johnMfisk

Heads up.

Just got suckered into yet another eBay scam:

https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=7222246303

The guy had 100% positive feedback when the item was posted. Answering email. Then *poof* -- phone disconnected, emails unanswered. The ONLY hint of something wrong was a new negative feedback. I've been exchanging email with other buyers that got burned. Hopefully, my credit card will come through.

Arrggghhh! I'm about ready to just cancel this stupid eBay account. What a miserable den of miscretants and thieves.

This is almost as good as the '50mph uphill!!' eBay seller. It'd be funny if it weren't so pitiful...

cheers,
Johnny

cs1

I am sorry to hear about the seat. When your CC reverses the charges on the purchase then go to ebay seller BENSBIKE. BTW I moved out of Syracuse in 1966 to beautiful Clev OH. It snow less here, not much though. Good luck

Tim

Corsaire

If if looks and/or sounds too good to be true......well, I guess you know the rest.

Corsaire

EricDJ

Just be glad it was only 50 bucks. I lost 250 a few months ago in another category to an Australian woman.

reneuend

That sucks.
What's left if you can't trust someone's positive feedbacks?
I hope it turns out OK.

Doggus

For $67 you could get one from Wallbike.com and come away with this:

6 Month UNCONDITIONAL SATISFACTION GUARANTEE - new BROOKS saddles. Return your new saddle at any time within six-months of the ship date for a full refund of the price of the saddle. Shipping will not be refunded unless there is a manufacturing defect issue that would make the return a factory warranty issue.

merlinextraligh

ok,
I'm a very limited ebay user. How does one get several months of positive feedback if they're defrauding people. Did he hijack someone else's history? or just suddenly turn criminal?

jimbud

I'll guess the criminal option, He has sold other bike parts in the past and most hijack scams involve high dollar items. Probably simple money trouble.

jbonus

Be extra careful now that spring's around the corner. I've noticed a lot of BS bike auctions appearing in the listings, many from hijacked user accounts with solid feedback. Do a little detective work and look at the seller's feedback from buyers, items for sale, currency and location, query for pickup, and ID history (in case they changed their user name before). If it smells fishy, drop it.

TallRider

$50 seems like relatively small-ticket item for a scam...

Little Darwin

Or, perhaps the problem is that a negative feedback combined with a seller's error has started a panic among otherwise sensible buyers.

The item ended within the last 48 hours... Payment by PayPal only (so it is protected) to registered addresses only...

I don't even try to contact the seller in cases like that. I send payment and wait for a notification of shipment.

While I know it sounds fishy, perhaps you should at least wait for a reasonable delivery timeframe before broadcasting to the whole world that this seller MIGHT be fraudulent.

Perhaps the seller just moved and forgot to update his contact information... Perhaps the seller died... Perhaps the seller is defrauding you... Perhaps the seat will arrive tomorrow...

Of course, someone may know more than was stated in the OP's short posting... I am just going on what I read.

Peek the Geek

I don't know if I would consider a $50 Brooks B17 Standard to be "too good to be true."

msheron

13 transactions and 81% + feedback! That should be the clue to a scammer or someone who does not have a reputation. Sorry for you being burned by that guy. It does leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Peek the Geek

Note that the bad feedback didn't start until just a couple days ago.

dekalbSTEEL

I noticed all his current listings have manufacturer's stock photos. With private sellers, I always demand photos of the actual item i will receive. If they can't or won't supply them, I steer the he11 clear!

wile e. coyote

I started in on a scam from the good old romanian mafia guys on a $1200 cdale r1000. That one was obvious tho, they wanted to use a 3rd party fake broker for money exchange. When I realized that was a scam I led them on to the point of getting the address of the 'agent' in Chicago. Fortunately i am a total paranoidiac.

I'd never buy from a non-registered user, that should've been a flag. If they *used to* be a registered user, probably ebay has them on record and can try contacting them. Doesn't feel like a scam tho...

I'll probably join up with the cycling club here in syracuse this spring, see ya around if you go on club rides.

-Ned

johnMfisk

Thanks.

Actually, I've already exchanged email with Bill Paine at Wallingford bikes (https://www.wallbike.com) -- I belatedly found out about him after reading some older posts about Brooks saddles. I'll keep BENSBIKE in mind.

And congrats on the move... my wife and I lived in Nashville for several years and were VERY sad to have to move back 'up North' -- the kids were getting bigger and it was important to get back closer to family. I'm already scheming about the gentleman's farm outside of Maryville, TN once we get the kids off to college...

cheers,
Johnny

johnMfisk

Actually, the story is a bit more involved, but I didn't want to ramble on.

The rest of the story is that I emailed the guy after a couple days to get a tracking no. No reply. Then, I notice that his feedback isn't 100% anymore... huh? I check his feedback and the most recent buyer leaves ones of those 'SCAM!!! Emails unanswered, phone disconnected...' type messages. I exchanged email with this buyer and gives me his story. So now I try emailing the seller again (no reply) and get the contact information from eBay (the guy's in CA, I'm in NY) and, oh BTW, his phone is now disconnected. And now I'm getting additional email messages from other buyers having the same happen to them.

You're very right, however, on the not jumping to conclusions part -- normally, a week to ten days is a fair time frame before getting antsy.

My hunch is that this account was hijacked -- I've been getting pretty convincing phishing email from 'eBay' and 'PayPal' about something wrong with my account and how I have to just log in here and fill out a form with my account name, password, etc. The IP address is the giveaway -- I haven't nslookup'd or whois'd it, but none of these point to www.ebay.com or paypal.

Fortunately, it wasn't a huge amount, mostly just the aggrevation of it all.

cheers,
Johnny