Rangefinder scams?

[aks-116]

How do I know if something is a scam? And if it is a scam am I actually protected? Or is it some **bleep** where they make it impossible?

This is the listing 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/356330305738

Help me forum!

[kensgiftshop]

The sellers feedback looks OK.

Them being in China would be enough for me to hit the back button.

[eburtonlab]

@aks-116 

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.

[eburtonlab]

The sellers feedback looks OK.

Them being in China would be enough for me to hit the back button.

I agree on the latter point.

As far as the feedback goes, the seller has received four positive feedback comments for sales of relatively expensive items, all recent (the account was just registered in September). But of those comments, two are from users that are no longer registered, and the other two have single digit feedback. I tend to be suspicious of sellers with feedback only from new users. Either more experienced buyers are staying away for a good reason, or more likely, someone is using new accounts to pad feedback.

Oddly, for a relatively new seller, the seller has left no feedback for any buyers at all.

Perhaps the newly registered seller of fancy teapots is legitimately branching out to drop-shipping laser range-finders from Hong Kong and storage sheds from China, but I would not count on it.

I just noticed that the same kind of teapot that the seller appears to have sold for hundreds of dollars are currently selling for $30 or so from many other sellers, using the same stock images and titles.

[fab_finds4u]

eBay removed the listing.