lip off deciding to sell a car you don't want to sell, but then to go through all this too. Geesh. Glad to hear you didn't fall for it. Glad I haven't either. Carl Hagan out here in Kansas City. Oh...now I just send some rude ass email back to the sender immediately tooling on the idiot. I mean the most common question "has the oil been changed" come on...WTF?? If your selling nonrunning car, wouldn't these chodes just read the add a little first.

 

Unfortunately it's not just the overseas guys. Bought parts from a guy with almost 300 transactions and a 99% pos rating. Waited weeks, no parts, no response, etc. finally filed a dispute, got some stalling crap, finally filed a claim with Paypal. they found in my favor, then told me his account was empty, no refund. Sorry Charlie - CASE CLOSED. Now he has about 20 negative feedbacks for non shipment and claims filed. No longer has any items on ebay for sale. I'm no computer whiz.. How hard is it for him to get a new email address and user name and start over? Seems it would be tough to set up a new paypal account, but maybe not? I like ebay and have found some great stuff I can't find locally, so I'll probably use it again (have bids in now for some trim) but I'm a lot more skeptical.
I'm out $75 bucks, but worse, I've wasted months screwing with this and just ordered the parts from a retail company.
Which brings me to a related point.. The HAMB has a place for listing bad buyers and sellers. Is it restricted to HAMBers? Should we start a list of these clowns for our own use? How do you find the "real name" behind an email address? can that be done?
Feels good to rant here, but solves nothing. Anyone have the knowledge needed to address the issue?

 

I've sold parts on eBay for a number of years. The scams are not going to go away. eBay will only do something about it when it seriously affects the income of their top execs. They really don't care, in spite of what they say. They get their listing fees, and that's what they're about.

If you get an email from someone who sounds suspicious, have no further contact with them, and make sure you scan your computer for viruses and trojans. They like to send little gifts with their emails.