Warning; October 2015; Increasing ebay trader fraud

Sunshine_Superman

This past week i have experience four seperate traders on ebay who have attempted seller fraud.

Ebay were notifiied of this. They investigated each transaction and surprisingly said that they would be reporting the innapropriate seller account activity and for me to cancel the transactions but still the traders are allowed to continue listing their goods.

Out of the four, two of these transactions were on auction. Two were buy it now.

In the case of the auction sales, the bids were placed by various second or third accounts. In fact one of these account 'bidders' had neither bought or sold anything at all yet had seven bid retractions.

In the very same auction, three of the independent 'bidders' all had multiple retracted bids and high percentage of buyer activity with that particular seller.

The second auction, although the final end price was was much smaller the same situation applied.

As for the two buy it now sellers, these were record dealers and the goods which arrived were substituted from the listing description for damaged well worn items which the shop sellers were obviously trying to clear out from their stocks.

While there are honest traders using ebay, they are very very few and far between, as even the most 'honest' trader inflates the postal costs to cover their increased ebay fees.

And as Action Fraud and our trading standards departments rarely take any more action than ebay, perhaps now they are all best avoided.

TKPeters

Best course of action for you is to leave appropriate feedback & stay away from those bad sellers.

FYI; We offer Free P&P on all our listings, of course the cost of RM or our DPD Courier is included in the BIN price

soolin

While there are honest traders using ebay, they are very very few and far between, as even the most 'honest' trader inflates the postal costs to cover their increased ebay fees.

Wow, blanket statement or what!

You are obviously new to ebay and it might pay you to do more research before you buy anything else as you seem to be attracted to poor sellers.

As for the inflated postal costs, I understood that the 'official' statistics showed a slight majority in the percentage of 'free postage' listings as opposed to those who charge postage separately- so how then does that equate with your statement "even the most 'honest' trader inflates the postal costs to cover their increased ebay fees"

Sunshine_Superman

Actually, i am not new to ebay.

In fact, I am very experienced in this particular field as to how the ebay trading fraudsters are manipulating the sales of their own goods to further their profits.

How typical it is though that one ordinary message to advise other people, and in particular the newer inexperienced users to be very aware now of buying from ebay traders, and suddenly the board guide suddenly pops up to diss a genuine warning.

soolin

Sunshine_Superman wrote: »

Actually, i am not new to ebay.

In fact, I am very experienced in this particular field as to how the ebay trading fraudsters are manipulating the sales of their own goods to further their profits.

How typical it is though that one ordinary message to advise other people, and in particular the newer inexperienced users to be very aware now of buying from ebay traders, and suddenly the board guide suddenly pops up to diss a genuine warning.

Genuine warnings are absolutely fine- I would post them myself (and do)

Blanket scaremongering is different, you stated

"While there are honest traders using ebay, they are very very few and far between, as even the most 'honest' trader inflates the postal costs to cover their increased ebay fees."

I'm not sure if you are just exaggerating for effect or truly believe that the honest sellers are few and far between. As for the statement that even honest traders inflate their p and p costs- I've already pointed out that statistics appear to show this cannot be the case.

Furthermore, a seller cannot charge more postage than shown on the listing, so if you see a seller that you believe is overcharging you can walk away. Any seller being silly with postage costs on a site that encourages sellers to go free post is not going to last long.

sequence

I've been buying and selling on ebay for a very long time. In my opinion, dishonest sellers are few and far between. You have to try quite hard to find scammers/dishonest sellers. 99% do the best they can and are honest.

Sunshine_Superman

Who's statistics are you refering to?

Sunshine_Superman

FYI; We offer Free P&P on all our listings, of course the cost of RM or our DPD Courier is included in the BIN price

---

Precisely.

This is how the so called 'free postage' sales are listed

So it isnt free at all is it. In fact you are charging your customers at the full price just in a covert way.

Flyonthewall

Sunshine_Superman wrote: »

Actually, i am not new to ebay.

In fact, I am very experienced in this particular field as to how the ebay trading fraudsters are manipulating the sales of their own goods to further their profits.

How typical it is though that one ordinary message to advise other people, and in particular the newer inexperienced users to be very aware now of buying from ebay traders, and suddenly the board guide suddenly pops up to diss a genuine warning.

There are certain categories which are more likely to have the have the odd dodgy seller. Still, I agree with sequence, dodgy/dishonest sellers are few and far inbetween.

When it comes to dodgy bidding that's usually obviously before you bid, in which case you either don't bid at all or you bid knowing that you're likely to have your bid pushed up (or get refunded if it doesn't get high enough).

To have four dodgy transactions, all different sellers, and in just one week is a lot and suggests you're not as experienced as you claim (more so as it sounds like 2 should have been easily avoided).

Warning people is fine, but your situation is a rare one I'd say.

Flyonthewall

Sunshine_Superman wrote: »

FYI; We offer Free P&P on all our listings, of course the cost of RM or our DPD Courier is included in the BIN price

---

Precisely.

This is how the so called 'free postage' sales are listed

So it isnt free at all is it. In fact you are charging your customers at the full price just in a covert way.

Are you suggesting that sellers that do that are dishonest?

Everyone should know postage isn't going to be free for the seller. It's not some massive secret.

All items, regardless of where they are sold, are priced to include costs the seller has and still make them a profit. Otherwise no business would survive.

Sunshine_Superman

Flyonthewall
It would be inappropriate to discusss on here at this current time either the individual sellers under investigation or the particular accounts involved. There does however At first sight appear to be a surprising lack of immediate auction transparency on the ebay website.

As you say that it is usually obvious before placing a bid if there is illegal activity, perhaps you could clarify this in further detail?

And would you classify advertising free postage only then to include it in the total buyers costs?

Would you say that is honest?