It’s interesting to note that there aren’t that many scammers on eBay, however, they’re the ones who tend to be greedy. This means that they will always try to pull their scams on high-value items like cars and computers, so that they can make a lot of money quickly.. Since buyers generally buy these items very rarely, they may not know about the various scams out there..

Automobile Scams.

With cars, you will find that scammers will try to get you to send them money in advance for any reason. For some reason, some people aren’t all that reluctant to pay 50% or 25% of the money before delivery using a relatively insecure payment method, especially on a car.. They reason that the seller will obviously deliver it, as they’ll want the other half of the money.

But there never was a car! Believe when I say that pictures of cars aren’t hard to find and the veteran scammer may have a library of photos of different cars. The seller just got your $5,000 for nothing, and you can leave them all the negative feedback you like. They’ll just go and open another eBay account and find their next sucker..

While it’s not an outright scam, what you might find is that the car does turn up, but simply doesn’t live up to the description – it has been oversold, in the tradition of used car dealers through the ages. If this ever happens to you, then you can open an eBay dispute and say your item was not as described, then you might get a partial refund.

It’s just like any web owner who got a seo service which do not know a thing about professional website design or web traffic; you end up losing money.

Computer Scams.

If you bid in a computer auction but don’t win, the seller might email you to ask whether you would like to buy a computer the same as the one they just sold through their own website..

This is a bad idea! You do not have any guarantee that the item will ever arrive, and you haven’t just given them your money – you’ve given them your credit card details too.

There are sellers with nothing but positive feedback who use this scam often – and since you won’t be able to leave them any feedback on the transaction, their reputation will stay that way.. If you complain to eBay that you bought an item outside the site and got scammed, they will tell you to get lost and not do it again.

How to Beat the Scams.

There are lots of ways to beat the scams.. First, whenever you buy anything expensive, make sure to read and check your seller’s reputation thoroughly. Always check if they have sold items of a similar high value before and haven’t just sold a string of $10 items to get their feedback rating high. If you want to be very sure, insist that the money is placed in an escrow service (eBay recommend escrow.com – don’t use any other service unless you’re sure of it).

To be honest, it’s generally quite a bad idea to use eBay to buy things like cars and computers to begin with – you can get them anywhere, and the discounts aren’t that big any more. It ‘s much better to use eBay for those special things. The next email will give you some tips for buying collectibles.

 Mail this postStumbleUpon It!

Tagged with: •

Filed under: General

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!