Ebay guitar Scams
Jack Zucker
sellers not answering questions when you submit them. I think folks are
afraid to comment in an email in case it can be used against them later.
Anyone else notice this trend?
--
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ZiggyPopp
> Don't know if these are scams or not but lately I've noticed more and more
> sellers not answering questions when you submit them. I think folks are
> afraid to comment in an email in case it can be used against them later.
>
> Anyone else notice this trend?
>
I was in the ebay market for a long period of time. I was looking for,
and finally found, a high end Gibson. Anyhow, I ran across several very
obvious scams. The sellers usually had no feedback, lived overseas and
wanted to use an escrow service for payment. Rarely would they return
email. The description was usually a dead give away as well. For
example, a 1995 Page signature LP mint with a starting no reserve bid of
$1,000 and a description of "nice guitar".
Be careful out there.
Charlie
policy pertaining to them.
I also see as many of you do new guitars selling for more than in your
local retail music store. Also inflated "list prices". I was going to bid on
an Epi Dot Studio which sell all over eBay and retail stores for $299. The
"seller" mentioned it was a $499 "list price" guitar.
I hate bay anyway....and their sister company paypal
--
Charlie
- " Keepin' the Blues Alive "
4 9 2 A c o u s t i c B l u e s
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"ZiggyPopp" <Zigg...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Ra
"Charlie" wrote
> Also inflated "list prices". I was going to bid on
> an Epi Dot Studio which sell all over eBay and retail stores for $299. The
> "seller" mentioned it was a $499 "list price" guitar.
The places selling it for $299 also quote the 'list' price,
so why shouldn't the eBay seller?
It's just the manufacturer's suggested retail price.
It's not up to sellers to find the bargain prices for the buyer.
That's not an example of a 'scam'.. that's just business.
More and more scams are being done after the scammer
hijacks an account. This fools more people.. because they
see a lot of good feedback.
The scammer then 'hooks' them, with a super low price.
As we know, most successful scams are based on
exploiting our greed.
Here's an example of one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=3750164832&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT
I reported it about 5 hours ago.. if it she be gone by the time you are reading this,
it was an auction for a Wes Montgomery L-5, in mint condition.
It has a 'Buy it Now' price of $1400.
It is for 'pre-approved' bidders only. You have to email the seller to be 'authorized' to bid.
The 'seller' has 204 feedbacks, with a 99.5% positve ratio.
As I type this, 170 people have viewed the auction.
Even if eBay ends it right now, a goodly number of gullible people
will have emailed him. When the auction ends, eBay will not post any
kind of notification that the ID had been hijacked and that people may be
defrauded. The item will simply disappear from their watch lists.
The 'seller' will email the people back, giving a bogus reason for
why the auction is no longer visible.. and offering them the guitar.
Most people may become wary and avoid the transaction.
If only 1 or 2 go through with it, that's 1 or 2 thousand dollars
profit for the scammer.
He'll then go on to steal another account.. and do it again.
--
best regards,
Ra
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Lignum Vitae
----------------------------------------------------
jimbol51
"Ra" <use...@freetoys.com> wrote in message
news:uu54d.186566$%n4.7...@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
Ra
> Still there as of 8:12 pm PST. Jim
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=3750164832&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT
341 people now.
You'll notice that no one has been 'approved'.
He wants to harvest as many email addresses as he can.
Has anyone tried emailing him?
You'll eventually get a reply with a excuse something like;
"Sorry for taking so long to respond, my wife was giving birth to my first child."
or something like that.
They'll then offer you the guitar.. and may even send you a false invoice
that will send you to a site that harvests your paypal info, so they can
clean out your bank account.
That's probably how they hijacked the account in the first place...
by sending someone an 'alert' from ebay... telling them that their
account was in jeopardy.. and to just 'click here' and enter your password.
They may also sell the guitar with requests for wire transfers, or Western Union.
I wish more would be done to prosecute these people.. and warn the suckers.
John D
was in the market for an entry level Ovation and found a Celebrity for what
seemed like a going price. The hard case was actually a cardboard case and
the Celebrity was a factory second. I could not adjust the neck to factory
specs... I have since replaced it with an American made Legend... much
better.
Just my 2 cents...
John D.
"Jack Zucker" <j...@jackzucker.com> wrote in message
news:XZadna8Fhv5...@adelphia.com...
J. Roberts
> Anyone else notice this trend?
Yep. I just e-mailed a seller about a "new" G&L ASAT Classic that had
apparantly only been played for "about 10 hours". But the pictures he
showed had a 3-bolt neck, which I understand were no longer made after
1997. Maybe it had been sitting in a warehouse somewhere or maybe it
just sat in its case in his basement and he never got around to really
learning how to play it, but a 7-year-old guitar that had only been
played for a total of 10 hours was begging an explanation. I was very
polite about it, and did not sound acusatory or anything in my e-mail.
But no response was forthcoming. It otherwise didn't look like a
scam, but I didn't take the chance.
Zorrro_2k
> sellers not answering questions when you submit them. I think folks are
> afraid to comment in an email in case it can be used against them later.
>
> Anyone else notice this trend?
I get responses back most of the time.
What I see is an uptick in the number of guitar/amp Sellers with 0
feedback and only being members for 2-3 months. I get real nervous
about this, although I know we all have to start at the baseline. But
I ALWAYS E:mail a question to these, and MUST get a response back AND
a contact telephone number and address I can verify if I am at all
interested in bidding on their items. I don't press the issue, I just
easily pass up on it if I'm at all skitish about it. I might loose out
an many good deals, but I have not yet lost any money.
Zorrro_2k
>
> > Don't know if these are scams or not but lately I've noticed more and more
> > sellers not answering questions when you submit them. I think folks are
> > afraid to comment in an email in case it can be used against them later.
> >
> > Anyone else notice this trend?
> >
> example, a 1995 Page signature LP mint with a starting no reserve bid of
> $1,000 and a description of "nice guitar".
>
> Be careful out there.
What is so 'dead giveaway' about this. Page LP's are 'nice guitars',
and maybe the Seller doesn't want to pay more than $30 in listing
fees. He will just cancel the auction, and all bids, 24 hours in
advance of end if his 'mental reserve price' is not met. I've done
this an a couple occasions, myself.
Zorrro_2k
> Latest ebay scam I see is inflated shipping charges with a "don't ask"
> policy pertaining to them.
One auction awhile back for a Dr. Z amp required a $50 'sign-up'
charge on top of the shipping...probably to cover anticipated PayPal
fees. The Seller was completely up front with this....just like the
Dealer Add-on fees in the new automobile market
Ra
> What is so 'dead giveaway' about this. Page LP's are 'nice guitars',
> and maybe the Seller doesn't want to pay more than $30 in listing
> fees. He will just cancel the auction, and all bids, 24 hours in
> advance of end if his 'mental reserve price' is not met. I've done
> this an a couple occasions, myself.
That's not a wise policy.
Most smart buyers wait until the last minute of the auction, to bid.
There are numerous reasons for this sniping, such as avoiding
'bid stalkers', people who follow you around,
because you've won nice guitars.. and end up outbidding you
on things you're interested in.
'nibblers', who are people who will bid early..
and keep outbidding you by 5 dollars.
Bid late and they're out of the picture.
'shill bidding', which is a seller who posts a fake bid,
through another ID, to 'feel out' your 'proxy' bid.
They then withdraw the bid.. and use another ID to
post a bid just 'under' your maximum,
extracting the most possible money from you...
and numerous other reasons why many people,
myself included, are 'snipers'.
There might be 2 snipers waiting for your auction to end,
who will each bid a very high 'proxy' bid.
Even though they may bid with 6 seconds left..
the 'system' will conduct a microsecond bidding war
between them... and give you a price higher than
you had even hoped.
I had a guitar that I think the opening bid was $1200.
The 'Buy It Now' price was around $1700.
Someone bid fairly early.. and the $1700 option disappeared, as a result...
but at the end, the bidding reached over $2000, so you never know what will happen.
Instead of using a reserve, which will cost you about 1% of the price you set, in fees,
which you lose, if the guitar doesn't sell... just start the bidding at a price you're
willing to accept. You can still use the 'Buy It Now' at any price you wish.
The auction will cost about $4 to run, regardless of what you are asking...
and you can let it run to it's finish, without worrying about anything.
You will only pay additional 'final value fees',
if the guitar sells for the amount you are asking.
Good luck.
J. Roberts
items. I just lost a bid on another ASAT Classic that is now back on
the market after having been sold a few days ago. I wondered if maybe
the deal had fallen through, so I checked out who the buyer was.
Turns out the buyer only ever buys items from this one seller, and
it's a pretty varied list of items. The seller has even given him
positive feedback for all the sales (including the most recent one -
"Thanks for the quick payment!"). Yet, the guitar is currently back
on E-Bay, being auctioned off by the original seller only days after
allegedly being sold to the supposed buyer. Obviously the guy didn't
like the bids he was getting, so he bought it from himself.
Not strictly a scam, I suppose. But annoying nonetheless. And
clearly against the E-Bay rules against shill bidding.
EHHackney
the final bid price was pretty low. When I next checked, expecting to see the
final sale price there was a notice that the item had been removed because of
damage or some other such thing. It looks like, if the bids or too low, there
is a way out for the seller even if he hasn't set a minimum.
Hack
--//--
Ra
"EHHackney" wrote
Sometimes people will also end an auction because someone
made them an offer to do so, for a price they liked.
That will piss off people who have been watching the auction.
Ending it because the bids aren't high enough is also unwise,
because many people wait until the last moment to bid.
It would be better to just start the bidding at a price that
the seller finds acceptable, than to waste everyone's time,
including their own.
Nate Lamy
> I ALWAYS E:mail a question to these, and MUST get a response back AND
> a contact telephone number and address I can verify if I am at all
Yep. It's amazing how cheap it is to call long distance these days -
there's really no reason not to do so. I always contact the seller by
email, get a phone number, have a pleasant chat and so forth. It very
quickly separates the wheat from the chaff. And there are some real
nice folks out there on the interweb.
- Nate
ZiggyPopp
There is no way a seller is going to list a Page LP that could be worth
4 - 5K (a '95) with no reserve and a starting bid of only 1k. The Page
LP auction I referred to was definitely a scam. Payment was escrow,
location was Italy, seller would not return email, zero feedback and a
pic off the Gibson site. I pointed out the auction in AGA and we bid it
up to ~2 million bucks. Haha.
Just about every auction is sniped in the last few seconds. If you do
not enter a comfortable reserve and then cancel as you do, you won't
ever find out what the true bidding value would have been.
G-man
> There is no way a seller is going to list a Page LP that could be worth
> 4 - 5K (a '95) with no reserve and a starting bid of only 1k.
Dude, you know nothing about markets. If that's what the market
would fetch then you can count on the bids to reach that price. I
recently sold a bunch of pedals on ebay and started each auction at
$1.00 - no reserve. And you know what? They all ended up going for
the "market price" - every one of them.
Geoff...
Keith Freeman
> the "market price" - every one of them.
I saw a copy of Beatles for Jazz Guitar recently auctioned for *more* than
the musicroom.com price!
-Keith
Music samples, tips, Portable Changes at
http://home.wanadoo.nl/keith.freeman/
E-mail: keith DOT freeman AT wanadoo DOT nl
Ra
I agree.
Just because there are some unconventional ( to you, or me ) things about
an auction, doesn't mean that it is a scam auction.
Uninformed vigilantes going in a disrupting auctions is as
disturbing as some of these scams are.
Ra
About an hour after I posted the message at the bottom of this entry...
I got an email that bounced back to me.
I just got another one.
Someone is sending viruses, with my email address as the return address.
I don't email anyone, unless it is a reply to an email that you sent me.
I was able to find the IP numbers and have traced them to the
Arizona Tri-University Network.
I just sent the following email to the University...
and to the Phoenix branch of the FBI
_________________________________________________________________
Hello,
Someone has started sending viruses in email messages.
They are inserting one of my email addresses as the return address
( pi...@freetoys.com )
A few of these messages have been rejected by the servers
and have bounced back to me.
They are originating from the Arizona Tri-University Network
The 2 IP numbers that sent the virus are:
204.228.23.230
204.228.23.214
I will forward the emails to the FBI or the University, on request.
I am willing to assist in any way, in the prosecution of the individual
or individuals who are responsible for this felony.
Thank you for your help.
best regards,
Robert Denney
______________________________________________________________
I hope they get booted from the school... and go to jail.
--
best regards,
Ra
----------------------------------------------------
http://surfpick.com
Lignum Vitae
----------------------------------------------------
"Ra" <use...@freetoys.com> wrote in message news:9rk6d.205713$%n4.1...@bignews6.bellsouth.net...