Ebay
Fake Listings Copied From Real Sellers and Slow Fee Refunds

Ebay makes it easy for sellers to rip off trusting buyers. This is how it works. A potential scammer can make up a name, go to any email server and register that phoney name to get a email address. The rip off artist then goes to ebay and registers his phoney name to receive an ebay user name. There is no verification of the information given to register. The phoney seller then copies any ebay sellers items and list them as his own. The rip off artist then list as many phoney auctions as he wants to. I have seen as many as 100 items listed by a new seller with a rating of (0). Because he is listing another persons items, he can offer expensive items at very low prices, and he gets bids on everything.

If a real seller with a good ebay rating discovers that one of his auctions has been copied by a new phoney seller with bogus contact information, he tries to contact ebay. Ebay often does nothing or takes so long to do anything about the bogus listing, that by the time they act, the bogus seller already has his money for the items he didn't ever have.

The listing that caused this report was a grandfather clock that a seller with a rating of over 2,000 had listed for $15,000. The long time seller with the high rating discovered his entire listing with all photos and even his store name was being offered by a new seller with a rating of (0). The bogus scammer had included the real sellers business address and even a photo of the real sellers store. The real seller was upset to see his clock with all of his information listed for $600. So he contacted ebay by phone only to be told there was nothing they could do. The real seller was told he could send an email reporting the scam if he wanted to but they couldn't guarantee that anything would be done. The real seller sent in 3 different emails reporting the 3 different violations involved. 24 hours later the bogus bidder continued to get bids on the real sellers clock with all of the real sellers information. The bogus seller also had 31 other auctions that had been stolen from other real sellers.

Another way for good sellers to be ripped off:

A new bogus buyer with a rating of (0) and bogus contact information can bid on a $14,000 auction. The listing fees are taken at once by ebay. However, when the real seller discovers that his winning bidder was bogus, he has to wait for at least 18 days before his listing fee is refunded. In the mean time, ebay has control of his or her funds. At any one time, there could be thousands of auctions pending.

Company: Ebay
Country: USA
Site: ebay.com

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