Ebay - be cautious

[triscleeire]

I have seen a few references to ebay on this and other media.

The basic idea behind ebay is great and it started off brilliantly with people selling used or unwanted stuff to other people looking for exactly that stuff.
In the meantime most of the stuff you find on ebay is cheap crap made in China (not everything made in China in bad!, but most crap is made in China) I think.
Like cigarettes, all advertising for ebay should contain a warning: Buying here might be harm your purse.

Sorry if I sound a bit cynical but fact is that ebay is trmendeously successful and people get carried away. I use ebay myself occasionally but I would never ever (again) by a phone or accessory on ebay.

This is all my humble opinion. I do try support serious online shops that sell good products and good service at a competitive price. My advice here: Always see to it that the online shop you buy from provides full contact details on their website: postal address and a valid phone and fax number. There are too many shops out there with no physical address at all which to me is quite dubious.

Cheers

[hanmin]

I've been purchasing a quite a few things off eBay, mostly UK sellers, and all of the product I've got are brilliant. If you were to think China products are mostly crap, you can well steer away from it (i.e. most of the China sellers have a word 'China' on the item location).

Anyway, I have bought a powered USB hub from China (via eBay) for GBP5 (include P&P). For the same product, if you were to get it from here in UK, it will cost you at least GBP15+. And yes, my USB hub is still here and I'm using it.

And, yeah, I've got myself a 512 Kingston SD from China, for GBP5 cheaper than of UK sellers.

Anyway, with most people saying that China will be an "economy threat" to others, I'm sure there are some reason to that (i.e. you can't be a threat by manufacturing craps). You might want to reconsider your point of view.

Anyway, I've got my Charmer off eBay for GBP150, that is more than 50% off as compared I were to get it (without contract) off local/web stores.

[reddog]

I have saved tons of money from getting stuff from Ebay, which includes my K-Jam.

[vijay555]

I've bought a lot of stuff from ebay.
However, selling stuff on ebay, obviously be extremely careful about your purchaser and receive positive indication of payment before posting.

Buying: well, you take your chances of course. I've had bargains on some small electricals (eg USB hubs etc), but if you're paying that kind of money, be prepared for crap quality, and then hope you'll be pleasantly suprised.

I've had my fair share of scammers and non paying auction winners. I think your level of caution should grow the more expensive the item, of course. A lot of guys will try to scam you out of a phone, or into a stolen one (or one without a touch screen :wink:)

V

[neilius]

I've managed to find original XDA accessories (Keyboard for £16 and Extended Battery for £11!!!!!!!) selling stupidly cheap (would cost 5x more in the shops) and both work great!

Regards,

Neil.

[christopherwoods]

I think there's some golden rules with eBay...

Take everything you see on there with at least a pinch of salt.

Remember, some fraudsters will get others to post fake good feedback, I've seen this in the past and although it's hard, it's possible.

Also make sure you can pay via a scheme which offers Buyer protection - the standard eBay buyer protection is VERY inadequate, and it's really hard to get your money back (and they charge a fee for the service too). If you have a credit card, usually if you have a problem you can speak to your credit card company directly and they will protect you from fraud by charging back the transaction (as far as I know, all UK credit card companies offer free fraud protection these days, so if you are defrauded out of your money they'll give it straight back and get in touch with the transaction processing company themselves to resolve the situation).

Avoid paying by cheque/cash/postal order wherever possible, you're just asking to be taken for a ride like that. Also, third party escrow companies not run or approved by eBay you should steer VERY clear of, I have seen people defrauded by fake escrow agencies. Anybody who pays with cash is just asking to be mugged.


Read the item description VERY carefully - I'm amazed how many people complain that they've received something they didn't want, or people who put negative feedback on items after they bought something which was actually broken (and said so in the description)... They have only themselves to blame. Scour the eBay description every time, and don't be afraid to ask the seller further questions or request pictures / more information if you feel you need it to be confident enough to make the bid.


Everyone with an ounce of common sense will already realise this, I hope.

[jabski]

Thanks for the tips guys.
Always remember " if it sounds too good to be true, it will be !!! "

[TheBrit]

Just sold my magician on eBay at the second attempt. I've bought quite a lot on eBay, even from Hong Kong and everything's been fine and dandy.

As a seller I'm a bit of a newbie and some nigerian tried to scam me out of my magician. He registered that very day claiming to be an american on business in Nigeria. He even went so far as sending me a fake PayPal confirmation.

I smelled a rat straight away when he said he wanted it posted to nigeria but gave him a chance given that there was a 0.0000001% chance he might have been genuine. When the fake PayPal came through though that was it. I reported him to eBay, PayPal, the owner of the domain he was using to (try to) scam me and then re-listed. He was thrown off eBay in short thrift and I soon had another (genuine this time) buyer.

If selling, you can specify that bidders MUST have a PayPal account and with "But It Now" you can specify immediate PayPay payment. Make sure you do and you really should be OK.

I have my money and the magician is in the post.

Everybody is happy.

P.S. Why do 99% of the world's internet scammers come from Nigeria?

[christopherwoods]

There's a culture, particularly in Nigeria, that scamming people from richer countries is almost entirely acceptable, as the scammers prey on the gullibility and greed of the rich people who usually fall for the scams (the promise of millions with a much smaller payment, what stupid rich person could turn that down?) - some people make a living exclusively from scamming Europeans and Americans (they call their targets 'mugus', singular mugu)... The most prevalent scam is the Advance Fee Fraud - the 419 scam (so called due to the number of the Nigerian law which makes it technically illegal... The thing is, these laws are rarely enforced, and corruption itself is widespread throughout the police force and government).

Of course, this is just how I interpret it, but you'll find others who share a similar point of view. Just googling for Nigerian scam 419 culture brings up some interesting results, including http://slashdot.org/articles/05/10/21/138243.shtml and http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/31063 ... Read those and browse for some more, very interesting, discussions on the subject.

[TheBrit]

Read this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.stm on the BBC web site. It's very funny. :lol:

It's about a hobby called Scam Baiting - which is basically stringing the 419 scammers along, getting them to do rediculous things and sometimes conning THEM out of money in the process.

If you want to get in on scam baiting go to http://www.419eater.com

Edit: Funny you should mention police corruption - this is the address he wanted me to send it to:

Name : Eke James
Address : block (d) highway patrol barracks flat 17 :shock:
City : Ikeja
State : Lagos
Country : Nigeria
Zipcode : 23401

[richardlai]

TheBrit: that's some funny sh*t!! :lol: "Church of the Painted Breast" LMAO

Sometimes I'm not even sure if the scammers know what they're talking about: one time I received a request to end the auction early with an instant payment of something like £300 for this xda iis with a broken screen, and that I must send it to this guy's cousin a.s.a.p. cos it was his birthday! :lol:

[neilius]

Oh guys if you haven't seen it already, check out http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/ - don't sell a faulty laptop and leave your data on the hard disk! This has been making news around the world, over 2 million hits now and a Wikipedia article hahaha!

Neil.

[richardlai]

OMFG - the fun never stops!!! I'm laughing so hard that I can't even go to bed... :lol:

It's a shame that the guy's been kicked off ebay now: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6825578528&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.co.uk%3A80%2Fsearch%2F search.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26satitle%3D6825578528%26f vi%3D1

[christopherwoods]

Hardly, he's exactly the kind of person that I don't want to see on ebay. I love all the newspaper coverage this story's been getting :D

[richardlai]

What I mean is that guy is probably using ebay under a different name now, so it's hard for us to track him down, unless he forgets to wipe his hard disk again! :LOL:

[PPCNUT]

I have bought heaps of great things on eBay and I find it great but you should always be careful of things that seems to good to be true.