eBay

astrodate · ‎11-08-2018

SCAM 1

I've been looking to buy a Fitbit Ionic, either New or Used, but in good condition. I have noticed that there are quite a few sellers using a picture of an Ionic, clearly taken off the official Fitbit website, and no pictures of the "real" item. I bought one of these, at the "too good to be true" price of 70$. Shoulda known, right? As soon as the sale went through, which was almost immediately since I used a credit card, the item was "shipped". Nobody ships that fast! Then, the "tracking no" provided told me that the item had been shipped via Fedex, TWO DAYS BEFORE I placed the order! Also, it is expected in 2 days in Florida.... Now, ALL OF THIS is highly dodgy, because: 1) You can't ship something before it is sold, 2) The seller is in Italy and I am in South Africa, so why is it being shipped from the US TO the US? 3) The ad says it would be shipped via Aramex, not Fedex! I did check with the seller and he told me he is shipping it to his reshipping address in the US. Highly dodgy. On asking for an updated tracking number, since the puchase now said "delivered", he stopped communicating. Obviously. So I'm waiting for my refund.

(suspected) SCAM 2

So I tried a different tactic- buying the "pebble only", that is, the watch only, without strap, charger or box. I also noticed there were quite a lot of these, showing the pebble in a white Fitbit window envelope. On closer inspection, you will see that all these listings use only 2 pictures, multiplied over the various listings. Either that, or it has a stock picture of a complete Ionic, but it says "pebble only". Almost all of these listings are either brand new accounts, or ones where the rating is poor and there are lots of "did not arrive" comments. I chose the only one that had a 100% rating, but that is probably since it had the whole of 3 sales! I paid 100$, and it hasn't been shipped yet, so let's see....

Have you seen these dodgy listings? Have you been scammed?

Anonymous · ‎11-08-2018

@astrodate wrote:
Have you seen these dodgy listings? Have you been scammed?

Yes, I have seen them and no I have never been scammed. In the 20 or so years on eBay the only person who ever took advantage of me was me by being too greedy or not vetting the seller.

Good thing that eBay has an extremely friendly money back guarantee and in all of 20 years have only had to use it twice, once for a hijacked account and the other by a fake zip code delivery - both times I prevailed.

wdoc156 · ‎06-26-2019

So, whatever happened with the Ionic Pebble only purchase that you made? Did you receive it and did it work and continue to work. One theory is that some of these may be fraudulently obtained warranty replacements and Fitbit can/will shut down access of these devices in their servers and either stop the initial configuration or prevent sync to the servers if discovered later.
I've looked around at these also and yesterday, I decided to test the waters and bought one of the Ionic pebble only items from a seller that has been with eBay since 2015 and has over 58 positive reviews with 1 negative that was a communication error by the seller. His sales of the Ionics are very recent though so it remains to be seen how this works out.