SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Small Business Guide To Buying Items:
eBay Auctions
Watch
Out for eBay
Automobile and Computer Scams
by Jeff Cohen
There aren’t that many scammers on eBay –
but the ones there are tend to be greedy. This means that they
will always try to pull their scams on high-value items like
cars and computers, so that they can make a lot of money quickly.
Since buyers generally buy these items very rarely, they may
not know about the various scams out there.
Automobile
Scams
With cars, you will generally find that scammers try to get
you to send them money in advance, for whatever reason. For
some reason, some people aren’t all that reluctant to pay 50%
or 25% of the money before delivery using a relatively insecure
payment method, especially on a car. They reason that the seller
will obviously deliver it, as they’ll want the other half of
the money.
But there never was a car! Pictures of cars aren’t hard to
find, and the experienced scammers will have a whole library
of pictures of different cars. The seller just got your $5,000
for nothing, and you can leave them all the negative feedback
you like. They’ll just go and open another eBay account and
find their next sucker.
While it’s not an outright scam, what you might find is that
the car does turn up, but simply doesn’t live up to the description
– it has been oversold, in the tradition of used car dealers
through the ages. If this happens to you then you should open
an eBay dispute and say your item was not as described – you
might get a partial refund.
Computer
Scams
If you bid in a computer auction but don’t win, the seller
might email you to ask whether you would like to buy a computer
the same as the one they just sold through their own website.
This is a bad idea! You have no guarantee that the item will
ever arrive, and you haven’t just given them your money – you’ve
given them your credit card details too.
There are sellers with nothing but positive feedback who use
this scam often – and since you won’t be able to leave them
any feedback on the transaction, their reputation will stay
that way. If you complain to eBay that you bought an item outside
the site and got scammed, they will tell you to get lost and
not do it again.
How
to Beat the Scams
There are lots of ways to beat the scams. First, whenever
you buy anything expensive, be sure to check your seller’s
reputation thoroughly. Make sure they have sold items of a
similar high value before, and haven’t just sold a string of
$10 items to get their feedback rating artificially high. If
you want to be even more cautious, insist that the money is
placed in an escrow service (eBay recommend escrow.com – don’t
use any other service unless you’re sure of it).
To
be honest, it’s generally quite a bad idea to use eBay to
buy things like cars and computers to begin with – you can
get them anywhere, and the discounts aren’t that big any more.
It’s better to use eBay for those rare, special things that
you can’t find anywhere else.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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