New type of eBay listing scam

Browntoa

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282615410826

New unit obviously would NOT be £20 delivered , says seller is in Glasgow but comes up as "within 10 miles" of me in Kent , zero feedback seller, delivery from outside UK

Not quite sure what the scam is or how they freak the distance but it's the 4th seller I've reported in the last few days

mrcol1000

Guessing they get as much money as possible, empty their PayPal account and then PayPal has to refund everyone and can't trace them. They probably use their "customer" details to register accounts.

mrcol1000

Saying that, assuming PayPal hold the funds to avoid this. Maybe just data harvesting or contact buyer asking for alternative payment method.

qsk

If you search "Dyson DC28 Musclehead Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner in Silver & Blue", you get a long list of 0-feedbacker selling them. I know "anyone has his first time" but I never buy anything from new sellers who all of a sudden have a large quantity of high risk and usually expensive items for sale.

Pun

Listing has already been removed from ebay.

Browntoa

I've reported another 4 sellers this morning

Browntoa

Ive been reporting at least 6 to 7 new users each day now , did see mention on one seller that said buyer had lost £10 so maybe that's the scam , small amounts but on a big scale


one of this mornings had location as costa rica but new dyson with free delivery £10.98 from there


I'm wondering if this is repeated across other items that I'm not looking at , would seem likely

bxboards

Browntoa wrote: »

Ive been reporting at least 6 to 7 new users each day now , did see mention on one seller that said buyer had lost £10 so maybe that's the scam , small amounts but on a big scale


one of this mornings had location as costa rica but new dyson with free delivery £10.98 from there


I'm wondering if this is repeated across other items that I'm not looking at , would seem likely

Yes, I am seeing these all the time, a new user will list about 5 or 6 items around £11 - stock photos, listing nicked verbatim from other sellers. I can only imagine that Paypal do not hold funds, so they are getting away with about £65 each scan. I have found most of these users are not in the UK so I have been buying all their items, cancelling my Paypal payment (as their paypal accounts are not in the UK they need to accept the currenacy coversion so I pay then cancel the 'unclaimed' paymment) then report the items to Ebay and they are removed 10 minutes later, and the users kicked.

I've bought around 400 scam items and had about 50 to 60 users deregisted since I noticed this pattern of scam which seems to start in July.

We seem to be policing Ebay better than they do - what I cannot understand is why Ebay do not spot this, and nip it in the bud - they cannot be holding funds now, or it would not work.

Browntoa

It's got the look of "bots" the user names are normally in the format of random letters and numbers like the black magic Spammer's on here .

You can see they are all linked as they often have a feedback of 1 , which turns out to be from another of the spam profile.

There's been none today so I assume eBay have done a system tweak to stop them for now

bxboards

Browntoa wrote: »

There's been none today so I assume eBay have done a system tweak to stop them for now

I've spotted several today - here is one I got kicked, but I bought all his items first to stop other folks falling for it.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/augustumo_0

theonlywayisup

bxboards wrote: »

I've spotted several today - here is one I got kicked, but I bought all his items first to stop other folks falling for it.

Why would you buy all his items "first to stop other folks falling for it".