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fraudulent sellers and potential ebay collusion
so there was an item for sale this week....an electronic fish finder. the seller was located in hong kong. the item was listed as a "buy it now" for $361. these typically sell for 10x that amount. the seller had 5 of them. after about a day...all 5 were sold and the listing showed "out of stock". i bookmarked the listing and i bookmarked the seller's page. today i checked back. the seller is no longer a registered user on ebay. and the bookmark to the original listing now takes me to a legitimate listing from a legitimate seller. what exactly is going on here. the buyers were obviously scammed.....but why did ebay replace the fraudulent listing with a legitimate listing? also...the original listing was covered by the ebay money back guarantee.
how can anyone trust ebay with stuff like this going on?
eburtonlab
Mentor8 months agoWhen a listing sells or ends, links to the original item often often point to similar listings that are still available. That way buyers looking to make a purchase can do so -- particularly if the buyer was following an old link. Often there is a link back to the original listing for those wanting to research the old listing, but that is not as high a priority for eBay as selling is.
If the listing is removed by eBay, the same thing applies, except there is no longer a link back to the original removed listing.
There are many good reasons to not buy expensive items from new or low-feedback sellers, not the least of which being that scammers often list expensive items at fire sale prices as bait to attract potential victims, and then make it as hard as possible to actually get a refund.
And even otherwise honest, new sellers may encounter lots of potential problems selling for the first time and actually delivering the goods, and such sellers may require a lot of additional hand-holding to get through a transaction. And that is if the seller is not planning to drop-ship the item from someone else who turns out to be a scammer.
In general, you can avoid a lot of headaches by choosing to purchase only from established sellers that have recent and past positive feedback as a seller for selling items in the same category that you intend to buy. If someone is selling a dozen apple watches, but has no feedback, or only has feedback as a buyer, or only has feedback for selling dress patterns or fishing lures (actual examples I have seen), perhaps wait until they have a track record of positive feedback for selling electronics before you buy from them.
You might miss out on a good deal from a new seller once in a while, and nothing can guarantee that you won't still run into an issue anyway, but you can avoid a lot of potential problems by choosing to do business with established sellers. Anyone can put together a listing that looks nice -- it is not hard at all to simply copy an existing listing -- but it is much harder to create a history of consistent sales and positive feedback.
For more experienced sellers, you can learn a lot about the sort of seller you are dealing with by checking the seller's feedback page to see where the seller is registered and to notice if the seller has any negative feedback. If you see negatives indicated in the table of recent feedback, you can choose to exclusively see each type of comment by clicking on the numbers shown in the table. Reading negative or neutral comments can often tell you if a seller has a pattern of problems with items not matching the descriptions, canceled orders, late deliveries or item location misrepresentation.
If a seller has a pattern of too many serious negatives -- or just not enough positive history -- it is often better to find another seller with a better track record to do business with.