17" PB eBay auction advice. smells a bit fishy

Its a hijacked account. Don't touch it.

ebay PB

jimsowden said:

Its a hijacked account. Don't touch it.

Click to expand...

May be we should report to eBay ??

dylomel said:

May be we should report to eBay ??

Click to expand...

There are so many, but whats the harm? I hate scam artists.

Hijacker

I discovered a very similar auction last week. Seller had been selling $2.00 Christmas ornaments for months and suddenly had 15 powerbooks maxed out everything for $1500. Not the first scam I've discovered on eBay. This one smells like a hijacked user ID to me. Good to look at past and current auctions. I reported the one last week to eBay and then watched the auction. It never got pulled, but no one bid on it.

Don't worry the local giver of bad auction advice, emaccrazy, should be by soon to tell you that he's thinks you should go for it. 🙄

It's your money, if you think it's a scam -- it probably is.

Don't get caught up in buying something for nothing if you can risk flushing the money down the toilet.

Remember, a fool and his money are easly parted.

Ebay Scam Sniffing

Here's a clue:
Look at the other auctions this seller has on offer.
Powerbooks, iPods, Sony stuff, 19" LCDs -- allovasudden the guy is a bleedin' department store with the who's who of hot products selected to make people pay first and think later. He's doing PayPal, which is unusual for scammers, but with PayPal, all he has to do is to slurp out the money and close the bank account and you won't be able to recover.

Here's my fraud detection list - 3 or more and I'm not risking it, any 6 of these mean probable fraud:

1 New account or zero feedback or cloaked account
2 No history of selling this type of goods or radical shift in pattern (based on the feedback - indicative of an acct. hijack)
3 Offering new high end product with no reserve or a buy it now far below wholesale
4 Offering new products that are authorized dealer only
5 Non-recoverable payment methods (Western Union, bank draft, certified cheque, email money transfer)
6 Preapproved bidders only (so they can harvest your emails and sell to multiple suckers off-eBay)
7 Individual selling multiple "new" products,
8 Copy and paste graphics and text, lack of "personal" details (but remember, a lousy picture could just as easily been lifted from another auctioneers 'real' photo)
9 Missing or absurd location,
10 Offers free shipping (typical of "offshore supplier/Western Union" type scams)
11 Country of goods doesn't match country of account registration,
12 Selling product that is not shipping yet,
13 Short auction (to sell before EBay responds to complaints)
14 Solicits direct contact by email (anonymous, throwaway email account) or any text that says "email me here ####@yahoo.com instead of my Ebay profile because I have been having trouble with that email"
15 PayPal payment solicited outside of the eBay auction payment system. A legit seller should have their Paypal linked to their eBay acct.
16 Delivery > 30 days after payment. A PayPal refund *has* to be claimed within 1 month or your out of luck. If they can string you along to the 32nd day ("Yeah, I shipped it, I don't know why it's taking so long, hang on a few more days while I track the package for you or I'll send you another one"), they're home-free.

- Make it a policy to ALWAYS post a PayPal non-delivery claim on the 29th day. You can always cancel the claim if the goods show up later.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com