There have been a large number of listings in the last month or two, usually high-dollar Macs, digital cameras, etc. It's usually pretty easy to spot the frauds. I first became aware of them when I saw an eBay listing which was identical to a spam email I received from someone in Russia.
Ask yourself these questions when reading the auction listings:
1. Is the location of the item even in the same country as the lister? Many times these items are being listed using hijacked accounts of innocent eBayers.
2. Does the alleged seller have a history of being a seller? This raises a red flag if they've always been a buyer. That's how they got those 100% ratings. Possibly a hijacked account in this case.
3. Does the alleged seller have a history of successful sales of such expensive items? If not, if they've never sold anything of much value and suddenly they're offering high-dollar items, they're very suspect; very likely a hijacked account in this case.
4. Is the Buy-It-Now price of the item ridiculously low, lower than wholesale even? If so, it's bogus. These are *so easy* to spot: who in their right mind is going to sell a 2Ghz DP G5 with 2gig of ram plus a 23-inch Cinema Display for $2700? And in some listings I've seen, *the full retail version of Final Cut Pro* is included at no extra charge. What a deal! It would be, if it were legitimate.
5. Has the seller been inactive for quite some time and then suddenly is online offering all these high-dollar items? A red flag here, folks -- probably a hijacked account.
There are other questions that could be asked but these are just a few that have occurred to me over the last month or so. Look at all the angles of the listing when trying to determine its legitimacy.
Most, if not all, of the fraud listings I have seen and reported have had some common features: 1) a requirement to Pre-register (Authorized Bidder). This is one of the ways these scammers obtain legitimate eBay IDs; 2) frequently very short duration auctions -- 1 or 3-day listings; 3) Buy-It-Now at a ridiculously low price.
It is certainly possible to report these listings if you are an eBay member even if you are not involved in the transaction. You go to the eBay Site Map, find the link to "Investigations" and when that page comes up, click on "Contact Us" at the left side of the page. You have to use the complaint categories they provide, but if you follow through on it, eBay will investigate your allegations promptly and they definitely will void the listing fairly promptly if they agree, so be specific about why you think it is a fraudulent listing. If you allege that a hijacked account is involved they will follow up on that and take appropriate action.
I've reported a couple dozen of these listings, and a number of them have been cancelled within only a few hours and the rest within 24 hours. eBay is very aware of these problems and is trying hard to minimize their impact. I've had some email correspondence with Apple about these listings and they have indicated that they are very aware of the problem and indicated that they do take appropriate action when they receive reports about them. It's actually just as easy to report it to eBay because you will get results a lot quicker.
Sorry to be so verbose, but these scammers really make me angry because there *are* going to be some unlucky people who will fall into their trap and end up losing their money -- money which most can not afford to lose.
Play it safe -- buy the expensive stuff from an authorized Apple reseller.
