Hosed on Ebay

[Reedus]

Anybody ever been taken for a ride on ebay? I got the ebay bug a couple of years ago, and everything I could buy I went through ebay. If I needed electronic gadgets, I would shop around and do my homework and then see how much I could save buying on ebay. Worked great and stills does, but the selling is wear I got screwed. A year ago, Dell was selling laptops on their site around Christmas for about 600 if you found all the coupons to get the deal. On ebay, the same config was going for 750 to as high as 900. Being the risk taker that I am, I bought 20 of them on my credit card and then posted them on ebay. The turn around was astounding ( dell has since added and stipulation that you can't sell on on-line auctions). The first ten I averaged 100 dollars profit, but then I lost it all to a scam. I had a person email me from Moldova offering to buy one for 850 plus S&H. I think had the offer been higher, the red warning light may have gone off in my head to a scam, but I let greed get the best of me. The person said they had no access to Paypal and offered to pay through an escrow service. I had never done this before, so I was hesitant. They offered to pay the full amount to the escrow and then after they had recieved the laptop, the escrow service would release the money into my account. Problem was with the escrow service. They lead me to an escrow site and showed me that they had sent the money and I needed to send the laptop. I sent it and then found out that the whole website was fake. Just an authentic looking site with all the buttons for help and contacts, but nonetheless all fake. Nothing like getting hosed for a few benjamins to get your blood boiling. Needless to say, I have been ultra cautious since.

Reedus :frustrated:

[Sombeech]

That sucks, bro. How much did you get hosed out of?

[Reedus]

When all was said and done, the cost of the computer was 600 and it was around 60 bucks to ship it to the freeloader. It would have ticked me off worse, but I still manged to make money off the whole deal. The Xbox 360 was a pretty good benjamin generator on ebay last Christmas. If you had a couple of those to sell, you could almost double your money

[Alex]

Sorry to hear that. I manage the mail proxy at work here and I stop about 300-400 attempts each day of these kind of scams. But people fall into the trap faster than you can imagine. That is why the attempt rate for fraud is on a huge increase.

Nothing will protect you against scams/phishing except the little voice sitting inside your head. If it smells bad, it must be rotten.... sort of say.

I am sorry you got scammed.... and thanks for posting it here for others to learn from your lesson.

PS: The same applies to Ebay e-mails, if you get emails from Ebay saying the auction is closed and you need to send the invoice, DO NOT login to Ebay, it's a fake site.

Another e-mail you might get is the one after the auction is closed. The e-mail will come from Paypal, saying that you have received the funds and you can send out the package. The e-mail will be 99% legit, except where it came from. ALWAYS check the Paypal funds before sending a package and NEVER login to the site via a link, always type "paypal.com" into the address bar.

Hope this helps.

[shagster]

Yea I got hosed once buying an Ipod. I was the winning bid so like a good ebayer I sent the money through paypal. Supposedly the item was shipped but it never showed up. I contacted the seller several times and he proceeded to tell me that he ran out of the Ipod that I bidded on so he was going to send me a check back, well that never happened. I finally turned into the ebay claim department, needless to say they sent me a check. I think I still lost out on $50 or so. Ever since I have not even looked at Ebay. I feel your pain, it SUCKS. I wish I could have found that SOB :angryfire: :bash: In guess it's a lesson learned.

[savanna3313]

I was taken once on Ebay. I was looking for a silkscreen poster for my sister's birthday, found exactly what I wanted and bought it. When I received the item, it wasn't a silkscreen at all, it was a cut out from a color magazine advertisement. I knew there was an advertisement of this particular item (it was an Absolut vodka ad using Rodrigue's *Blue Dog* - a popular icon in the south La area) but the Ebay ad read that is was an actual silkscreen which I knew were being sold and I thought I could get a better bargain on Ebay than from the gallery. So basically, what I could have bought for around $3 (the magazine), I paid $125. I protested to Ebay because it was a scam, pure and simple, but never received a reply from Ebay, the seller, nothing.

I WAS HOSED. :frustrated:

[Reedus]

I'll bet I get an email from Paypal or Ebay at least twice a week that is fake. Most of the time it goes to my junk folder which so far they all have been fake. if I ever do get on in my inbox, I read what they have to say, BUT DON"T click on any of their links. I then check my paypal account or ebay account to see if it was legit. Is it possible to get the little secure lock on the bottom right hand with a fake site? It seems all the fake ones don't have it.

[Alex]

Yes, the lock only says that the Secure connection has been established between your computer and the web server. Well, a lot of these scam sites are operated overseas. Most likely the web server where the site is hosted...is hacked. Once the server is hacked or the scammer has administrative access to the server, they can generate a fake SSL key and establish that secure connection between you and their web server.

So the lock icon means that the information between you and the web server will transfer in encrypted format. The problem with these scams is what happens once the information is received by the scammers. It doesn't matter how it gets there (encrypted or clear text). So the good practice on these scams is to look where the site is hosted. The first part before .com, .net, .org etc is the most important factor, which can NOT be faked or scammed. The third part is much less important.

Examples:

http://www.paypal.com/signon.asp?userid=reedus is legit, because the site is hosted on paypal.com server, which is owned and registered with paypal service.

http://www.paypal.tg.ua/secure/signon.asp?userid=reedus is none legit, because the site is hosted on tg.ua (Ukraine domain) server and is intended to steal the information.

I hope my explanation made sense, if it didn't please ask and I will explain better. This tactic IS the only real way to find out if the e-mail is a scam or not. There are other ways as well, but this is the fastest way.

[Reedus]

I think it makes sense. If I click on a link in a fake Paypal email, the address that pops up in the address bar will not be paypal.com? It is is a legit email, it will be paypal.com? I am always afraid that they have someway of making it LOOK like paypal.com when it really isn't. That is why I do what you recomended by manually typing in the address

[Alex]

You are right. I didn't have to go far for an example, just my Yahoo mailbox :)

Click on this link (MAKE SURE NOT TO LOGIN!!!!):

http://tinyurl.com/y72gcq

First of all, notice how long the url (web address) is? It's made very long so it will hide the first part of the address (http://sbgallarate.it). The first part of the address (http://sbgallarate.it) is the crucial information here. The site is hosted in Italy (.it domain) and the name of the company is sbgallarate. Most likely it's a web hosting company. I or you can easily contact these guys and take the offensive web site offline....just for another 5 pop up somewhere else :frustrated:

PS: This site acts as a proxy for Ebay. These guys are just gathering the usernames/passwords. If you type in your username/password and click Login, the information will be collected and then passed over to Ebay servers. The user will not even know what hit them, until their Ebay account is hijacked and used for malicious purposes.

[rockgremlin]

I've never been scammed, but I am ULTRA CAUTIOUS! I never buy unless the seller is top rated, and his/her most recent transactions have been above board. I never deal with out-of-country folks either, no matter how good it looks.

[shagster]

I've never been scammed, but I am ULTRA CAUTIOUS! I never buy unless the seller is top rated, and his/her most recent transactions have been above board. I never deal with out-of-country folks either, no matter how good it looks.

That's the killer, I am the exact same way. The time that I got screwed the seller had great ratings, and had sold a ton of stuff. That was the only reason I went ahead with it, and I still got screwed. After this happend he closed his account on Ebay. Go figure.

[Alex]

Actually it's very easy to get the good ratings.

1. Bid on any items with a keyword (ebooks) http://tinyurl.com/uprom They are all 1 cent items and are there to boost your rating. It's basically a feedback exchange. Legal and it works :)

2. Hacked account, see my post above about collecting legit usernames. So what happens the person steals a good account and makes bunch of selling auctions, receives the payment and goes underground.

[Mtnman1830]

I got screwed on ebay as well, I purchased a magazine subscription (I have done it before with no problems) and they say 8-12 weeks I should start getting the mags, but the e bay claims dept does not pursue after 8 weeks. it was only $13 dollars, but still...

[shanehadman]

Oh man...you did get HOSED!! EBAY can be very risky. Don't ever buy or sell to anyone out of the US I have learned.