In my last article (‘How to avoid being scammed on eBay‘) I showed you the key things to check before bidding on an item to avoid to being scammed by an eBay seller. Now, in this article, I want to show you the top five eBay tricks that unscrupulous eBay sellers use to seperate unwitting users from their cash.
1. Paying for freely available information
An easy way for sellers to make money is to sell information about an item. Such listings usuallyfeature a picture of the item in question, perhaps an iPhone and a description that is written in such a way as to suggest that you can get one either for free or for a very small amount of money.
However, you’ll need to check the description carefully because more often than not the seller will be selling information (information that is freely available on the Internet) on how to get the item shown in the picture.
Users looking for an Apple iPhone may be duped into buying a link to a website where you sign up and then refer dozens of other your friends, none of whom will thank you once they get bombarded with marketing messages.
Or my favourite: a seller who’ll charge you $1.95 to tell you a website which’ll let you find misspelled eBay auctions. Of course, you could always use Missing-Auctions.com. And then send me $1.95 
2. Beware Counterfeit Goods
Although eBay work hard to remove counterfeit goods from their site but there’s still a good chance of listing and selling them on eBay before they get removed.
One trick that the sellers use is to list the items for short periods, usually one or three days. Auction-Follow.com will highlight auctions that last for three days or less but there are other things to check.
Make sure that the picture of the item being sold is real and not just a generic image. Check also that the label is visible and looks correct. Also be wary of auctions where the seller says that an item is ‘like’ a well-known brand name.
Something else worth checking is that the seller has reasonable feedback from sales and not from buying items as buying lots of items is a good way to build up a good feedback very quickly.
3. Beware ‘Sold As Seen’ Items
An old-fashioned auctioneering con is to sell an item ‘as seen’. Whilst this is not so risky if you can actually go and see (and hopefully test) the item, on eBay this is not usually possible.
Unscrupulous sellers capitalise upon this by sending out an item that’s broken and then claiming that it must have got damaged in the post. Not surprisingly they usually don’t accept returns so you’ll have shelled out for a broken and worthless item.
To avoid these, avoid auctions that are ‘sold as seen’ especially where the seller doesn’t accept returns. Again, you could use Auction-Follow.com to check the returns policy.
4. Selling recently released CD’s and DVD’s
With the major online retailers selling heavily discounted music CD’s and film DVD it’s difficult to get a good deal on eBay for recently released items. So if you’re looking at a recently released album at an amazingly good price then you’re probably looking at a copy burned on to a recordable CD (a CD-R).
Some sellers will offer these as ‘backups’ if you’ve already downloaded the album from, say, iTunes but these are still illegal as these are an infringement of copyright.
To avoid these, make sure that the listing states that the album or film is the retail version. If in doubt, email the seller and ask them.
Something else to check if you’re buying a film is that it’s the popular version and not the first version or perhaps a low budget remake. Again, if in doubt, email the seller and ask for clarification.
5. Avoid Mystery auctions
Mystery auctions are not that common on eBay but do offer an excellent opportunity to get ripped off. The idea is that you bid an amount for a box containing an unknown item. As you might imagine, there is no guarantee that the item in the box is worth what you pay for it.
Couple with this the chances that the seller could send something that was already broken and then claim that it got broken in the post then these are best avoided.
Do you know of any other scams ? Have you been tricked by an unscrupulous seller ? If so, leave a comment and let others know what to avoid.
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Perhaps I can add to this that the best way to guard against being ripped off by online sales or auctions is to use a bona fide online escrow company. Although it does add some cost, that will take uncertainty out of the transaction.
For my money, the best bona fide online escrow (and there seems to be ten fraudulent escrow sites for every bona fide one) is probably Escrow.com (http://escrow.com). In fact, it’s the only one that eBay recommends.
Take care,
Ulf Wolf
I’ve definitely been caught by sellers advertising a “complete DVD set” of a TV show, only to find that the package is all bootleg DVDs, usually ripped from TV, or camera grabs of movies. Some even sell them without labels on the discs (to try and APPEAR legit).
This is less common on eBay than it used to be, but is still prevalent on places like ioffer.com.
Also, as always, watch out for recently signed-up sellers, or sellers whose positive feedback is coming from only a few people, or sellers with no feedback whatsoever…
It’s the old adage that if an offer appears too good to be true then it probably is. The best way to avoid being scammed is simply to ask lots of questions as the scam merchant sellers out there rely on those who simply pay for something and hardly ever kick up a fuss when they either don’t receive the item or its not as advertised.
If they can see that you’re someone who is prepared to ask a few questions at the pre sale stage, you can bet they realise that’ll you’ll definately hound them should something go wrong with the transaction.
Common sense rules also apply:
Where is the item being sold from? Its generally best to source from your own country – its a lot easier to take things up with a seller within your country.
Feedback rating: Where ever possible ensure you do business with those who have maintained a good feedback score and have plenty of recent sales activity.
Escrow service: For high ticket items always look to pay via an escrow service that way at least you get to see the goods before parting with your money.
Happy Bidding
Gez “Big G” Bennett
Ever seen Judge Judy?
Some eBAy scammer successfully sold a PICTURE of a mobile phone! It was all very squeaky clean as far as what was in the item description.
But Judge Judy had other opinions….
Auctionerrol.com checks eBay items for scams.